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Post by dvg on Oct 2, 2019 13:53:54 GMT
Every year some of these charming Viola tricolor plants pop up on the lawn or in the flower beds here. To spare them the wrath of the lawn mower, i'll uproot some of them and stick them in a pot to ride out the growing season. This year, a fine dark flowered specimen jumped up in an abandoned flower bed, and what at first appeared to be multiple plants, actually turned out to be one large plant. That plant was promptly potted up into a 8" pot and this is how it looked back in July. Yesterday, some shots were taken of what still remains of this Viola. It is still flowering and has plenty of spent seed pods. The bumble bees visit the flowers and the pollinated flowers produce seed pods like this green one, which then open and spill out their seeds as the dried one above this unopened seed pod already has done. The wind spreads the small seeds all about, and they pop up in unexpected place, hence leading to one of their common nicknames - Johnny-Jump-Ups. If the definition of a weed is any plant that grows where it wasn't intended to be, then these little darlings would be my weeds of choice. Plus, it doesn't hurt that the flowers are edible. Perhaps it isn't just me that has a soft spot for these plants... ...some of their other common nicknames according to Wikipedia are: heartsease, heart's ease, heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, or love-in-idleness.
dvg
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Post by dvg on Jul 7, 2020 20:32:07 GMT
Noticed the weeds were popping up in a long crack in a concrete slab here, but that also Johnny-Jump-Ups were volunteering along that fault line as well. This was the first one i'd noticed a few days ago, because it was in flower then. Here are two more, the right one just about to unfurl its flower petals. And two more, the left one still waiting on a bloom. They might be growing like a weed with the weeds, but i do have a soft spot for these little fellas and feel compelled to carefully try to dislodge them, and then give them a fair bit more foot space, than the cramped crevices they have wiggled their way into. dvg
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Post by dvg on Jul 15, 2020 15:10:10 GMT
So about a week ago, I tried to carefully prick, pry or otherwise extricate some of these wee little fellas from the cracks in their concrete homes. Was able to remove most of the roots with the majority of these, but one plant came out with most of its roots left behind, and was potted up with the rest of them. These are quite resilient and even were hit with pea sized hail a few nights ago, but all are well on their way to growing out happily in their new home, late into the autumn here. Cheers, Doug dvg
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