Wildflowers in the NY Times

There's a slide show up on the Times' City Room blog, called City in Bloom. Some of my pictures feature. Surprisingly many, actually: I counted nineteen. I thought I would be lucky to get even one in. But it seemed that either few people were aware of the request for wildflower pictures, or most don't know what a wildflower is! In honour of wildflower week, it shows a heck of a lot of tulips, roses and cherries.

Anyway, here it is.

Despite our concrete jungle, native flora are not hard to find in the city. Our recent trip to Jamaica Bay proved that, and then there is always, Dear Reader, Central Park, that most iconic of New York green spaces. There are countless tiny parks and larger ones. They are not all devoted to native plants but they always contain some.

The highly-publicized and expensive Highline; the extensive, taken-for-granted planting along the West Side Highway, all along the entire length of Manhattan, on the Hudson; the southern tip of the island, where the Battery Conservancy plantings are stunning; Teardrop Park in Battery Park, well-hidden unless you know where to look; wild Inwood Park at the northern tip; Fort Tryon Park just below it; St Luke in The Field - a walled garden on Hudson Street in the West Village; the Median in East Houston Street; the Liz Christie Community Garden.

In Brooklyn, Prospect Park, of course; the parks between the bridges on the East River; the Brooklyn Botanical Garden that has a whole garden devoted to native plants, the oldest of this kind in the country.

Hm, maybe I'm onto something here.

If you know of other places within the five Boroughs to see real wildflowers - on perennials, shrub, or tree - please tell...maybe we can make our own slideshow?

Please send pictures with your name, or pseudonym, location of flower, and name of flower, if you know it.

So that's the New York one.

But if you are Elsewhere in the World (or country), what wildflowers are in bloom for you? Show us, and we'll do a global slideshow for those. Tell me what the flower is, and where it is growing.

Please send attachments to:

marieyviljoen(at)yahoo(dot) com. Yes, that's my spam email address, but once we're in touch we'll use the real one.

Let's make the deadline for submissions May 29th (thanks Anyes)...

No tulips, please, unless you're in Central Asia!