A Plant (accompanied with with a whole lot of words about the plant ending with a tale of woe) and Some Flowers

 

My wife has two, oblong shaped, wood planter boxes on the patio in the back yard.  She puts pansies in them in early spring and then in June she’ll replace them with whatever strikes her fancy at one of the nurseries or garden centers around us.

One day I noticed a slender green leaf, that was coiled up vertically, growing in one of the boxes.  Next to it was another upright green leaf, but this one was coiled so tight it was no thicker than a pencil.  The fatter leaf was about 18 inches tall and the slender one was about half that height.

I had no idea as to what kind of plant it was and asked my wife if we could leave it alone for a while to see what it turns out to be.  It wasn’t long before a couple of more leaves sprouted up and the were all opening up.  It had gotten to the point they where the plant was creating a problem in the planter box so I took it out and transplanted at the very back of our yard along the fence line.

The photo below was taken about seven to ten days after being transplanted.  I kept giving it Miracle-Gro weekly along with the flowers in my garden. Initially, while it was still in the planter, I thought it was corn.

After about three more weeks, this very healthy plant showed itself what it was, kind of.  Turns out it was not corn.  It was pearl millet or sorghum, they look very similar with a tall spike coming out of the center of the plan.  The spike looks similar to a cattail, but instead of the thick brown sheath of a cattail, the sorghum/pearl millet spike is covered with grains.

Sorghum and millet come from two different plants, but the easiest way to tell them apart is that sorghum grains are much larger than pear millet grains.  Sorghum grain is an important livestock feed source in many parts of the country.  Both grains are gluten free and are used to make flour.

How this plant ended up on our flower box, I have not idea.  There are parts of the Midwest where you will see vast fields of these plants, but none of those farms is anywhere near the St. Louis area.

I would show you a picture of the plant with its grains, but I  can’t because I  don’t have it.  I lost it when I formatted my memory card thinking I had already copied the photos to my PC.

Not only did I lose the millet/sorghum photos, but I also lost  some of the most beautiful photos of flowers I have ever photographed, some insect photos that were just unbelievable in their detail, and bird photos that would make John Audubon himself cry at their loss.

 

So much for what was lost, here is what I have:  a candy striped cosmos.

 

Two candy striped cosmoses, each with its own little and companion hanging out around the sepals.

 

Same as above, but isolating the flower on the left.

 

A chicory blossom.  Unfortunately for me, effective with my 2024 files, I will no longer any chicory photos.  The giant chicory plant that had been in the southwest corner of my garden, and held up with green yarn that had been looped around it and tied off on the chicken wire fence on sides of it, did not make it into the 2023 season.  This huge plant (about 3 feet by two feet) just disappeared from my garden.  It had disappeared so completely, without leaving a trace that I didn’t notice it was gone until around the end of May that year.  I have no idea, not eve a guess, as to what happened to it, but I’ll probably get some seeds for the 2025 season.  I’m too busy with other garden priorities right now work on that..

 

Thank you for visiting my blog.

David

All photos taken with a Nikon D7100 and a Nikkor 80-400mm telephoto zoom lens.