Saturday, May 24, 2014

Name this plant


My best guess is that this is a calendula, but I'm really not sure. It's about 8-10 inches high, one of several that have volunteered in the front garden this spring and just started to bloom. My other not-so-educated guess was a zinnia, but I don't think it has densely-layered enough petals for that, and the yellow-orange range seems to be the calendula groove. Can anybody confirm or deny?

3 comments:

  1. Looks like calendula to me. I always liked them, maybe because they were sort of a novelty to me, never having seen them in person until we moved to Seattle. I think they like the cool temps, a thing zinnias do not.
    As for the tiller thriller (just catching up with comments here) I share your distaste for those things. They buck like wild horses without being anywhere near as beautiful. It's true that they can chew up dirt faster than a shovel. And anything that can reduce the backbreaking part of gardening is worth trying. So, good luck with all of that.
    Don't know if I'd be keen to eat a dahlia tuber though. Maybe I'm missing out. Always good to know what's safe to eat at any rate. Come the apocalypse...

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    Replies
    1. Yay! I am glad to have my suspicions corroborated. They're coming up in the same bed were the grape hyacinths have just finished, and where deep purple volunteer pansies are having a good time of it, so they make a nice contrast with all that purple :3

      I think I'm going to see if I can convince H to try preparing some of the dahlias with me. The articles I've seen say there's a lot of variation in how flavorful they are, so it's definitely a gamble! But we'll see how it goes. Maybe they'll turn out to be one of the good kinds!

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  2. Pansy flowers can be eaten; they have a faint wintergreen taste. Not sure how the calendula tastes, though.

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