Musical flowers

Bigleaf Snowbell, Styrax grandifolius

We encountered this beautiful shrub on a wildflower rescue. It's a tricky area. On one hand, it's very near a creek so houses are probably not going to be built directly on top of it. On the other hand, (1) you never know, and (2) high amounts of soil runoff might kill everything here anyway. So we are just taking some of the plants.



The shrub was near this little stream. The water goes underground around the middle of the picture, and reemerges just out of the shot on the right.


I'm 98% certain that this is Bradbury's Bergamot, Monarda bradburiana. (It's not in flower yet, so I can't be 100% sure.)

A few more shots of the Bigleaf Snowbell:



Gorgeous! I got such a charge when I first spotted this plant. ("Come look! What is it, what is it, what is it?!")

The flowers look as though they should be wonderfully fragrant... they had a light scent but I wouldn't exactly call it pleasant.



A similar shrub is American Snowbell (Styrax americanus). That plant has smaller leaves and fewer flowers per raceme.