(Creasy greens growing wild beside the road)
Last summer as I was driving north on Rt. 29, I saw a flowering weed beside the road so stunning that I went back to see it again. To the best of my weed-identification abilities, it was a butterfly weed – adorned in the most incredible orange I have ever seen.
Since that time, I have been on the lookout for beautiful weeds and wildflowers growing literally beside the road, and there are many. Last summer and fall, I marveled at the beauty of black-eyed Susan’s, red clover, Queen Anne’s lace and others. On a drive to Longwood last Sunday, I was intrigued by numerous yellow weed/flowers I saw in the fields and along the roadsides. We stopped and picked one and as best I can tell, it was a creasy green, or in the upland cress family.
The flower had a lovely smell and I noted several bees on nearby plants. I actually grew creasy greens in my garden last year. The hardy plant often grows wild in old cornfields or any place it can spread its roots. The beautiful buttercup-yellow flowers are now in full bloom across central Virginia.
This spring. I will continue my search for some of God’s most incredible handiwork as it grows wild in our fields. Beauty beyond imagination.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”
