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Ontario Wildflowers: Nature's Perfume
Ontario wildflowers add color and scent to hot
summer
days and counterpoint red and gold fall trees with a carpet of goldenrod and purple asters.
As the
spring
flowers fade away, mauve and white wild phlox take their place on the roadsides.
Waterlilies are common in the quieter parts of Ontario's many lakes and creeks. This is a fragrant waterlily, though you'd need a canoe to confirm it.Following the white and cream fragrant waterlily is another beautiful lily, red this time.
Another lily but a marsh variety this time rather than a full-blown waterlily. With the tiny fly coming in to land (upper right corner), the scene looks like a space station in a Star Wars re-make.
The best thing about milkweed can't be experienced over the web -- yet. Until they invent scratch and sniff web pages, you'll have to miss the incredible scent of the milkweed flower. I don't know why people haven't used it to make scent, there should be fields of milkweed as far as the eye can see, like lavender in France. Milkweed must be packed with nectar too because it's the favorite flower of Monarch
butterflies.
Birdfoot trefoil adds to summer scent but it is its vivid golden color that really makes it memorable. When the sun is shining, and it shines often in Ontario, this flower positively glows.
Everlasting Pea is a sort of Sweet Pea on steroids with big richly colored blooms but the same wonderful scent.
I'm treating clover and vetch together because they grow together. In June and July, Ontario's road, rail and trail sides become swathed in gold and mauve as these two flowers replace the pastel shades of wild phlox. Their scent is so heady it catches in your throat as you walk on country lanes. If you enjoyed these small examples of Ontario wildflowers -summer, you may enjoy our
Ontario Wildlife
page or our
Ontario birds
page. Alternatively, if we've whetted your appetite for more wild flowers, visit
Ontario Wild flowers.
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