A Quick Hike With Wildflowers

 

With our house on the market, we have to find someplace to go while it's being shown.  This morning's outing took us to a trailhead for the Katy Trail, which is a 237 mile trail across much of the state of Missouri.  Much of it runs along old railroad tracks; and the name derives from the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad, or MKT.  Hence Katy.  A very typical Missourism!

We certainly did not hike very far along it ourselves, but we did photograph a few wildflowers we found growing by the side of the trail.

There was quite a bit of Tradescantia virginiana or possibly T. ohlensis, the spiderwort (above).

There were spreading bushes of Rosa multiflora (below), sadly an invasive species here.  (Reader, I have grown it here myself before I knew its proclivities for world domination; it was a mistake!)

And there was this lovely pink-purple flower, which I have yet to identify.  One friend has already suggested Lunaria, but the leaves aren't right for that, though the flowers are similar.  The leaves look rather like Phlox, in fact--long, lanceolate and deep green.  But I don't know any Phlox species that would quite match the flowers and the 3 ft height...

So that was my little jaunt, other than the honeysuckle, which is also a problematic invasive, but gave off its wonderful scent in the rainy air.  Here it is clambering upwards, as it does!