Hydrangea

Scientific Name : Hydrangea macrophylla
Family : Hydrangeaceae
Common names : French hydrangea, Big leaf, Snowball and Japanese Hydrangea
Flowering Period : Summer
Colour : Blue, Dark Purple, white, Green, Pink

Hydrangea is a shrub with big, medium to dim green, abundant foliage with round ball shaped cluster of flowers. These shrubs are easy to grow and flowers well in areas with gentle winters. A native of Japan and Korea, the shrub has many varieties and hybrids. One of the extraordinary characteristics is that the same plant can create both pink and blue flowers depending on the ph factor or the aluminum content of the soil-blue in acidic soil and pink in alkaline soil. The blooms stay long as cut flowers.

Dahila

If ever there was a flower that knew the intelligence of variety, it is the Dahlia. While its colors are incomplete to the warm ranges of red, orange, yellow, pink and white, its flowers come in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes. Dahlias are grouped into six size categories:

• Giant - more than 10 inches in diameter
• Large - 8-10 inches in diameter
• Medium - 6-8 inches in diameter
• Small - 4-6 inches in diameter
• Miniature - 2-4 inches in diameter
• Mignon - Less than 2 inches in diameter

On top of that, they are grouped into 11 bloom categories. These include:

• Decorative
• Cactus
• Fimbriated
• Ball
• Waterlily
• Anemone
• Collarette
• Orchid
• Peony
• Single
• Novelty

Each variation of the dahlia petal is loveliness. Their petals can be prickly, wispy, round thin or a semi dozen other variations. Even the color ranges from one solid color to a painted mixture of two or three colors.

Dahlias like well, drain, humus wealthy soil. They also like full light. While dahlias are not cold hardy, they do advantage from being grown in a cooler climate with abundance of rain fall.
Dahlias bloom from mid summer all the method up to frost. Many times their displayed will become more stunning as the weather cools. Dahlias create a better display if they are correctly deadheaded and haggard.

Calla

Calla (kal'a), or calla lily, is a beautiful garden flower of the arum family, or Ara-ceae. It is related to the jack-in-the-pulpit and the skunk cabbage. What looks like the flower of the calla is actually a leaflike sheath called a spathe. The true flowers are extremely small and are inside the spathe. In the common calla the spathe is pure white. There are also yellow and pink varieties.

The calla grows from a bulb. This bulb has to be planted in rich well-watered soil. Often it is located in loam or soil mixed with manure. In most parts of North America it is grown indoors or in a greenhouse. In California and southern Texas it can be grown outdoors and is planted in parks in great flower beds.

The most ordinary tropical calla comes from the banks of the Nile River in Egypt it is called calla lily, Ethiopian lily, or common calla. The plant has a 10-inch (25-centimeter) white leaf. The calla lily causes a burning annoyance to the mouth and stomach if eaten.

Orchids

Orchids belong to the family Orchidaceae. Some are pleasingly colored, some dull, some curiously speckled and with stripes. Some look like groups of gay butterflies as the clusters flutter in the breeze, and some look like inquisitive moths. One species was likened by its early Spanish discoverers to the Holy Dove which descended at Christ's baptism. Greenhouse spec-imens are among the most required after of cut flowers and are of many colors and shapes. The tropical orchids are mostly air plants attached to the trunks and branches of trees. Their long roots are bare to the air from which they soak up moisture and food.

Orchids of temperate regions have their roots in the soil as do most ordinary plants. While not so luminous as their tropical relatives, they are very beautiful. Among the many orchids which occur in the United States some of the more colorful are the lady's-slippers, of more than a few colors, the fringed orchids, the pogonias, calypso and tway-blades. In most orchids, self-fertilization is not possible. The pollen must be brought to the stigma from a different plant by some insect. So bright are the methods used to achieve this that a study of these methods is fascinating? Many tropical orchids are now willingly raised from seeds and brought to flower in greenhouses. Several species have been much hybridized. New and beautiful forms with characteristic forms and colors never found in nature have been originated in this way.

Lime

The lime tree rarely grows superior than 10 to 12 feet (3 to 3.7 meters). The fruit is significant as a source of lime juice and oil of lime, which are used to taste beverages and food. Lime trees belong to the regret family, Rutaceae.

Slaked lime has a wide diversity of uses. It serves as a fluctuation in the production of steel. It also is used in the cleansing of aluminum, copper, and zinc. Lime "softens" water by removing sure minerals from it, and it plays a precious role in the treatment of sewage as well many farmers extend lime on their fields to neutralize acid in soil, and homeowners frequently use lime on their lawns to stop the enlargement of moss. Lime also helps.

