As we pedal though the roads and trails of PEI, we have seen and experienced so many wonderful plants we thought we would share our favorites in ranked order.
10. Wild geranium: I see lots of these plants at home, but in our travels, they seemed to struggle to hold a place. Still it was an unexpected pleasure to see bunches of them pop up.
9. Buttercup: Lines of buttercups competed with dandelions along the road and trail. Down south (in New England) you see them sporadically. In PEI they are in pervasive clumps.
8. Blue-flag iris: All the wetlands we passed had groupings of elegant irises. Like the haughty flower in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, they stand out among the cattails, reeds and other deep green plants of the swamp.
7. Daisy: Like Meg Ryan said in You’ve Got Mail, “Don’t you think that daisies are the happiest flower?” How can you not like this white petalled wonder that varies from little patches along the roadside to fields of white that look like freshly fallen snow from a distance. They are a delight.
6. Beach grass: Rolling with the wind and holding dunes in place, beach grass is a wonder to watch and key to the health of beaches. Their understated elegance is often missed and it is easy to get lost in the undulating patterns they take in flight.
5. Bunchberry: This understory relation of a dogwood was thick in the woodlands we passed. Its star shape and white flower covered sections of the forests offering a unique carpet of color and texture. Soon the flower will become a berry, useful food for all the local creatures (even humans.)
4. Bogs: While bogs are not a plant, they support a wide variety of plants that find it tough to grow in other places. Peat bogs support mosses; acid-loving plants, like blueberries and inkberries; as well as one of my personal favorites, carnivorous pitcher plants and others. They are a rare ecosystem that needs protection.
3. Beach rose: About half-way through our trip we decided to slow our pace so we could smell the roses. We didn’t literally mean to do that but it could not be helped as the proliferation of pungent red and white beach roses were not to be ignored. Their sweet smell was an often sampled pleasure.
2. 2. Potato: If you go to PEI, you have to think potato. I never thought potatoes could be even more delicious or so ubiquitous. If we didn’t often see a deeply furrowed field of red soil with potatoes growing, we thought something was wrong.
1. Lupine: What a delight to arrive at the peak of lupine bloom. Every new stand of these blue, purple, pink and white roadside flowers outdid the other. From lone clumps to fields of textured color, it is the plant that we never tired of looking at and with each day were able to see new, unexpected arrangements.
