I’ve not seen so many honeybees in a long while as the number I found on the tall white lilies behind Zion Lutheran–a plant that until I took a closer look at it just now, I’d identified in error as Fly Poison. (Link is to Google Images of that plant for comparison to the image above.)
It isn’t, I now admit to my systematic botanical horror. And with the wife still asleep and me leaving for work soon, I can’t sneak upstairs and find my Newcombs Field Guide to steer me back in the direction of a correct ID.
So take a look at the larger version of this shot (with the bee hovering in the middle) and if anybody knows what this plant is, I’m ready to be humbled. I think I know it, but can’t retrieve a name. Flowers are a bit like a meadow rue, but everything else is wrong. I can’t remember what the leaf looks like, but I don’t think there were basal like Fly Poison.
For scale, the tallest plants of pure white flowers stand taller than my head (> 6 feet).
UPDATE: The big DUH: the flower is Black Cohosh. Common. Familiar. Forgotten. Early botanical dementia. So sad.
Stumble it!
3 responses so far ↓
1 Beth // Jul 15, 2008 at 9:14 am
It’s: Black Cohosh, Fairy Candles, Black Snakeroot
Latin: Cimicifuga racemosa
2 fred // Jul 15, 2008 at 9:52 am
Of course! No wonder I felt like I knew this plant, just usually in deep woods and not open fields. I took pix last summer.
http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z10/phred1st/cohosh.jpg
Thanks, Beth, I needed a Dope Slap to remember! Had I bothered to look at the leaves, I’d have nailed it, but I was so wigged out with all the honeybees, I didn’t even look down.
3 Houck Medford // Jul 16, 2008 at 12:55 pm
It’s Black Cohosh - very prominent on the Blue Ridge Parkway at this time of the year. The best stand ( a B&W photo with the right light) is just north of the turnoff to Morrisette Winery on the BRP
Cimicifuga racemosa
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