Wild Hydrangea grows throughout the eastern United States and it grows profusely around my mountain holler. The blooms are not as showy as the blue violet hydrangeas you see dotting people’s yards this time of the year, but around my house, the bees and other flying insects seem to prefer the wild variety over the blue blooms.
There’s something immensely comforting about wild hydrangeas to me. Maybe it’s because the plant grows in the shady edges of the woods where I liked to play when I was a little girl.
Tipper
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Beautiful plants! Also known as Seven Bark. The inner green bark makes a salve that does wonder for bugs bites and some claim it an effective remedy for brown recluse bites.
I’d love to see a picture of them full on as you would normally view them. I don’t recall seeing them when we lived in Virginia and visited on the Appalachia trail. Y’all certainly have a lot of beautiful plant life!!!
Well as we thouvht we were buying an ole timy one, when it bloomed out, it wasn’t. So my sweet huband went and bought me another one that had the blooms on it. I love it sooooo much!!!!! Love your post every day. God Bless
I’ve seen them things all my life and didn’t know they were hydrangeas. But, I call tame hydrangeas snowballs even the blue ones. So I guess the wild ones are wild snowballs.
Beverly Ruth,
There probably is, but we never paid any attention to that. Besides the Wardens didn’t walk far from their vehicles back then and they shore wasn’t going to trek back into the Mountains. …Ken
Tipper,
I made a mistake totaling all those Speckled Trout in my other comment, it should be 73, correct finger-wrong hand. ha Anyway, Speckled Trout don’t have scales and those little fellers are easy to clean, they don’t get nearly as large, but are kinda like the Brook Trout. They don’t have scales either. …Ken
Ken…..75 Speckled Trout… like in SEVENTY-FIVE…I’m shore that was over the limit, even back in our olden days…LOL
Tipper,
Wild flowers or weed flowers are always my favorite most of the time…Mother Nature places them just in the right places to show off their blooms and attract the right insects and birds to keep them growing over the landscape…
It you have ever tested Mother Natures ways…all you have to do is try and move a native plant to a groomed yard at home and see just how difficult it can be to get a piece of it started. Sometimes even after mapping out your place, following the sun/ shade times, checking the soil for dryness/ dampness; one forgets that the plants surrounding the plant you moved also depends on its neighbors, birds and bees that live near it for its health…
Thanks Tipper,
Loved the post today…Oh and by the way…as pretty as they are Blue Hydrangeas and/or Pink Hydrangeas fronting the steps of the old brick or white plank homes in NC…never looked real to me…I always loved them in their natural white…as much fun as it is to try to mess with the soil acid or alkaline to trick a hydrangea to a particular color…LOL
Tipper,
I don’t think I got any of those wild hydrangea in my yard, but I had lots of tiny little white and blue things that even a lawnmower don’t touch. I don’t know much about flowers and things, but they are pretty. I think they’re all gone now.
If you drive down thru the Nantahala Gorge, you pass Ledbetter Creek, the Double Bridges (Queens’s Creek Rd.). After about a mile or two that thing becomes crookeder than a dog’s hind leg. As daddy use to say “you meet yourself a coming!” I’ve caught lots of Trout in that branch. Reminds me a lot of Piercy Creek, but we’d go through the Mountains to get to it, and there use to be Speckled Trout, above the Falls. Me and daddy and a brother use to catch Speckled Trout like crazy. One time we had a bet and whoever caught the least amount had to clean the fish. I lost, had to clean all 53 Trout, but I caught over 20 myself. Leaning over the footlog at the house, I was
soon finished cleaning ’em, and our Family got to enjoy fresh Mountain Trout for Supper. …Ken
Ken…
Wasn’t there a limit on Speckled Trout back then…I love trout…We caught a few on the Little Tennessee years ago when we camped right on the river before the dam. When cooked right at the campfire, there is nothing that tastes better. My other favorite is a pan of fresh Blue Gill and hush puppies on the campfire. Now a days we only get a few fresh crappie now and again…cooked on the kitchen range…not the same…Those were the goodoledays…
I have two planted on the east side of the house where they are mostly shaded and the runoff from the roof waters them. One is the cultivar “Incrediball” with large wgite blooms that do not turn blue. The other one I forget which cultivar it is but all the bloom are blue (acidity c soil). This hill is droughty but they are happy, one of my successes among a lot of failures.
A few weeks ago I cut some of the blue ones and brought them in. They lasted very well, at least two weeks. But then I cut some more and they promptly wilted.
The oak-leaved hydrangea is widely planted for landscaping now. It grows wild in northwest Georgia. In general though it isn’t so easy to find native plants for landscaping. I prefer them because unlike nursery stock I can make a better judgement about the match of species to my conditions.
They are beautiful though
I have seen those growing on the mountain but didn’t know what they were. I’m glad to know the name. They are truly beautiful.
You don’t see those much around here, every once in a while you’ll see a patch growing, I think somebody traded ours in on morning glory, elderberry and privet hedge.
The root is sometimes used as a prostrate (prostate) medicine.