MID-APRIL, COUNTRY-ROAD FLOWERS

      A few kinds of small, wild plants, including common dandelion, blue violets, grape hyacinth, Veronicas and purple dead nettles, have lovely flowers that brighten and beautify miles of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania's country roadsides in the middle of April each year.  Those plants are adaptable and able to thrive on lawns, fields and roadsides, in spite of mowing lawns and roadsides and plowing fields, therefore making attractive, wild bouquets of themselves, with no work on our part.  And all these species are aliens from Eurasia, except blue violets that are native to North America. 

     Cheery, yellow dandelion blooms are the largest of these wild, roadside blossoms in April and into May.  Each flower head, composed of many tiny, golden blooms, is a bit over an inch in diameter and stands out above its plant's ground-hugging leaves, the other kinds of flowering vegetation, grass and garlic plants.  

     The perennial dandelions are abundant along country roads, and on lawns.  Each of many tiny, golden blooms on a flower head produces a seed with a fluffy "parachute" that carries that seed away on the wind to colonize soil elsewhere.  

     Many dandelion seeds, however, are eaten by mice and a variety of seed-eating birds, including finches, sparrows and cardinals, during May when few other seeds are yet available.  And wood chucks and cottontail rabbits ingest many dandelion leaves and flowers during spring and summer, adding more interest to roadsides, fields and lawns.  

     The appealing flowers of blue violets are more purple than blue, but they are beautiful peeking coyly from grass and violet leaves.  Dandelion and violet flowers together create a lovely combination of colors that are so delightful to see.  Many people, including me, like to see those flowers blooming together on their lawns.  Again, the leaves and flowers of violets are consumed by chucks and rabbits through summer, adding more intrigue to lawns.

     Grape hyacinth bulbs are planted in flower gardens on many lawns.  But this plant, with the clusters of small, purple, bell-like blossoms that resemble tiny bunches of grapes on their stems, spread easily across many lawns, some fields and along certain strips of roadsides.  There they bloom in mid-April, helping to beautify the landscape.  And I have seen parts of some local fields purple with the beautiful, intriguing flowers of grape hyacinth.

     Veronicas are small, ground-hugging plants that begin producing tiny, light-blue flowers by late March.  But they reach a peak of blooming by the middle of April.  Then pale-blue carpets of lovely Veronica blossoms beautify parts of many short-grass lawns during sunny days in April.  And those blossoms are so close to the ground that lawn mowers don't cut them off.  Since mowing cuts off the grass, more sunlight reaches Veronica leaves. 

     Many thousands of dull-pink blooms on purple dead nettle plants dominate parts of certain local fields in April, making them dull-pink in color.  These small plants also grow in attractive patches, here and there, along local, country roadsides, adding another appealing color to roadside bouquets in mid-April.  This plant is a mint, and has a square stem to prove it.  

     When walking or riding along country roads in the eastern United States, watch for these flowering plants, and others, during April.  Their lovely blossoms add much beauty and joy to our daily lives, if we look for them.        




























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