Summer is here, and all the plants are loving it - a small photo series of what I found in my garden

The last week has been very hot here in Norway, and it seems like we pretty much skipped the entire spring and went straight to summer this year! This means that the flower are starting to pop up for real, even in my town that is located 150 meters above sea level.

I shot some photographs of the plants that have grown into a blossom already, and wanted to share some of them with you, and tell you a bit about the plants.

This flower is a Myosotis sp., but I'm not really sure which species it is. I could probably find out, but I just haven't gotten around to finding my botanical books used for identifying species just yet. We only have 9 species of Myosotis sp. here in Norway though, so it should not be too difficult to identify.

The tulips (Tulipa sp.) have not yet blossomed, but they seem like they could open up any day now! I'm really looking forward to when they all open up, because tulips are really beautiful flowers.

Most people probably know this flower; the dandelions (Taraxacum sp.). A lot of people believe that the dandelion is a single species, but this could not be any further from the truth! In fact, there are over 500 different species in Europe, and well over 200 only in Norway! Many of them look so much like each other, so it is next to impossible to identify them, and you would really need to find an expert to determine the species.

It is a lot easier if you live in the United States though, since only a few species have been imported from Europe. However, they tend to do most of their reproduction strictly by cloning themselves, so if a single flower gets a mutation, it could potentially be the origin of an entire new lineage that eventually evolves into a new species. This is pretty cool, and also the reason why there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different dandelion species.

This blue flower is called Muscari armeniacum. I actually did not know what this plant was called until I saw @flatman post a picture of it in one of his posts, so I would not have known the name if I had not been browsing Steem that day! We have been having these in the garden forever, and they pop back up every year, so they are a nice plant to have.

Not a flower, but we got huge amounts of the common nettle (Urtica dioica) all over the garden, which sucks for the toddler who wants to explore and touch everything. There has been a few accidents, and we have to constantly remove them to prevent complete disaster. I want to try to make a soup out of them though, because I have heard that it is delicious, but I have never tried it before. Does anyone have any experience with cooking and eating these?

I also found this little, red insect. I have absolutely no clue what it could be, because I have forgotten most of the stuff I learned about when I did learn taxonomy back in the days. It's not the best photo, but this was the best I was able to get with my cheap 18-55mm lens! Maybe I should consider buying a 18-200mm lens to get a better shot?

And that's about what I got in my garden already. I want to do some trips to find some cool plants in the coming weeks now that the biodiversity is increasing due to the season, so expect some more photos in the coming weeks. Anyway, thanks for checking it out!