Wednesday 4 August 2010

Rainy Day Photo: A Lovely, Naturalized Mystery Flower

We are funny creatures: the weather has been dry for several days, and I'd begun to fret about it. Then we had a day of heavy rain yesterday with more forecast for today, and I find myself looking for bright things. Therefore this photo that I took on Monday as I wandered and wondered in Montreal's Saint-Michel district.

More about that some other day, but today's let's revel in the brilliant colour and general exhuberance of this mass of flowers growing, seemingly unculivated, at the back of someone's garden. What it's called is anybody's guess. It probably is a helianthus, or a member of the sunflower family. But as Patricia Little wrote in Canadian Gardening: even though "armloads of double, yellow pompom flowers spill forward from the sides of barns and the verandahs of older houses...no one knows the proper name of this two-metre-tall perennial: 'Been here as long as I can remember—never do a thing for it. My mother called it ‘Golden Glow,'' says a neighbour—which is as descriptive a name as any."

1 comment:

lagatta à montréal said...

Oh, isn't that lovely! Nice to see such beautiful vegetation in what can be a very "populaire" and even depressing neighbourhood.