I had no idea what this was, until I went out googling "orange flower weed Michigan." After I waded through the butterfly weed and the hawkweed, I found jewel weed.
This one is growing in the disturbed soil near our new garage. Weedy growth, but what exotic flowers. Of course we are predisposed to like it, as the flowers are orange....
(Note young pokeweed in front of it.)
I learned that the juices from its stems and/or leaves are useful in the event of exposure to poison ivy or oak, nettles, etc. Soothing to the skin. Who knew, right in my yard, volunteering......
Cool.
That page I link to above says that it likes really wet feet. That probably means we'll never see it again, but we'll hope to.
3 comments:
I have jewel weed in my yard for the first time too. I'm trying to make it feel comfy and happy, and to encourage it to seed. It's great for anything itchy - when you're out in the yard and get a mosquito bite or a scratch, you can just smear some of the juice on your owie, and Bob's your uncle.
Vicki...this flower is so cool...looks like a ladies slipper.
How neat that it's good for bites and scratches....I hope it comes back for you!
I took some more pictures of this plant this morning -- it's got little bitty bean-pod type seedpods. So it's going to try to come back, I would guess from what I read.
The flowers are really cool. Not very big, and sparse on the plant, but cool. Very different from a flat old "regular flower." :-) They are very attractive to bees, too, so not a surprise they got polinated.
It's good it's such a big plant -- one wouldn't feel bad about ripping off a bit to smear on one's self.
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