American spikenard

A great day compared with yesterday! Got better as the day went on and ended up late afternoon with blue skies and warm sunshine.

This is one of those giant herbaceous plants, Aralia racemosa. A native of eastern USA and Canada, it grows to about six feet here. It's not the most flamboyant of perennials, I admit, which makes it hard to explain why I have two or three other species, as well the shrubby species. I just like plants in the ivy family, I suppose!

The clusters of small white flowers eventually turn into little black berries.

Susie's turn for the extra picture today - she sat on a mossy rock close to where I was working and dozed in the sun!

For some reason as yet undiscovered, my camera suddenly changed the picture size while I was taking photographs this afternoon, going from around 3.78 Mb down to 225 Kb! So these pictures are smaller than usual.