When I started taking road trips in 2006, while looking for old alignments and studying the old pavement that I found, I began to notice things I had previously always looked right past. Chief among those things were the roadside flowers, to which I had always been indifferent. But as I really started to see how interesting they were, I couldn’t help but photograph them. Now I really look forward to the flowers I’ll encounter. It’s become an annual tradition to share some of those photos with you here.
This year, I didn’t take as many road trips as in years past. A busy summer and foot surgery kept me home. I did make a trip along the National Road in Illinois in May, and that’s where most of my flower photos come from this year. At a stone-arch bridge in Marshall, I found this purple flower. Can anyone tell me what this flower is called?
I also found lots of these weeds in the grass at that bridge. I’ve always called them violets, but I don’t think that’s what they are really called. Gobs of these grow in my front yard among the grass. I like them, so I don’t spray them with weed killer.
I found lots of flowers just past Livingston, near where a bridge had been torn out along an old alignment. I think these may be cuckoo flowers.
Here’s a bluebell. The place was thick with them.
I just love phlox and am always happy to come upon some. This wild blue phlox has a different flower shape from cultivated phlox.
Down the road a ways, near Clark Center, some sort of goldenrod was growing abundantly next to a fake covered bridge.
In August, when my sons and I visited Brown County, we found lots of flowers growing along the roadways in the state park. Here’s some Queen Anne’s Lace, a very common Indiana roadside flower.
I see this pinkish-purplish flower growing in clumps from time to time. I found a pretty good wildflower identifier that tells me it’s called Crown Vetch.
That identifier couldn’t help me pinpoint what this flower is, though. These are also incredibly common, but nine or ten different flowers look pretty much like this. It looks most like a Black-Eyed Susan, except the center isn’t black.
Here’s hoping next year brings more road trips and more flower-photography opportunities.
Here’s my first ever Roadside Flowers post. My flower photography has come a long way since then.