Narcissus

A big genus of flowers of the amaryllis family, inhabitant to Asia and Europe, is called narcissus. Included are the daffodil, the poet's narcissus, the jonquil, and others.

All the species create bulbs, from which the long, narrow leaves happen. These typically appear with the blooms. The flowers are white to yellow, seldom green, solitary or in clusters at the pinnacle of the flower stalk. The flowers of some are very perfumed, while some have no odor. The majority interesting feature of the flower botanically is the "corona" or "cup," which arises in the throat of the bloom and may be long and tubular, or cup shaped, or reduced to a ring in a number of forms.

Narcissus should be planted near the beginning—before the end of September. They should be at smallest amount three inches unconnectedly and covered with about four inches of well-drained soil of medium texture and fruitfulness. The paper white narcissus may be planted in a dish overflowing with small stones or fiber. It must be well watered and reserved in a cool place waiting well rooted. Then it can be located in a sunny window. Many other varieties are full-grown in greenhouses. They are outstanding house plants from Christmas through Easter. Some varieties become recurrent outdoors and, if uninterrupted, will multiply for many years.

Poppy

A poppy is any of a number of flashy flowers, classically with one per stem, belonging to the poppy family. They contain a number of attractive wildflower species with showy flowers found rising unusually or in large groups; many species are also full-grown in gardens. Those that are grown-up in gardens include large plants used in a varied herbaceous boarder and small plants that are grown in astound or alpine gardens.

The flower color of poppy species include: white, pink, yellow, orange, red and blue; some contain dark center markings. The species that have been refined for many years also include many other colors ranging from dark solid colors to soft pastel shades. The center of the flower has a whorl of stamens bounded by a cup- or bowl-shaped compilation of four to six petals. Prior to blooming, the petals are wrinkled in bud, and as blooming finishes, the petals frequently lie flat before lessening away.

Aster

ASTER is a flowering plant of the Composite family. It is so general in the United States that it has been suggested as the national flower. More than 175 species produce in North America. The flower also grows in parts of Europe, Asia, and South America. Toward the last of August and during September and October, these beautiful glittery wild flowers rupture into bloom. The aster (from the Greek aster, meaning "star") was so named because of its burning or star like flower head. It is found mainly in North America.

Asters are typically perennial plants. The flowers contain yellowish or brownish disks surrounded by white, purple, violet, blue, rose, or pink rays. Two handsome species are the New England aster, with its many large violet or purple rays, and the New York aster (Aster novi-belgii), which has light blue and white blossoms. They bloom until subsequent to the first frost. Both of these are ordinary in the northeastern United States.

The aster is linked to the daisy. It gets its name from the Greek word for star. The blossoms may be from one-half to two inches in width they differ in color from white through pink, red, and blue. All have flat yellow centers bounded by many thin petals.

Pink

PINK (pingk) is the general name of a huge group of flowering plants recognized to botanists as Dianthus. Many Dianthus flowers are pink, but the name pink is used to explain the scalloped or "pinked" edges of the flower petals. Pinks are typically natives of Europe and Asia, where many kinds have been refined in gardens for centuries.Plants of the pink family have stems with distended joints and leaves rising in pairs on opposite sides of the stems. Flowers of cultivated pinks are white, pink, red, sometimes yellow, and often with stripes. They may be single or double, unaccompanied, or in clusters. Many are sweet-scented.

Cultivated pinks comprise the carnation, grown more in English, gardens than in the United States. Other garden pinks are: fragrant cottage, or grass pinks; small-flowered, mat-forming maiden pinks; sweet-scented clove pinks; fragrant Cheddar pinks, with blue-gray foliage; scentless China pinks, frequently grown as annuals; and bunch pinks, such as sweet William, with intimately clustered flowers.

Pinks are simple to grow in ordinary garden soil. They like sunshine, but do best in moderate and cool climates. Some are annuals, but most are biennials or perennials.
Pinks are grown from seed or cuttings. Some, sweet William, for example, often self-sow and produce year after year in old gardens, or even escape to roadsides and waste places.

Bulb

A bulb is a thick, fleshy bud that typically grows underground. In many plants, such as the tiger lily, it grows above ground, in the mark where the leaves branch from the plant stalk. Bulbs are of two types: the scaly and the tunicate. The scary type bulb as in the majority lilies is made up of a short central core inside of broad, fleshy, scalelike leaves. The tunicate bulb, such as the onion, has fleshy leaf bases in smooth and incessant layers. If an onion is cut in half, the inside looks similar to thickened bands or circles of tissue. Roots usually grow from the base of the bulb. The bulb serves as a storage place with sufficient food and water to provide the plant during winter or a dry period.

