Climbing Prairie Rose
Posted: July 5, 2010 Filed under: Adventures in Life, Earth, garden, home, nature, Photography, pond, Summer | Tags: climbing prairie rose, flowers, wildflowers 5 Comments
If you walk towards the back of the pond, near the cattails but before you get to the woods…
… you’ll see a large tree to your left.
The center tree
I don’t remember at the moment what type of tree it is. It will probably come to me a few hours after I publish this post. If and when that happens, I will insert the name.
Under the large unnamed tree, you will find a beautiful pink flower:
It’s a flower we haven’t seen on the property before this summer. M asked me to go back and take a look at it to see if I could identify it. It is a climbing prairie rose.
It winds around the bottom of the tree, little pink flowers dotting the greenery. Some of it has reached higher, heading up towards the branches of the tree.
The climbing prairie rose is the only climbing rose native to North America. It is usually found at the edge of prairies and woodlands, in thickets and in fencerows. The species has been cultivated and you can usually find them being sold at nurseries. It’s a hardy plant, tolerating drought and cold well.
I don’t know where our climbing prairie rose came from. Perhaps a bird or some other animal brought it to us. However it got there, it’s a beautiful gift. It arrived at a place where we can more or less let it grow as it will without worrying about it getting in the way or overtaking anything.
Project Patio Update
We finally finished laying out the puzzle pieces yesterday and have our pattern set up. The next step will be to mark the pieces and move them out of The Pit so we can put down lots and lots of sand. To do that, we have to clean up all the leftover stuff (bricks, cement, flagstones, etc.) hanging around near The Pit. Today we moved the leftover flagstones. We had quite a few extras so we’re thinking of tackling a walkway next.
It’s hot, hazy, and humid today. We stopped work around noon as we’d both had enough of the heat and humidity. It’s very energy draining.
Life in the Bogs 
A beautiful gift indeed!
Did you and M plant the trees in the woods or were you lucky enough to inherit them?
Joanne: We were lucky enough to inherit the woods at the back of the pond (as part of the acreage we bought).
We have been doing some tree planting, somewhere around 200 trees planted by now.
Another lovely reflection. How nice to have a pond as part of your property – being a newbie reader here, I guess I didn’t realize these were shots of your property that you share.
Its interesting, the prairie rose looks a lot like beach roses. When I visit Cape Cod or Maine, flowers that look a lot like those live on the back side of dunes or on rocky pathways along the sea. I’m sure I’ve taken pictures of them – I could send you a link if you are curious.
Thank you, Karma. 🙂
I have a little information in the Bogs Blog FAQ (the link is up top under header and the Kingsolver quote), but you reminded me that I need to update it and include a few more things for new visitors to my blog.
It’s probably a similar type of rose as wild roses can be found pretty much everywhere. There is one that doesn’t mind the salty sea air and it does look a lot like the prairie rose. That may be why the flower looked familiar to me. It’s likely I’ve seen wild roses during our visits to Cape Cod.
And now I see that you already have plans for the extra rocks. I still think you should take up sculpture.