flowerbookings

collection of local flowers for identification & medicine (original pics tagged #my photo). zone 6b/7a. this is my flower book. small plot gardening, foraging & urban farming. on a self-taught journey of herbalism & healing. currently: getting my organic herbal skincare business on its feet. orders and questions on my store's tumblr @luckyherb - UNDER CONSTRUCTION but I have plenty of supplies and whip up fresh batches for every order! I also am aiming to make great skincare accessible so my prices are the best around and I'm willing to work/trade with those with financial difficulties.

[teapot-of-unique]

Anyone who purchased rhododendron or lilac plants from Walmart or Rural King between March and May should immediately dispose of the plants in a way to prevent further spread of the disease, officials with the state agriculture department’s Division of Plant Health said. Infected plants can be destroyed by burning, deep burial or double-bagging the plant — including the root ball — in heavy duty trash bags for disposal. To prevent further spreading, do not compost. I just saw this posted on fb and thought to share the word.

Sudden Oak Death detected in Ohio after stores receive infected shipments of plants

The state Department of Agriculture reports that cases of the Sudden Oak Death disease have been found in Ohio.The plant pathogen, also know

[bobcatmoran]

Heads up that this is a widespread issue. Other states that received plants from the nursery with Sudden Oak Death are: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Click on the state’s name for more details about where the plants were sold. Other chains that have received plants include Hy-Vee, Home Depot, and a few independent stores.

And CLEAN ANY GARDEN TOOLS YOU USED ON POSSIBLY INFECTED PLANTS. YOU DON’T WANT TO SPREAD THIS.

[flowerbookings]

13 June 2019

Sambucus Nigra L. aka black elderberry. It was a large bush, I'd say around 6' tall & quite wide. It can grow up to 30 feet tall, however. It was by a river and elderberry enjoys wet, marshy areas. 

The black elderberry plants have multiple edible parts and has many medicinal qualities.The flowers are edible but be careful that the plant is not red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) which is poisonous. The black elderberry berries are much more popularly used than its flowers; they are high in vitamin C, antioxidants, and fiber. Elderberry contains the antioxidant flavonols quercetin, kaempferol and isorhamnetin. The flowers contain up to 10 times more flavonols than the berries.

How to use: the berries must be cooked before consumption (some say as long as they are fully ripe they are safe raw, but cooking them actually adds more benefits so I figure be safe rather than sorry) and are used to make juice, jams, chutneys, pies and elderberry wine. The flowers are often boiled with sugar to make a sweet syrup or infused into tea. The flowers can also be eaten fresh in salads.

[bastard-woodsman]

Leaf/tree identification guide by Nutt & Stevens Ltd., Leicester, England

[flowerbookings]

5 September 2018

Clematis

[flowerbookings]

4 April 2019

Crocus

When these bulbs in the yard pop up and flower- Spring is here!

[rewind-on-purpose]

Alright, now I have a whole garbage garden getting started. Green onions and carrots this time, in addition to five cloves of garlic and two onions. Now I just need to try celery, lettuce, and cabbage.

[flowerbookings]

Summer 2018

California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) mix in full bloom.

1st time growing them from seed; the only way to grow them as they do not transplant. They reseed themselves and should come back next summer.

Part of the poppy/Papaveraceae family, still a sedative with many medicinal uses, but non-narcotic.

[linenandwool-blog]

How to Describe Plants

[screambirdscreaming]

So I just learned something that pisses me off. Y’know quinoa? The ~magical~ health food that has become so popular in the US that a centuries-long tradition of local, sustainable, multi-crop farming is being uprooted to mass-produce it for the global market? Potentially affecting food stability and definitely effecting environmental stability across the region?

Ok, cool.

Y’know Lamb’s Quarter? A common weed throughout the continental US, tolerant of a wide variety of soil conditions including the nutrient-poor and compacted soils common in cities, to the point where it thrives in empty lots? These plants are close relatives, and produce extremely similar seeds. Lamb’s quarter could easily be grown across the US, in people’s backyard and community gardens, as a low-cost and local alternative to quinoa with no sketchy geopolitical impacts. You literally don’t have to nurture it at all, it’s a goddamn weed, it’ll be fine. Put it where your lawn was, it’ll probably grow better than the grass did. AND you can eat the leaves - they taste almost exactly like spinach. 

