It seems that every time I open a garden magazine, there's another feature on an old plant in the new and trendy spotlight. Not just fancy ornamentals, either--some of them are wild flowers, or what we used to call "ditch daisies," things no respectable florist would ever use commercially. Found flowers. Nothing worth making much over.
Flowers from ones garden or native specimens were ONLY used if there was nothing else available, or you were dead broke. I remember the gossip at church regarding a 'hippie' wedding in which the bride used flowering things out of her yard. How tacky! Didn't her family Know Any Better? Ths trend has shifted--yippee!--and now, home grown favorites are taking center stage. Most of these plants were weeds to play with when I was growing up. I never thought about how pretty these flowers were when my sisters and I used them for other purposes.
We picked milkweed (Asclepias) on the roadside and fed its milky goo to our baby dolls, or used the white sap as ink to write secret letters on ivy leaves. (This was life without video games--we made our own fun.) I'm glad to say that Asclepias, also known as butterfly weed, is gaining popularity as a keynote plant in natural borders. I've got a couple of different colors in my garden, and have found that dead-heading them regularly extends their bloom time considerably. Species of Asclepias occur across the United States, with various height, leaf shape and blooms of white, pink, yellow and red. My favorite is a hybrid, with bi-colored blooms of yellow and orange.
This hardy native is becoming harder to find in the wild here in North Georgia. Urban expansion is reducing its habitat, but thankfully more of us are bringing it into our gardens. It's a booger to transplant as it has a tap root that goes all the way to China, but it can be relocated if you move it while dormant (in the fall) and dig a rootball five times bigger than you think you'll need!
There was no better slingshot ammo than the pods of the 'maypop vine' (passion flower, spp. Passiflora incarta) which grew wildly up our telephone pole. Maypop had other reasons justifying its use as little grenades--it smelled like dirty socks when smeared on clothing, and was good and sticky. What more could a kid want from found military ordinance? This plant bears edible oval fuits, which have been used medicinally as a sedative since the 17th century. The fruit is also high in niacin. I have no idea how it tastes; we used the fruit primarily in sneak attacks, not as a nutritional supplement! However, all parts of the plant are indeed edible.
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