Advantages of an Unkempt Lawn


On a short mown lawn, boringly green,  you do not get to see these. The orange flowers are Hieracium aurantiacum, which is to my mind the most handsome dandelion relative growing here. It is also an endangered plant in CZ so we are mowing the lawn in a way as to allow them to flourish. There are only a few patches around where it prospers.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Comments

  1. says

    Oh my! I’ve never seen anything like, they are so beautiful! Thank you for providing them with a good place to flourish.

  2. rq says

    Oh! I hadn’t seen those in that colour in Europe, they were everywhere in Canada! We called them Indian paintbrush in English (though they’re not) and ‘fireflower’ (ugunspuķe) at home in Latvian.
    I like the tiny bluebell, though. They’re so delicate and lovely.

  3. springa73 says

    The orange flowers are especially beautiful. We have similar plants in Massachusetts (probably a related species) that are called hawkweed, but the orange color isn’t quite as vivid. It’s nice to let a patch grow like that, especially since it is rare in your country.

  4. jazzlet says

    springa it is a member of the hawkweed family :)

    Charly those are beautiful photos. I have a few self seeded plants in a pot that contains a small evergreen, I have been chishing them (mainly weeding out the grass) and hope they will spread. Your patch is most impressive. They are such a glorious colour and go on flowering for a good long time.

  5. Ice Swimmer says

    They are gorgeous.

    It seems they have a rather long Finnish name (that some botanist must have come up with), oranssivoikeltano. Oranssi is orange (the colour, the fruit would be appelsiini), voi is in this context butter, kelta is used in nouns to indicate that they are yellow and -no is a suffix that modifies the word into a plant name.

  6. says

    I am glad you like them. They are my favourite wild flower.
    @ Marcus, I am shooting most of my pictures with Coolpix P900, only pictures in the workshop are made with my phone instead. For these I did not use any extra lenses, but I used UV filter and as big zoom as possible to obtain the depth of field. I also cropped the top and bottom picture around the flower.

  7. voyager says

    What a pretty colour. I’m glad you’re giving them a place to flourish. Also, those are very nice photos. The first one with the bee is a really excellent shot.

  8. jrkrideau says

    Fascinating. Here in Eastern Ontario, I know the orange ones in last two photos by the name “The Devil’s Paint Brush”. It is a rather pretty flower that one often finds in meadows or lightly grazed pastures. I think I have seen them in the occasional urban garden as well. I believe we have the yellow as well but I don’t recall it being as common.

    The Ontario government seems to classify them as “weeds” but it seem to consider them neither a problem nor a threat.

  9. Raucous Indignation says

    I would definitely find a place for Hieracium aurantiacum, albeit not on my lawn.

  10. Nightjar says

    So gorgeous! I know the yellow ones, I wasn’t aware they also come in orange. What a beautiful wild flower. I would allow it to grow all over my garden too.

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