In a recent post or two I showed some photos of the plant (herb) Goldenrod (Solidago); which I thought were of our (Swedish) native kind virgaurea rather than the canadensis - which is considered invasive here. (The Canadian kind may still have been around for 200 years, though!)
Today I noticed a whole field of Goldenrod in a wild area behind a parking lot, where they definitely looked rather "invasive" - which made me think again. So I went up close to take some more photos; and back home compared those again to Wikipedia. Actually these do indeed seem to be of the Canadian kind. And if so, the ones I saw in the cemetery and the ones growing on the slopes down to the railway are probably of that kind as well... (In fact, I'm no longer sure if I ever actually saw the virgaurea in real life?!)
Which just goes to show that you can't really take for granted that everything you happen to read online is true. "Not even" on this blog! ;)
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| Goldenrod - Solidago canadensis Public domain picture from Wikipedia |
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Solidago virgaurea |
I am glad you took the closeup photo! I ran it through AI, and it is indeed Canadian Goldenrod! Now how on earth did it get way over there?
ReplyDeleteGinny, it seems it was imported from North America as a garden plant back in the 1800s, but then escaped from the gardens and ran wild... 😉
DeleteWe currently have fields of gold in Australia, but they are fields of Canola plants, ready to be harvested and made into Canola oil.
ReplyDeleteRiver, ours bloom back in late spring/early summer, I think. This year I have spent all summer in the city, though, so haven't seen any fields like that...
DeleteI am now puzzled as to the Latin name. Is it soldiago or solidago? There are both versions here on your post.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, thank you for doing more research on the topic! And no matter which variety they are, the golden yellow is beautiful, and I hope that even the "invasive" kind is of some use to insects, birds and other animals.
Meike, it's Solidago (as Google or Wikipedia will confirm). Typing mistakes made by my tired brain last night corrected now...
DeleteIt looks beautiful, even if it has rather insinuated itself into the native flora. So many specimens, flora and fauna, have escaped their confines and made nuisance of themselves in the wider world.
ReplyDeleteJanice, for my own part I've always just regarded them as "wildflowers". My grandparents and parents happily let them grow in wild corners of their garden without complaining about them. And my wildflower book from the 1990s just states their origin, without calling them invasive... (That was before Google invaded our lives and made us keep digging deeper into every detail!)
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