This short, fennel-like plant is blooming now, in late March, in a rock garden in Northern Virginia. Can anyone give it a name?
I would hazard a genus guess- some species of Lomatium. Here on the West Coast we have a couple of native species, common name is Spring Gold, and Desert Parsley.
Thanks, Terry. That's entirely possible. The fellow who created the garden was an inveterate collector of wildflower seeds, especially from the Rocky Mountain states. Can anyone narrow it to species, or do I need a better photo?
See if you find anything similar in the Lomatium series of images from Burke Museum. It's not comprehensive - there are 80-90 species of Lomatium, but maybe you'll be lucky.
Eighty species. Daunting. Here are some close-ups. Maybe someone will recognize the species and save me a bit of searching.
That sounds tough. I suppose you have ruled out a dwarf dill. It just seems like a likely plant to find in a garden and in your area might go to seed early if overwintered.
I have a cold, so I can't give the plant a sniff test for dill right now. But would dill be blooming this early? And do Lomatiums have a distinctive scent?
I don't know anything about Lomatium. It does seem early for dill to bloom although they can overwinter in the South and you have had some unusually warm weather there this winter. I was just guessing dill because it looks like it and it is such a common plant in gardens.
Though it resembles dill, I tend to think it's not dill. From what I understand, dill is an annual. This plant (or one just like it) popped up in the same position last spring. It bloomed early, just ike this one, and the foliage hung around through the summer long after the flowers were past. This suggests a perennial to me, storing up energy for the next spring's bloom. I didn't notice foliage overwintering. And although we had a mild Dexember and early January, the last part of January and most of February were unusually cold. Only a really hardy annual could have survived. In any case, a lomatium would be much more interesting to have than a dill! But perhaps a dill grower (or a lomatium fancier) can set us straight here.
