Consider-the-Lilies Web Gallery
Longleaf Summer Bluet
This native wildflower once grew throughout the eastern half of North America, but in recent years has declined in some parts of Canada and New England to the point where it has been declared an endangered flora.
Fortunately, it is not categorized as a threatened variety in Virginia. Although not seen as often as the more familiar varieties of its family, when found, it is worth a closer look.
The prefix Houstonia was given to this plant family by Linnaeus, the father of the botanic binomial naming system.
He did this to honor his friend, William Houston, Scottish surgeon and botanist, who died in 1733 while on an extended expedition to find new flora in the tropics of South America.
The common name is derived from a more familiar member of this family, Bluet (Houstonia caerulea), which has flowers of a more decided shade of blue.
Note cards featuring the Longleaf Summer Bluet wildflower are available in the new Gallery Shop.
Click HERE to visit.
One easy way to identify this Bluet is the spiky foliage arching out below the blossoms. (Arrow)—longifolia and "longleaf" in the botanic and common names, respectively.
This delicate native flora—Does it look like an Easter lily to you?—prefers dry, gravelly soil.
In fact, I often find this xeric wildflower growing on seemingly barren ground in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
These beauties were found flourishing on the thin soil of a limestone outcrop where little else will grow.
(Heal-all and Golden Ragwort require just the opposite habitat: damp soil and semi-shade of a forested wetland.)
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Go back to the Main Directory to consider more lilies of the field.