This just… drives home, again, that a huge part of the appeal of “superfoods” is the sense of the exotic. For whatever nutritional benefits quinoa does have, the marketing strategy is still driven by an undercurrent of orientalism. You too could eat this food, grown laboriously by farmers in the remote Andes mountains! You too could grow strong on the staple crop that has sustained them for centuries! And, y’know, destroy that stable food system in the process. Or you could eat this near-identical plant you found in your backyard. 

[radical-agriculture]

so true – another example is acai berry, which is just about the same for you as any other berry. +lots of plants we deem weeds or invasives are incredibly hardy and nutritious! look out for dandelion, wood sorrel, and Japanese knotweed

[nightshade-victorian]

Dandelion is delicious and can be used in many different ways from salads to drinks. All you need for good foraging with a identification book and a bag.

[nic-mharta]

Lambs’ Quarters DO grow across North America in peoples’ back yard and community gardens. And, some of us were taught by our seanchaidhean, our tradition-bearers, not to pull them up but to let them grow. Their leaves are richer in protein than spinach, but they grow over four feet high: virtual spinach “trees” where you can go harvest the leaves for salad or cooked veg over and over again. Grown as a companion-plant with beans or squash they provide stakes that the vines can be trained up (in place of corn, which in my area is vulnerable to local wild herbivores. Lambs’ Quarters will grow up through a thick mat of pine needles, will grow in drought conditions and in the hard-packed dust on the edge of roadways. And unlike dandelion, which is non-native and is crowding native plants out of their ecological niche, Lambs’ Quarters are a native plant that belongs here. Public service request for responsible gardeners who appreciate and nurture dandelion: please gather the flower heads before they go to seed. Do the same with chamomile, chinese lanterns, blue bells and any other “vigourous free-seeding” non-native that grows on your land.

[furbearingbrick]

oh!

[oncekimberly]

This inspired me to do some googling. Quinoa, lambs’ quarters, and orach are all part of the chenopodium group (not sure of the taxonomical word) I’ve grown mountain orach and it’s delicious, I prefer it to spinach because it’s hardier and doesn’t bolt to seed as quickly. Imma stop pulling lambs’ quarters and try its leaves and seeds!

[trollkatt]

There is only one reason why we hear so little about the edibility - and yumminess! - of many of the plants we find growing in ditches and back gardens. One reason only - we don’t have to produce them or buy them.

Consumerism is a consciously engineered system to make people produce and consume, produce and consume, in the name of this fantasy-monster called “progress”. It is the younger twin of capitalism, and is made to have so many steps between the idea of a product to the consumer, that everybody has to pay somebody else only in order to be able to do something so basic as to eat. Most of the time and energy spent in order to be able to eat is never spent in our favour, but in the favour of those who control the system, and who consume and consume without ever producing anything at all.

How many of you following this post know that there are even people who earn money on the ignorance of people by selling them weed seeds? Dandelion, chicory, lamb’s quarters, clover, rosebay willowherb, burdock, purslain, wood sorrel, white mustard chickweed, reedmace… Of course nobody tells them that these plants are the same plants that they spend their summer Sundays digging out of their lawn and throwing away! I have heard people say things like, “Can’t be the same kind of dandelion, because I paid for it!” and “Yes, but these are cultivated and therefore better quality.” Which is true only of a rare few kinds, such as carrots, potatoes, tomatoes… Of which up to ¾ - three quarters - actually are thrown away by the commercial producers. Not donated to poor people or to kindergartens and old age homes. Not even sold to pig farmers. No, thrown away.

The only thing that can weaken - if not topple - this system, is to become aware of its mechanisms and the fact that its motto is a huge lie.

Truth is, outside of this system, all lunches are free.

[aeyriabird]

Not to derail the post, but Radical-agriculture above mentioned Japanese knotweed, and as someone involved in environmental conservation who has been doing invasive plant removal for the past two years now, I just want to caution people against trying to cultivate it or other invasive species.

Invasives aren’t like weeds; they’re not just plants we decided we didn’t like, and so slapped a bad label on them just because. Invasives are a scientifically based category, named so because these species will literally invade ecosystems they don’t belong to (often because of human introduction) and wreak significant damage on the native flora and fauna because of their ability to out compete other species.

Japanese knotweed in particular is a highly invasive plant in North America that will quickly and literally choke out everything around it in its proliferation. And once it takes hold it is damn near impossible to remove. We would spend hours going into a patch, digging up the entire root system, bagging every piece of plant we could find, spraying the remains with round up (which is highly toxic to plants and humans) and even then, we couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t crop back up.