The bulb is also a storehouse for new stems, leaves and flowers, after the plant first flowers. In fact, the bulb has in it a new stem and frequently the beginnings of flowers and leaves as well. These are protected inside the bulb by the bulb scales. These scales or leaves are a food storehouse for the plant. The food stored in the bulbs throughout one season is used for the start of the growth of the stem, leaves and flowers during the next season. A number of different kinds of bulbs such as the onion are used for food. Some additional examples of the bulb are the lily bulbs, the tulip bulbs, and the hyacinth.

Chrysanthemum

The word chrysanthemum comes from Creek words that denote gold and flower. The flowers now variety in color from while and yellow through pink and lavender to deep red. The sizes differ from pompons, fewer than an inch across, to blooms 8 inches or more in diameter, there are 15 distinct bloom forms of chrysanthemums, which be different primarily in the shape and arrangement of the petals. Petals may be flat, fluted, quilled, feathery, fringed, or curled. Blossoms may be single, semi-double, or double.

Chrysanthemums flourish in fertile, well-drained soil and full sunlight. They produce from cuttings or root divisions. They are also annual, lasting only one year, or perennial continuing to live from year to year. Gardeners like to grow chrysanthemums because of their diversity of size, shape* and color, The 3000 varieties in cultivation may be alienated into two main types those that are cultivated in a greenhouse and forced for winter bloom and hardy varieties that grow outdoors and bloom in late summer and fall. All chrysanthemums bloom outdoors if they are secluded from frost. The only species of economic significance are certain forms of pyrethrum, Chiysanthemum coccineum. Their flower heads are the basis of pyrethrum powder, an insecticide.

Buckwheat

BUCKWHEAT is a quick-growing yearly plant, full-grown for its shining, three-sided fruits or "grain." The plants are resident in Asia, but are grown also in Europe, Africa, and North America.

Three types of buckwheat are grown:

1 Common buckwheat
2 Tartary buckwheat
3 Notched or Winged buckwheat.

The U.S.S.R. is the world's major producer, followed by France, Poland, Canada, and the United States. Pennsylvania and New York make more than half of the United States crop.

The majority buckwheat is raised for the grain, which is fed to poultry, hogs, or cattle. In the United States and Canada, some is complete into pancake flour and other foods. The straw and hulls are used as mulches to defend the roots of plants

From the flowers bees create buckwheat-flavored honey. The drug rutin is taken as of the leaves and flowers. Rutin is used to decrease high blood pressure and is used in the treatment of emission injury.

Buckwheat also is planted as a smother crop to discontinue weed growth; as a cover crop to stop soil erosion; as "green manure" to add humus to soil; and in elsewhere of-the-way places as feed for game birds and animals.

Gardenia

A favorite shrub, the gardenia has extremely fragrant creamy-white flowers and sleek, dark-green leaves. The genus Gardenia is supposed to have been named after Alexander Garden, a physician in Charleston, South Carolina, through colonial days. Gardenias are an associate of the family Rubiaceae and belong to the genus Gardenia. There are over 200 type of Gardenias. One species is of main importance: Gardenia jasminoides containing many cultivars. Gardenia jasminoides is inhabitant to China although most named cultivars have arisen in cultivation.

Gorgeous, dark of bright green, conflicting leaves on a shrub that can grow 6'-8' with almost equal spread. Leaves are glossy and rubbery. Mature shrubs typically look round, and have a average texture. Blooms in mid-spring to early summer, in excess of a quite long season: this is not a bloom-all-at-once-and-it’s-over shrub! Flowers are white, turning to soft yellow as they age, and have a waxy feel. They have a influential, sweet fragrance, and can perfume an whole room. Air currents waft the scent during the warm summer garden.

Lilacs

Lilacs grow finest in full sunlight, nonacid soil, and anywhere there is high-quality drainage. They require a winter freeze to offer a dormant, or rest, period. Single shrubs, given plenty of room, produce full and tall, attainment a height of 10 to 25 feet. For utmost bloom, however, they have to be kept to a moderate height. Pruning back young growth to keep the center open also helps flowering.

