We went for a nature walk last weekend and I snapped tons of photos; photos of my kids, of wildflowers, of bees and dragon flies. My kids want to know the name of every plant and creature we see. My wildflower knowledge peters out somewhere around Cornflowers and Queen Anne’s lace. One of the flowers that peeked my interest was this light pink-purple beauty, which seemed quite popular with the bees and butterflies.
I didn’t have a clue what it was called, but I thought it was pretty so I took a few close up shots, just for fun. Once we were home it occurred to me that I should be able to figure out the name of the flower by doing a reverse photo look up on Google. Bingo. Apparently this plant is Eutrochium, more commonly know as Joe-Pye Weed.
Jopi, or Joe Pye, was an Native American healer from New England who used Eutrochium to treat a variety of ailments, Folklore says that he used this plant to cure fevers and to help treat typhus outbreaks in the American colonists. which led to people using the name Joe-Pye weed for these plants.
Neat. And I have to say, I love the internet, because that was way easier than hitting the library and searching through a wildflower guidebook.What sort of photos have you folks been snapping?
Oh my gosh this is so interesting. I didn’t know what this plant was either but I have heard of the name before.I am more into perrenial flowers than wild flowers but they are all beautiful.I find it so interesting that many of them are so valualble for cures and healing things.
Beautiful flower, thanks for sharing it