I love the big red berries that emerge from the white flowers on the Dogwood trees. They just don’t seem to go together. The flowers are so pretty and delicate and the berries are huge, about 1″ berries with little bumps all over them, almost like a soccer ball.
Have you ever seen these berries on your Dogwood trees?
Milkweed wildflower seeds are ready to blow wherever they want here on Cape Cod. You can see the pods are open and bursting with white fluff and attached seeds. The seeds will just disperse in the wind.
The Milkweed plant is the stable plant that the beautiful Monarch butterflies feed upon. There are a lot of Milkweed plants all over Cape Cod where you can see the Monarchs.
I saw this Milkweed plant at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary where you can see many Monarchs in the summer months. I also have seen many Milkweed plants at Fort Hill which is also a favorite place of the Monarch butterflies.
I wonder if the seeds will still be there the next time I visit the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.
The Brown Knapweed is blooming all over Cape Cod. Many regard it as an invasive wildflower, although it is very pretty. The 1 to 1 1/2″ flowers are pinkish purple with thistle like heads that grow from June through September.
I took this photograph while hiking at Fort Hill in Eastham but you can see them along the sides of the roads and trails.
The Indian Pipe wildflower is a perennial that grows to about 7 inches and is a translucent “ghostly” white, sometimes pale pinkish-white and commonly has black flecks. The leaves are scale-like and flecked with black on the flower stalk . The stem bears a single 3/4″ flower. It gets its nourishment from decayed organic matter and turns black when picked.
I had never seen an Indian Pipe before so it was a big treat to find so many of them in my woodsy yard.
Have you ever seen one? It does look like an Indian smoking pipe, don’t you think?
