#Dianthus armeria (Deptford Pink)

[wildflowers-of-southern-ontario]

Deptford Pink Dianthus armeria Caryophyllaceae

Photograph taken on September 23, 2022, at Marmora and Lake, Ontario, Canada.

[faguscarolinensis]

Dianthus armeria / Deptford Pink on the Flatirons Vista Trail in Boulder, CO

[thebelmontrooster]

Hot And Dry Wildflower Walk, 6-4-23

Leucanthemum vulgare (Oxeye Daisy) on 6-4-23, #943-60. Hello, everyone! I hope this post finds you well. I decided to go for a wildflower walk on Sunday afternoon even though it was bright and sunny and the temperature was already almost 90° F. There was a nice breeze, so it wasn’t so bad. We haven’t had much rain and it seems many of the wildflowers I usually see are non-existent. Only the…

[thebashfulbotanist]

This Wednesday’s Weed is Dianthus armeria, a really pretty flower found here in Lewis County, Washington State, where it does not belong. It’s native to Europe, but has been spread to North America and New Zealand. Its common names include grass pink and Deptford pink. Dianthus flowers are called pinks not because they’re often pink (and they really are!), but because of the serrate petals that look almost as if they were cut with pinking shears. In fact, the color pink was named for Dianthus pinks!

[starfragment1979]

Before I got sick, I was very much an outdoorsy person, which is one reason that becoming housebound had been so hard for me. A week or two ago I was in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil and a dragonfly happened to zip past the window, and I realized with a start, holy shit, I have not seen a dragonfly all summer. Because I'm just not outside. Which just fucking kills me, it really does.

But before I got sick, I spent years and years trying to learn about the plants and bugs and birds and everything around me. The city I live in is full of trails and parks and wilderness, and there's a lot of nature within walking or biking or public transit distance from anywhere in the city, and I was out in it as often as possible, and god I just miss the outside world so much.

Anyway, a lot of that knowledge is still in my head, and a lot of my learning was focused on urban nature, because as someone who's never gotten their driver's license, that was all that was available to me most of the time. But there's still a lot of nature in the city! Even without going off into the trails and parks. You just need to know where to look for it.

The problem is that a lot of wildflower field guides focus on the rare and showy and ornate flowers--because they make for pretty pictures and people buy books with pretty pictures. But that means that the growing-through-cracks-in-the-sidewalk weeds are often harder to identify, even though those are the kind of wildflower that people are more likely to see every day, because they're written off as too common to be worthy of notice or because they grow in abandoned lots or along the overgrown edges of alleyways or some other unseemly location.

So my point is, at some point in the past two decades I had misidentified this little flower as deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) and the ID just stuck in my head. But when I was writing out the alt text for my last post I realized that was wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it actually was. And it bothered me that I couldn't figure it out, that there's this super common weedy flower that I've been calling wild pinks for years and they're not wild pinks but wtf are they and am I really so out of touch with the outside world that I can't figure this out etc etc etc spiraling into gloom.

But this morning during my daily morning bed flop, I brought a bunch of my wildflower books up with me and did some better research, and I did have to make one wobbly trip down the stairs and back outside to go touch the stems to make sure they're sticky, but now I have successfully (I think) ID'ed it as dwarf sweet william catchfly (scientific name is either Silene armeria or Atocion armeria).

And like it feels so good that I was able to figure this out, that I can still learn new things even when I'm stuck at home or in bed so much of the time and that I can still make new plant friends.

[deathtek]

6/8/21

[zoology-time]

Deptford Pink, Dianthus armeria

[fischotterkunst]

Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria), native to Europe but naturalized in North America. cannot emphasize enough how tiny this gorgeous little flower is - no bigger around than the head of a tack

7/7/22

[speakingofnature]

Deptford Pink

This Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria) was found glowing in the early morning shadows of a sand prairie.

[purrfectly]

also we walked up a stream. ^_^

Went randonauting. Consider the yellow flowers the "treasure"

[mbsposts]

20080618   MP241.1  Doughton Park  Blue Ridge Parkway North Carolina  Bluff trail

Deptford Pink   Dianthus armeria

[wildflowers-of-southern-ontario]

Deptford Pink Dianthus armeria Caryophyllaceae

Photograph taken on July 21, 2023, at Mono Cliffs Provincial Park, Mono, Ontario, Canada.

[mossofthewoodsjewelry]

Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria)

Instagram|Newsletter

[cedar-glade]

Deptford Pink,

Dianthus armeria

A native to Europe, now fairly invasive in the Appalachian Mountains.

Although this photo was taken in TN, there wasn’t one point of any excursion in Appalachia where i did not see this coming up in a trail opening.

[debunkshy]

Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria)

Parrish Oak Savanna, WI, 6-17-17

[clinicalherbalist]

Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) The color 'pink' is named after the plant (much like the colors rose, lavender, and orange), and not the other way around. . . . #flowers #pink #colors