#widlflowers

Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) is backlit by the summer sun, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

honestly the best thing on this earth?? tbh like nothing fills me with as much joy as driving on the highway and seeing every bit of grass and dirt just COVERED with fLOWERS?

Campanula rotundifolia, Campanulaceae

Three years ago today I left Milan to move to Glasgow, so it’s a good occasion to write about another Scottish national flower, the other being Cirsium vulgare, the common thistle I wrote about a while ago. What here is known as the bluebell is generally known elsewhere as harebell, whereas in the rest of the UK bluebell normally refers to Hyacinthoides non-scripta, which belongs to a different family, the Asparagaceae.

Present in most of the temperate and cold areas of the northern hemisphere -this perennial plant is very hardy, up to -15°C/5°F - it is divided in about 32 variable subspecies which differ genetically depending on their location, but it is generally encountered in similar circumstances as it prefers dry, well draining poor soils, often on rocky cliffs and along the shores: in the example above I found it growing at the limit where grassland encountered sandy dunes on the west coast of Central Scotland.