I don’t personally know the nutritional value of Japanese knotweed, but if you do decide to eat plants you find and you’re in North America, I beg you please be careful that you don’t accidentally / intentionally propagate it. That shit spreads like wildfire and is just if not even more damaging; and with the environment already going to shit, it’s vital we don’t contribute further to its collapse.

[did-you-know]

Because most of us spend the majority of our time indoors, NASA conducted a Clean Air Study to determine which common houseplants are the best for filtering harmful toxins like ammonia and formaldehyde from the air.  

**Please note: Several of these plants are known to be toxic to cats, dogs and other pets. If you are a pet owner, please do check the toxicity of plants before introducing them to your home.**

Source Source 2

[awkward-ravby]

There’s a good site to reference when trying to make sure you don’t accidentally poison your fur children!

http://www.tailsmart.com/11-detoxifying-plants-that-are-safe-for-cats-and-dogs/

[regnum-plantae]

Eating Dahlias 

Thanks to the great promotion work by @seedkeeping​, I was dying to get a chance to cook and eat dahlia, or Acocotli/Cocoxochitl tubers, a traditional Aztec crop: if anything excites me more than plants, that’s food that comes from plants! Also, whenever I would deadhead or trim dahlias at work, the scent coming off the cut parts would instantly and strangely cause my mouth to water copiously, so I just wanted to give my body what it clearly seemed to want. 

I started with a small batch of mixed tubers from different plants, from the large-flowered cactus-type dahlias which seem to give the largest crop, and from some single-flowered ones. I cut them up in wedges, dusted them with corn starch and fried them in corn oil. I only added salt and no spices as I wanted to get a clear idea of the real taste. 

Well, both me and my boyfriend really liked it! It would be hard to describe it though. It’s mild and has a hint of the smell of the greens, which I really enjoyed. We both agreed the taste reminded us of the smell of roasting dandelion root from when I made coffee with it, which makes sense as they are both Asteraceae and their roots contain the sugar inulin.  

Since trying them I’ve been telling all the other gardeners in my allotment association and encouraged them to give it a go, as many grow dahlias, but nobody seemed particularly interested so far. I am certainly going to grow them for eating next summer now that I’ve discovered the dual-crop potential of these wonderful plants.        

[sleazeburger]

Roses have the highest vibrational frequency known among all flowers, resonating at approximately 320 hz 

Both photos by me, more here

[flowerbookings]

15 May 2018 Lilac (syringa) Lilac's scent hangs in the air in springtime- lilac has a potent, lovely floral essence; a couple flowers can scent an entire room. Native from southeastern Europe to eastern Asia & quite commonly cultivated in temperate areas elsewhere. One of 12 recognized species of flowering woody plants in the Olive family (Oleaceae).

[flowerbookings]

29 July 2018

Butterfly milkweed (asclepias tuberosa) Species of milkweed native to eastern North America. Excellent choice for butterfly garden; commonly known as butterfly weed because it is the larval food plant for Queen and Monarch butterflies. Also attracts other pollinators due to its copious production of nectar. Hairy stems are not milky when broken. In the garden: most easily propagated by seed. Prefers dry soil & full sun ☀

[flowerbookings]

27 June 2018 Passionflower (Passiflora x belotii) Woke up to the gorgeous surprise of my first ever passionflower blooms. 3 at once!

[flowerbookings]

13 June 2016

California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica)

Notes: native to western U.S. but now naturalized elsewhere. Reseeds freely, can be readily found on roadsides.

Medicinally- gentle and very useful sedative, ideal for sleeplessness, even in children. Unlike other poppy, no addictive side effects and is very safe to use. Gentle sedative for nervous system; excellent for insomnia, stress or tension. Also helpful for overactive digestive systems.

[flowerbookings]

Check out my first California poppy post from 2 summers ago!

[flowerbookings]

21 June 2018 Happy Solstice! ☀ First flower from the organic California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) I grew from seed, with another bud (aka calyx or sepals) to the bottom left. It’s native to the USA and Mexico. This is my first year growing these in my herb garden & I’m excited to make a tincture from this non-narcotic member of the poppy (Papaveraceae) family. I will expand on CA poppy’s benefits as soon as I have a chance (& check out my post -that I'll reblog now- from a couple summers ago about them), but in short it’s a relaxation-promoting, beautiful, medicinal, and edible flower.