Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Wildflowers of Italy

Well, I've been looking, and I figure it's got to be a trifolium of some sort, with the three leaves "with stipules adnate to the leaf-stalk".



And I know that some clovers have yellow flowers, but I've never seen any with clusters of such big trumpet-shaped flowers on tall stalks like this. They're usually the little "heads or dense spikes of small red, purple, white, or yellow flowers". Like this. The flowers in the photo are still closed, but they open quite wide on the ends and when fully open, the diameter of the flowers are sometimes more than an inch across.

I'm coming up with nothing on Google searches for "trifolium Italy" or "Italian wildflowers". And all my wildflower books are for the British Isles or norther Europe only.

Any of our sciencey people got an idea?

Julian? You still listening?

3 comments:

Zach said...

I assumed the yellow flowers were some sort of taller wildflower growing through the low-lying clover -- are you sure that's not the case?

Hilary Jane Margaret White said...

I was thinking something like that too. I'll have to check.

There are lots of wildflowers blooming now. I'll get some more pics and do a series.

Florence said...

I know this was two years ago, but this is sorrel - one of the species in this genus Oxalis. Lots of these have naturalized in California.