Lilacs belong to the olive family, Oleaceae. The name of the genus, Syringa ("little pipe"), was agreed it because lilac stems were once hollowed out and worn as pipe stems. Syringa is also the common name for an unrelated shrub, the mock orange. The scientific name of the common lilac with purple flowers is Syringa vulgaris; of the Persian lilac, a smaller shrub by means of white flowers, Syringa persica.

Photograph by P. Fukunaga.

The red lehua, blossom of the `ohi`a tree, is the flower of the island of Hawai`i, as designated in 1923 by the Territorial legislature. The plant has many forms, from tall trees to low shrubs, leaves round to narrow and blunt or pointed and smooth or woolly. The flowers are red, rarely salmon, pink, yellow, or white. The wood is hard, good for flooring and furniture, formerly used for images, spears, mallets. It grows abundantly in wet areas. It was believed that picking lehua blossoms would cause rain.

Purple Lilac

New Hampshire’s state flower and wildflower are similar in their beauty but vastly different in their hardiness. The purple lilac is hardy and strong; the pink lady’s slipper is delicate and grows in acidic soils of pine-oak forests.

State Flower. The purple lilac, Syringa vulgaris, is the state flower of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire historian Leon Anderson writes in To This Day that the purple lilac was first imported from England and planted at the Portsmouth home of Governor Benning Wentworth in 1750. It was adopted as our state’s flower in 1919. That year bills and amendments were introduced promoting the apple blossom, purple aster, wood lily, Mayflower, goldenrod, wild pasture rose, evening primrose and buttercup as the state flower. A long and lively debate followed regarding the relative merits of each flower. The purple lilac was ultimately chosen, according to Anderson in New Hampshire’s Flower -- Tree -- Bird because it "is symbolic of that hardy character of the men and women of the Granite State.

The Mountain Laurel

Mountain Laurel is perhaps the most beautiful of native American shrubs. Its fragrance and the massed richness of its white and pink blossoms so vividly contrast with the darker colors of the forests and the fields that they have continually attracted the attention of travelers since the earliest days of our colonization.

This plant is listed by the U.S. federal government or a state. Common names are from state and federal lists.

Kalmia

Kalmia is a species of about 7 species of evergreen bushes from 0.2-5 m tall, in the family Ericaceae. They are inhabitant to North America and Cuba. Kalmia is named after the Finnish botanist Pehr Kalm, who unruffled it in eastern North America.

The leaves are 2-12 cm long, simple lanceolate, and prearranged spirally on the stems. The flowers are white, pink or purple, in corymbs of 10-50, suggestive of Rhododendron flowers but compliment, with a star-like calyx of five conjoined petals; each flower is 1-3 cm diameter. The fruit is a five-lobed container, which splits to release the plenteous small seeds.

Kalmia species are used as food plants by the larvae of some lepidopteran species including Coleophora kalmiella which feeds completely on Kalmia.

Cherokee Rose

Cherokee Rose is a rose resident to southern China and Taiwan south to Laos and Vietnam. It is an evergreen climbing plant, scrambling over other shrubs and small trees to heights of up to 5-10 m. The leaves are 3-10 cm long, with typically three leaflets, sometimes five leaflets, bright silky green and glabrous. The flowers are 6-10 cm diameter, scented, with pure white petals and yellow stamens, and are followed by bright red and stubbly hips 2-4 cm diameter. The flower stem is also very unkempt.

The species was introduced to the southeastern United States in about 1780, where it soon became naturalized, and where it gained its English name. It is the state flower of Georgia. The flower is evermore linked to the Trail of Tears and its petals symbolize the women's tears shed during the period of great poverty and grief throughout the historical trek from the Cherokees' home to U.S. Forts such as Gilmer among others. The flower has a gold center, symbolizing the gold full from the Cherokee clan.

California Poppy

The California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is indigenous to verdant and open areas from sea level to 2,000m (6,500 feet) elevation in the western United States throughout California, extending to Oregon, southern Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and in Mexico in Sonora and northwest Baja California.

It can grow 5–60 cm high, with alternately branching glaucous blue-green plants. The leaves are ternately divided into round, lobed segments. The flowers are introverted on long stems, silky-textured, with four petals, each petal 2-6 cm long and broad; their color ranges from yellow to orange, and flowering is from February to September. The fruit is a slender dehiscent capsule 3-9 cm long, which splits in two to release the plentiful small black or dark brown seeds. It is perpetual in mild parts of its native range, and annual in colder climates; growth is best in full sun and sandy, well-drained, poor loam.

