Consider-the-Lilies Web Gallery
Moth Mullein
In the early summer, I've learned that I need not go on a hike in the forest or ascend the Blue Ridge Mountains to find some new wildflowers. Just by taking a drive along a "blue highway," such as US Route 11 in the Shenandoah Valley, I've found several types of lilies adorning roadsides, or along the edges of fallow fields, in drainage ditches, and other waste places that could use some "adornment."
In late June I found this beauty flourishing in what would seem to be a most inhospitable habitat: a dry, neglected field, offering only a compacted, infertile, gravelly soil. But this hardy wildflower, and others on this page, flourish in these "waste places."
(Other "tough" but beautiful wildflowers to be seen along Virginia roadsides in early summer are Campion, Dames Rocket, Perennial Sweet Pea, and Viper's Bugloss.)
Here are several of these hardy varieties I found growing together on some abandoned pasture land.
At the top—blue arrow—is some of the first Chicory to appear this summer. Just a few days later the roadsides of the Valley were colored "Chicory blue" as this interesting flowering herb came into bloom en masse in the Valley.
To the upper left—black arrow—is a stalk of Dogbane, with a Dogbane Beetle browsing on its favorite food. (The lily here is the fauna, not the flora!)
The white and yellow blossoms—white arrow and yellow arrow, above, respectively—are the two colors displayed by Verbascum blattaria. (One plant will have one color, not both.)
The common and botanic names are descriptive of the hairy stamens that stand out so strikingly in these blossoms.
Do they look like the antennae of a moth to you?
Whomever originated the common name of this European import in ancient times, considered these blossoms, saw the "antennae" and dubbed it with the common name.
Botanist followed the common name, translating it into Latin for the scientific label.
The first half of the botanic binomial, Verbascum, is said to be from the Latin barbascum, meaning with a beard.
The suffix, blattaria, is from the Latin name for moth, blatta .
Go to the Main Directory to consider more lilies of the field.