On one of my last trips back home to Manhattan, IL, I recall noticing so many wildflowers. I know that they have always been there, but it was like I was just now noticing them.

The way they were so perfectly placed with one another was a breathtaking palette that I could only give credit to God for. Since then, I’ve been curious as to what these wild were, what their names are, and what regions they typically grow free in.

Today I roamed around Cherokee Park in Louisville, KY and plucked the ones that I saw and brought them home to investigate further. Here’s what I found:

I took some time on the phone with my mom (who is one of the best gardener’s I know) to help identify each of these beautiful pieces.

Oriental Lady’s Thumb

Researching wildflowers is a lot harder than I thought it would. However, I’ve narrowed this beautiful plant down to either an Oriental Lady’s Thumb or Pink Smartweed. Personally, I’m leaning more towards the Oriental Lady’s Thumb, but that’s just based off of the pictures I have found.

I found this growing similar to a vine – close to the ground and not a lot of strength in the stem. I love the pink and magenta pops this little plant has. The flower tops are no wider than ANY of my fingers, which is saying something since my hands are already quite small.

Boneset?

Out of all the flowers that I picked, I truly thought this was going to be the easiest to identify. Little did I know that small, white, bunched flowers have many a name with varying looks and orientation. The closest I could come to what this is was Boneset. These that I picked were so dainty and grew almost every spot the sun broke through in the forest.

More dense than Baby’s Breath, I love the large leaves that join these flowers. They give a nice lively boost to the bouquet I held.

White Heath Aster

Another difficult one to track down. This one grew in tall stems with the white flowers growing up along all different sides. Heath Aster is what I concluded it must be, although the pictures on Google show the leaves being much more stringy.

I loved the length that these grew at and the density in which the flowers decided to perch themselves. A lot of long stemmed flowers will only have their freak flag fly at the top, where the sun shines. This one was authentic the entire way up.

Aster

These light lavender-purple flowers popped up almost everywhere on my walk this afternoon. The flower itself looks similar to that of the Heath Aster (above) since they are both in that family. These are either Short’s Aster or the Sky Blue Aster. I’m feeling like they’re the Short’s aster since they do not possess as much blue as the latter would show.

This bunch really helped pull the bouquet together with the large amount of flowers each stem held as well as the slight color variance. Although it’s very close to being a white, I felt like it gave my bouquet depth.

Thanks to my mom for sitting on the phone with me for almost an hour while both doing research on these. Also, here are a couple of sites that we used that deemed quite helpful for narrowing down our search:

I’m excited for my next hike, though fearful the next Wildflower post won’t be until the seasons pick back up again.

Read Part Two here