Into the Wild Blue

The lavender of the crocuses is gone, and we're now in the blue period of the seasonal wildflower show.

The flowers on the right are wild lupines. Texans call their wild lupines bluebonnets, which sounds so much more descriptive and interesting, doesn't it? They've given these beauties the honor of being their state flower, too.

Lupines are legumes, which means they are related to peas and beans and peanuts. Each one of those little blooms on the stock grows into a pea pod like seed packet. You don't want to eat the seeds of these legume pods, however, since they contain a bitter poison.

Another blue wildflower blooming now is Jacob's ladder (below), named for their ladder-like leaves. There are places on my regular dog-walking trail around the subdivision where entire hillsides are blue with a low carpet of blooming Jacob's ladder.

I have yet another blue wildflower blooming in the yard--tall lungwort (Don't worry, it has much better names than that, too!)--but I don't have photos yet, so I'll post photos and a little description of it some other day.

What comes after the blue period? Next up is the pinks, which I would expect to begin blooming within a couple of weeks.

Previous related posts:

• Still Waiting for Green
• Before the Greening, the Lavender

Both photos are by oldest son.

Technorati Tags: wild flowers, yukon, Jacob's ladder, lupine