Get out your wildflower ID books!

I’m kind of at my wit’s end with trying to figure out what these flowers are. Maybe someone can help? I know, I know, I’ll never learn to key out a plant by cheating this way!

This looks like it wants to be some sort of hyacinth, but the leaves are all wrong.
These were past their prime, but I’m guessing Bloodroot? I know the way the leaves are clasping the stem is important, but I can’t think of the flower that does that! Someone recently had this flower on their blog, but I can’t remember who it was.

These were blooming on a very spindly shrub. There were no leaves yet and the flowers were on the tips of the branches; the open ones reminded me of apple blossoms sort of.


I’ve edited this post to add this last photo above which shows, rather poorly, what the flowers look like when open.
Ideas anyone?

16 thoughts on “Get out your wildflower ID books!”

  1. Bloodroot is the only the only flower that I know! Just looked at some today and they are just peaking out of the ground right now!

  2. Don’t know the first one. 2nd one is blood root. 3rd one is red bud. Red buds often grow as a small, multi-trunked tree on the edge of the woods.

  3. FC: You’re right, they do.

    Carol and Cathy: I’ve added another pic to the post that shows what the open flowers look like because I’m not convinced this is a red bud. You can see now that the flowers are very pale and don’t at all pea-like as red buds do, I think? Don’t they look like apple blossoms – what in the rose family could they be?

    I’m totally stumped with the purple one – it almost looks like something I know, but I can’t come up with it. The individual flowers remind me of milkweed flowers when they’re open. I think they’re too small to be bluebells and I think forget-me-nots bloom singly and the foliage is different.

    Thanks for some ideas!

  4. You are absolutely right – too pale for Red Bud. Hmmmmm.

    Don’t Bluebells start smallish and kind of ‘inflate’ over time? (I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, but his is fun:0)

  5. 1) Mertensia virginica, Virginia bluebells.

    2) Definitely Bloodroot.

    3) The open flowers help. Looks like a cherry, could be an apple or crabapple. It’s definitely not a redbud.

  6. Cathy: I’ll have to try and get back there this weekend and have another look at those purple flowers – maybe they’ll be open enough to reveal their identities!

    xris: Thanks! I’ve been looking at pics of bluebells online and I’m not seeing any similarity with my pic. I think I just need to get a look at them when they’re open.

    Those other dangly flowers still have me wondering….

    Larry: I’m not sure what’s here to learn, but I’m having fun guessing!

    Laurie: Thanks – I love taking them!

    Pablo: Purty flowers sounds good to me!

  7. I have a cherry tree in my front yard and the blossoms on it don’t look anywhere near as small and pinkish before blooming – larger and greener, instead.

    But I don’t know nothin’…

  8. My first thought for the first one was Forget-me-not in an early stage but I don’t know the Virginia Bluebells that well. I say go back to get this one later.

    No.2 is Bloodroot as has been stated.

    No. 3 ? Not redbud but I am not sure what it is. Maybe one of the Juneberry (Shadbush)? They are early blooming shrubs up here in Ontario.

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