Goutweed and Other Flowers by the Don River: June 2020

Every flowering plant has a time when its flowers are at their maximum. On this day, it was Goutweed.

Goutweed is a native of Europe, widely grown as a foliage plant or groundcover and readily escaping forming colonies near homesites, along roadsides, on banks and at the borders of forests.

It is an “aggressive” invader in the upper Great Lakes region, northeastern North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Goutweed has a long history as a medicinal herb to treat gout and arthritis, applied in hot wraps externally upon boiling both leaves and roots together.

As I walked about near the Don River, south of Eglinton, there were scores of flowers to be seen. Here are a few of them:

Park scenes:

NATURE POETRY

Ah, happy day, refuse to go!
Hang in the heavens forever so!
Forever in midafternoon,
Ah, happy day of happy June!    – Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (1835–1921)

Miles Hearn