Spring Wildflowers: Fire Pink and Pale Rose

A blush of rosy red along the roadside caught my eye last week. The fire pinks were in bloom! The fire pink is one of my favorite wildflowers with its bright color and tendency to prosper in bad, clay-ey soil where little else will grow. This patch was no exception--it was high on the road bank in the poorest of red clay soil, and it was beautiful.



I remember trying to transplant fire pinks once, and of course the effort failed. Wildflowers are best left in the wild, I learned, and I am fortunate to live in a place where they thrive quite well with little intervention by humans.

On the ridge road, the wild roses are in bloom. This little patch is very near my driveway. Again, these seem to like poor soil, particularly dry, rocky soil like that along the wooded portion of the ridge road.

Such a lovely, simple little flower, the five petaled blooms are also quite fragrant. Some will bear hips in late summer; I harvest these (if I can get them before the birds do) for use in herbal tea mixtures as a good source of vitamin C. I think they add a nice zing to the tea, too. This is a Pasture (or Carolina) Rose; it is very similar to the Virginia Rose, but there a few slight differences, most notably in the thorns.