Wow! Just when I thought there were no new species to discover in my area, I noticed a different flower on a recent, casual walk in our neighborhood. It was a white flower by the roadside, hiding down low amongst the white Shasta daisies. The flower itself looked like a white morning glory, but the leaves were totally wrong for that.
I took photos, of course, and was thrilled to have identified it once back home as the Upright False Bindweed (Calystegia spithamaea), native to the Eastern U. S. but regionally rare in New England due to it being at the northernmost limit of its range. What a lucky find!
Go Botany describes it as "designated imperiled in some states, with few populations extant. It prefers disturbed sites with minimal competition from other plants, and therefore may be threatened by more aggressive non-native species."
This discovery is a reminder that plant communities are ever changing, dynamic entities. Or is it that the more I learn, the more I see? Had it not been there before, or had I merely overlooked it, camouflaged as it was by the daisies?
It's a very exciting find for me! And a sobering reminder that there's still lots to learn.
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