I have a soft spot for flowering trees, and these always remind me of fun times by the coast (plus some part of me thinks they look like a delicious forbidden food).
By usefulness: Yarrow, it’s an incredibly useful plant. Helps with bleeding, heartburn, indigestion.
By looks: Bird of Paradise Flower, lives quite a long time when cut from the plant.
Scariest: Poison Hemlock, it’s everywhere. And you wouldn’t think much of it.
Even scarier: Giant Hogweed. It’s like Poison Hemlock, but apocalyptic in size.
Best smelling: Wax Flower
Least favorites Limonium, it smells like cat piss. Roses due to thorns, plus if you don’t get them in water ASAP they tend to get air bubbles in the stem that makes the plant die faster. Gebera Daisies; they have a very weak stem. 2inch Carnations, because they break at the nodes
I used to be a florist and my hobbies involve foraging.
Roses, but only the heirloom types that have a scent. Their shapes and colors vary widely, but they are so satisfying to my soul, I’d fill up acres with them if we didn’t need to raise food. Bit finicky to grow, bit of a challenge to maintain them.
Smell-wise, night blooming jasmine. Effortless beauty, rain lilies and the black eyed susans. Pollinator attracting, I don’t know what it’s called but there is a lanky bush in my backyard with flowers like morning glories and when it blooms, it is a bee club, absolutely stuffed full of bees. So many bees come to that one plant every year late summer.
Snapdragons. My wife sometimes plants them to attract bees to her vegetable garden. The sight of bee butts wriggling to get inside those flowers never fails to make me smile.
Couldn’t tell you my favorite, but I could easily tell you I absolutely HATE rafflesia because it kinda creeps me out in a similar way that mushrooms do.
Lilac. Growing up, my childhood home had lilac bushes all around the edge. I used to build forts underneath like it was my own private space. The smell of lilacs brings me back to my happy childhood.
I love the colours. These flowers grow naturally where I leave in southeast France. They’re very resistant and bloom all year long. They where my father’s favourite and mine too.
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