I walk a mile a day out on the road just outside our subdivision. I listen to music, often singing along, and note what is going on around me.
This little plant is blooming now in the dry ground alongside the walking path. What is it.
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/When-One-is-Endlessly-Curious.jpeg)
Thanks to the plant identity app on my phone, I can take a picture and when I get home, see what it might be. It is a “Cutleaf Evening Primrose,” oenothera laciniata Hill. A primrose…how cool is that?
This plant is growing in the drainage ditch next to the path–the Low Country has lots and lots of little retention ponds and drainage ditches. The red leaves are from the Loropetalum bushes that line parts of the path, and I wrote about those a while back. They are spectacular right now, btw. But what is this plant?
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/1716804079_8_When-One-is-Endlessly-Curious.jpeg)
It’s “Lizard’s Tail,” Saururus cernuus. What a cool name. I had wondered if it was something in the loosestrife family, given the bent white flower part.
The Pickerel Rush is also blooming in the ditches–its purple spikes and pretty leaves are distinctive. In Maine, along the wet edges of ponds, the Pickerel Rush forms a mass that was purple with its lush blooms. Here it grows in the wetlands and ditches.
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/1716804081_399_When-One-is-Endlessly-Curious.jpeg)
Pickerel Rush:
And here is a tall plant I’ve been watching grow tall, and duh! Could it be a cattail? It is in the bottom of a drainage ditch that fills with water easily when it rains.
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/1716804082_213_When-One-is-Endlessly-Curious.jpeg)
Yes, it could. The distinctive “cattail” top means it is a cattail and not a “Bulrush.” This plant is probably a hybrid of two types of cattails and is called a “hybrid cattail,” Typha x glauca Godr, for Type and Glauca Godr.
Native Americans used this plant in all kinds of ways, from weaving things with it to eating parts of it to using it medicinally, and so on. I first read about native use of cattails in the native scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book BRAIDING SWEETGRASS, which is a delightful and instructive read.
But here’s a link to a quick read about the uses of cattails if you are interested:
And…the above is what happens when one is endlessly curious. Rabbit holes happen.