An excellent color inflection to any wildflower planting. The state flower of California. Blooms close each night at sunset or on dull days. The delicately divided foliage is bluish-green in color making classification easy prior to flowering

Sunflower

The sunflower is an annual plant native to the Americas in the family Asteraceae, with a large flowering head. The stalk of the flower can breed as high as 3 metres tall, with the flower head reaching up to 30 cm in length with the "large" seeds. The term "sunflower" is also used to refer to all plants of the genus Helianthus, many of which are permanent plants.

What is typically called the flower is actually a head of many flowers (florets) crowded together. The outer flowers are the ray florets and can be yellow, maroon, orange, or other colors, and are disinfected. The florets inside the circular head are called disc florets. The disc florets adult into what are conventionally called "sunflower seeds", but are actually the fruit (an achene) of the plant. The true seeds are encased in an unpalatable husk.

The florets within this cluster are arranged spirally. Typically each floret is oriented toward the next by roughly the golden angle, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are succeeding Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in 1 direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower you may see 89 in one direction and 144 in the other.

Daffodil

Daffodil - Beautiful spherical flowers of mountain and alpine pastures, plains, or woods, thriving worthily in most parts of our island; if anywhere, better in the cooler northern parts and in Ireland, though excellent in cool soils in the south. They are to the spring what Roses, Irises, and Lilies are to summer, what Sunflowers and Chrysanthemums are to autumn, and what Hellebores and Aconite are to winter. No good garden should be without the best of the lovely varieties now known. Narcissi vary so much in form, size, color, and in time of flowering, that a most gorgeous spring garden could be made with them alone; provided one had appropriate earth, and a background of fresh turf, shrubs, and trees. The best of the commoner kinds should be planted by the thousand, and, indeed, in many cases this has been done with the best results. On verdant banks, on turfy bosses near the roots of lawn-trees, or in meadows near the house, their effect is wonderful. All the best Narcissi, and virtually all the forms of the yellow and the bicolor Daffodils, may be planted in June, July, or August, in three ways-in the lawn or field, in the beds and borders of the garden, or in 6 or 8-inch pots. Five bulbs should be planted in a pot and covered over with coal-ashes or sand until January, when they may be placed in a sunny frame, pit, or greenhouse, or even in a sunshiny window, and a crop of flowers can be secured earlier than on the open ground.

Tulip

Tulipa commonly called Tulip is a genus of about 100 species of bulbous flowering plants in the family Liliaceae. The native range of the species include southern Europe, north Africa, and Asia from Anatolia and Iran in the east to northeast of China. The centre of assortment of the type is in the Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains and the steppes of Kazakhstan. A number of species and many mixture cultivars are grown in gardens, used as pot plants or as fresh cut flowers.

Tulips initiate from mountainous areas with moderate climates and need a period of cool dormancy. They do best in climates with long cool springs and early summers, but they are often grown as spring blooming annual plantings in furnace areas of the world. The bulbs are classically planted in late summer and fall, normally from 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 in.) deep, depending of the type planted, in well draining soils. In parts of the world that do not have long cool springs and early summers, the bulbs are often planted up to 12 inches deep, this provides some guard from the heat of summer and tends to force the plants to stimulate one large bulb each year instead of many smaller non blooming ones. This can expand the value of the plants in warmer areas a few years but not stave off the squalor in bulb size and ultimate death of the plants.

Camellia

Camellia is a type of flowering plants in the family Theaceae, subject to eastern and southern Asia from the Himalaya east to Japan and Indonesia. There are 100–250 extant species, with some storm over the exact number. The kind was named by Linnaeus after Jesuit botanist Georg Joseph Kamel.

They are evergreen shrubs and small trees 2–20 m tall. The leaves are alternately arranged, simple, thick, serrated, typically silky, and 3–17 cm long. The flowers are large and obvious, 1–12 cm diameter, with (in natural conditions) 5–9 petals; colour varies from white to pink and red, and yellow in a few kinds. The fruit is a dry pill, sometimes subdivided into up to 5 compartments, each compartment containing up to 8 seeds.

The genus is normally adapted to acidic soils, and does not grow well on chalk or other calcium-rich soils. Most species also have a high rainfall prerequisite and will not endure drought. Some Camellias have been known to grow without much rainfall.

Rose

A rose is a flowering shrub of the genus Rosa, and the flower of this shrub. There are more than a hundred species of natural roses, all from the northern hemisphere and mostly from temperate regions. The species form a cluster of generally prickly shrubs or climbers, and sometimes trailing plants, reaching 2–5 metres tall, rarely reaching as high as 20 metres by climbing over other plants