LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY AND MANY SPIREAS ARE BLOOMING

A BEAUTIFUL, CALM MORNING

LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY

SPIREA  'GREFFSCHEIM'

Friday,  9:00 AM.  48 degrees F, wind variable with very light gusts.  The sky is clear, the humidity 78% and the barometer relatively steady, now standing at 30.24".  It is a beautiful spring morning, and it looks like we are in for a few days of nice weather.

  Lily-of-the-valley, Convallaria majalis, in the Lily family, is blooming, its very sweet scent evident when walking past a bed of the flowers.  It was introduced to North America probably hundreds of years ago from Europe, was often planted around settlers homes. and is very persistent, often  forming large leafy mats.  If one comes across a patch of it along a roadside or in the woods it is a certain indicator that a home once stood there (there is also a native species in the eastern mountains of the US, C. montana). The attractive red berries, and indeed the whole plant, is quite poisonous, and has a long history of use as a heart medication similar to Digitalis, to treat heart failure.  Children should be taught at the youngest age never to eat anything wild unless it is given to them by a knowledgeable care giver.

   The wild Lily-of-the-valley, Maianthemum canadense, is native to much of  eastern North America.  It is a small woodland ground cover plant with attractive spikes of sweetly fragrant  white flowers, closely related to Convallaria.

   The shrub pictured is a hybrid Spirea, Spirea cinerea ‘Grefsheim’, a very showy rival to the popular old-fashioned Bridal Wreath Spirea.  Spireas, in the Rose Family, are very decorative and useful landscape shrubs, much hybridized.  They are plants of the temperate northern hemisphere, many from Asia.  They contain silicates, from which aspirin is derived, and many species have been used in herbal medicine, including by Native Americans.