in bloom

          
The humbly-named common chickweed (Stellaria media) must be added to our list of flowers blooming here:

I've never looked at the bloom this closely before. It's quite charming, and has a very nice, complimentary symmetry relative to it's sepals. Lovely. Per Calflora, it's a non-native. Apparently, what looks like 10 petals is actually 5, each deeply lobed. 

Also found shepherd's purse, Capsella bursa-pastoris. I had THOUGHT it was fringepod, or lacepod, Thysanocarpus laciniatus, but apparently, not so much. Thanks to you all, I had to look it up to be sure, and as it turns out, I was wrong-o-rama. These blooms are TINY. They are SO teeny-weeny, it was hard to see it well enough to figure out if I had it in focus. The very cool triangular things are the seed pods. It's a non-native. 

And miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata):

This is an edible plant (allegedly sweeter before it blooms) that I've seen for sale in seed catalogues. Apparently pretty popular for salads in Europe. It's native, here, and the following demonstrates our kitty's keen intuition re: plants good to eat. And, thus ended my plant photo shoot. =)

I also missed mentioning that the manzanita are in bloom--will get a pic of that soon. They've been blooming for a few weeks--someone else had to point it out to me. oop. =)

I may try to make some sort of flower visual gadget that displays what's blooming now in a visual, quick way.

I'm buying books on HTML, etc., so we'll see! =)

Any favorite flowers blooming near you? Any you're looking forward to?

The biobabbler