It's July and wild blackberry vines are rambling and scratching their way into everyone's heart and belly.
The "blackberry" below comes around a few months later, but I would not eat it.
Because they are the seedpods of an ornamental plant called Blackberry lily which is blooming now.
This biennial (flowers and sets seed in it's second summer and then dies) is one of Chris's favorites. She loves the summery orange color and the iris-like foliage. But it's not in the iris family--it's instead called Belamcanda chinensis.
This drought hardy plant also falls into our category of "gentle-self-seeders." One mature plant in our garden will probably spawn half-a-dozen seedlings to replace it. And since the foliage is two-dimensional, they can slip in sideways between perennials without crashing the party the way sprawling blackberry brambles will.
When the seed pods ripen and bust open in October, you can toss the seed into some fallow roadside for a little no-cost guerrilla gardening.
