{"id":4470,"date":"2010-09-23T12:01:53","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T16:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=4470"},"modified":"2010-09-23T12:03:07","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T16:03:07","slug":"ironweed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=4470","title":{"rendered":"Ironweed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><big>Autumn is a time to dream of American prairies, shoulder high with the blooms of plants bearing the names of forgotten explorers.<br \/>\nRight alongside the list of places I&#8217;ve yet to visit is the list of plants I&#8217;ve yet to see, such as vernonia, named for English botanist William Vernon.<\/p>\n<p>(V. altiissima, angustifolia, arkansana, baldwinii, crinita, fasciculata, flexuosa, gerberiformis, glabra, karaguensis, Melleri, missurica, noveboracensis and no doubt others.)<\/p>\n<p>An American prairie plant, member of the asteracea, blooming in fall.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.illinoiswildflowers.info\/prairie\/plantx\/baldwin_ironweedx.htm\">&#8220;Habitats<\/a> include upland areas of dry prairies, hill prairies, glades, openings in upland forests, thinly wooded rocky slopes, pastures, abandoned fields, areas along railroads, and miscellaneous waste areas.&#8221;  Looks like purple ageratum in photos.  Although British landscape architect Russell Page famously dismissed perennials as so much &#8220;colored hay,&#8221; the English tried mightily, and still do, along with now the German and Dutch, to marry the classical garden style with the informal use of soft-stemmed flowering perennials, many of them from North American prairies. <\/p>\n<p>Some of us just can&#8217;t get enough of the colored hay.<\/p>\n<p>(photo from <em><a href=\"http:\/\/gardenshop.telegraph.co.uk\/plants\/_\/perennials\/vernonia-arkansana-\/itemno.PL00006540\/\">The Telegraph<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/PL0000003699_card_lg.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And sometimes a poem can convey much more than a photo.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ironweed<\/strong> by Robert Morgan<\/p>\n<p><em>There is a shade of purple in<br \/>\nthis flower near summer&#8217;s end that makes<br \/>\nyou proud to be alive in such<br \/>\na world, and thrilled to know the gift<br \/>\nof sight.  It seems a color sent<br \/>\nfrom memory or dream.  In fields,<br \/>\nalong old trails, at pasture edge,<br \/>\nthe ironweed bares its vivid tint,<br \/>\nprofoundest violet, a note<br \/>\nfrom farthest star and deepest time,<br \/>\nthe glow of sacred royalty<br \/>\nand timbre of eternity<br \/>\nright here beside a dried-up stream<\/em>.<\/big><\/p>\n<p>published in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2010\/06\/ironweed\/8097\/\">Atlantic<\/a> June 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autumn is a time to dream of American prairies, shoulder high with the blooms of plants bearing the names of forgotten explorers. Right alongside the list of places I&#8217;ve yet to visit is the list of plants I&#8217;ve yet to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=4470\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[36],"tags":[233,234,232],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saNJ2E-ironweed","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4470"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8299,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470\/revisions\/8299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}