NE USA garden specimins (likely easy IDs)

[watermelonpunch]

0903

May 7th 2016 Pocono Mountains Pennsylvania, zone 5b
bush
Another example (pretty sure this is the same bush)

May 3rd 2014

0905

May 7th 2016 Pocono Mountains Pennsylvania, zone 5b
some kind of lily?

0210

March 26th 2016 Scranton, Pennsylvania, zone 6a
some kind of pussy willow / willow catkins?
It's a tree-like bush/shrub, slightly taller than the old lilac bushes (which could be 50 years old).

4158

May 30th 2014 Tobyhanna State Park, Pocono Plateau Pennsylvania, zone 5a/5b
This was in a cultivated garden, but not labeled.
Creeping phlox? It looks like it but not quite the same as the other I've seen:

May 13th 2013 Blue Creeping Phlox. Worlds End State Park, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania
This one was labeled in a cultivated educational garden.
I'm guessing there's different varieties, but I don't know the difference.
I've seen some of this in front yard landscaping in my neighborhood this time of year, but it looks like the 2nd example.

[rainbowgardener]

0905 May 7th - Solomon Seal, a lovely native woodland/shade wildflower, not a lily. There is a hybrid version of this available in garden catalogs and I think it is much under-used in shade gardens.

0210, yes pussy willow.

4158 I think is tall phlox, aka summer phlox, aka sweet william



the spiral twirled flower bud in bottom right of your picture is the give away, quite distinctive.

For some reason you always see pictures of them head on, like yours, and the above, where they look like flat flowers. If it is the tall phlox, in side view the flat petals open up from a long tube:



the sweet in the sweet william name is because they are sweetly fragrant

[watermelonpunch]

Thanks!!

As for the phlox... this is what I thought is summer phlox

August 18th 2014
Because my MIL gave it to me and called it summer phlox!

It's upright stands, and at least knee high.

I thought sweet william referred to dianthus?

But if you see the Tobyhanna State Park specimen has leaves that look different

Different bloom time.
It wasn't as tall as my summer phlox, maybe 1-1/2ft tall.
Here's another angle with a wider field of view.

And oh yes, Solomon's Seal... I'm sure my MIL told me that a few times now. haha.
She has a lot of interesting native shade plants in her garden that are attractive for the leaves as much as the flowers if not more. Foamflower being my favourite.

Oh, and the pussy willow. I guess I always think of pussy willow as being individual stalks of maybe chest high straight twigs in clusters... rather than a bush that looks like a tree.

[rainbowgardener]

I guess there's different varieties, but the summer phlox I am familiar with has very narrow leaves:



but the ones you asked about are clearly phlox flowers with the spiral buds, and long tubular base. They sometimes call it "wild sweet william." I guess that differentiates it from the dianthus sweet william. How tall it gets depends on variety and also amount of sunshine.

Pussy willow is what we call willow trees when they have the catkins on them.


were you thinking of these:



cattails, a wetland grassy plant.

[Lindsaylew82]

I think 4158 is Wild Blue Phlox.

Werkin on the first!

[watermelonpunch]

Rainbowgardener
Ha! Maybe I was confusing the cat tails with the pussy willow in my memory.
This willow catkins in my yard is large, tall, and wide with thick branches, and that could be why I just didn't put it together, the pussy willow I remember from my youth was never so large. It looked more like the picture you posted.

Lindsaylew82
I'm looking at pictures of wild blue phlox, and I think you could be right. Something about it's habit. Kind of clumpy and a bit messy.
And of course I was looking at it in person... I think sometimes when I take pictures and look at them even ages later, I'm also sort of remembering what it looked like in person! In other words, almost forgetting that someone else looking at the picture isn't seeing it in the context of my memory!!

As for the leaves... My summer phlox has pretty wide leaves.
But I bet there's a bunch of different types. Now that I've been looking at other pictures, apparently some can be very pointy.
Even in my picture, there's 2 and they're different shades of pink, and the leaves on those plants are slightly different from each other.

[A Happy Seedling]

4158 the tobyhanna park one looks like some kind of periwinkle (Vinca spp.)?