It’s The Little Things

The shelter-in-place orders/recommendations keep me largely at home these days. Instead of traveling away on field trips to see Georgia’s beautiful flora, I stay at home and wonder about the tiny flowers so long overlooked. Some of these tiny things are in my yard while others are ones that I have found on walks through the area.

Wild slender basil (Clinopodium gracile)

Take a walk with me through a week’s worth of tiny flowers and the journey of discovering them. I’ll start with a small pinkish one that got some discussion last year, might have been identified—I can’t remember now—but which popped up in my neighbor’s yard again this year.

It was clear that it was a member of the mint family (once you got out the hand lens or your reading glasses to see!).  Someone in a Facebook plant group identified it as Clinopodium gracile, slender wild basil. It is a non-native perennial that is very low-growing.

A white-flowering plant on the side of the road was the next puzzle. It looked very much like it would be in the Apiaceae family and my first thought went to Osmorhiza  (sweet root or sweet Cecily). However, I could not get it to match up (neither the flowers nor the foliage matched). I posted a photo on Facebook and my friend Jane provided the name: hairy-fruit chervil (Chaerophyllum tainturieri), a native annual plant (and yes, in the Apiaceae family so I got that part right!).

Chervil (Chaerophyllum tainturieri)

Developing fruits on chervil

On the same roadside, cheek-by-jowl with the chervil, was another tiny, white-flowering annual which I already knew: beaked corn salad (Valerianella radiata). I recognize it by the almost square look to each set of 4 (sometimes 5) tiny flowers (best perceived if you step back a bit, hence the photo below). I can only imagine the critters that feast off the abundance of tiny seeds that these two annuals produce.

Beaked corn salad (Valerianella radiata) with
yellow Medicago lupulina (non-native black medic)

So, with Osmorhiza on my mind, it was a complete surprise to find a small cluster of white flowers on the edge of the stream in my wooded area. Could it be? Yes, it is! Based on range, it would appear to be the species Osmorhiza longistylis. I love to find new things on my property.

Sweet root (Osmorhiza longistylis)

Osmorhiza longistylis

Back to the weedy roadside, a super tiny purple flower had me puzzled. Up close (and I mean with a hand lens!), the flower was very much like a buttonweed (Diodia) or a bluet (Houstonia). An email to my friend Richard brought a quick answer: field madder (Sherardia arvensis), a non-native annual in the Rubiaceae family—which explains the resemblance to the buttonweed and bluet since they are in the same family.

Field madder (Sherardia arvensis) can be prolific!

A favorite native annual is also just now starting to bloom in lawns. More foliage than flowers, this tiny geranium (Geranium carolinianum) has small, pale lavender flowers. Like its bigger cousins, this flower is often called cranesbill because of the appearance of the seed capsule.

Carolina geranium (Geranium carolinianum)

Be safe, folks, and be curious! Several years ago I wrote about other small flowers you might find growing in your lawn in spring. You can read that blog here.