Some Small Summer Flowers

     Lancaster County, Pennsylvania's lawns, fields, meadows and roadsides, as in much of the eastern United States, are blessed with small plants that have diminutive, but beautiful, flowers from late May through much of summer.  Two of those plants have yellow blossoms, including yellow wood sorrels and Indian strawberries, two kinds grow blue blooms, including blue-eyed grass and forget-me-nots, and ground ivy produces purple flowers.  But all these plants are attractive and interesting, adding much intrigue to the human-made habitats they adapted to.
     Yellow wood sorrels are native to North America and adapted to many regularly mowed lawns.  In fact, some lawns have lovely, yellow carpets of this species' tiny, five-petaled blooms.  Each plant can be up to a foot tall, where it is not regularly mowed off, has clover-like leaves of three leaflets each, and visible, upright seed pods where the flowers were.  
     Indian strawberries are alien plants, having originally come from Europe.  This species, which is a small, prostrate vine on lawns mostly, can also be common on that built habitat, sometimes creating little patches of itself. Clumps of this pretty species has many yellow, five-petaled blooms over dark green, three-lobed foliage that looks like real strawberry leaves and attractive, red, half-inch fruits that look like strawberries, but have grown the tiny seeds on the surface of the fruits.  Those fruits are edible to certain kinds of birds, a variety of insects, rodents and box turtles.
     Blue-eyed grass is native to eastern North America, stands up to two feet high, and has uniquely-blue flowers and grass-like leaves among real grass.  This pretty species of plant inhabits fields, meadows and roadsides, but never in abundance that I have ever seen.  Its six, sky-blue petals per blossom are delightfully striking among the green vegetation surrounding them and add beauty to those built habitats.
     Forget-me-nots are alien plants in North America, having come from Europe.  This flowering species is as pretty as any other in this writing, but I think the present kind of plant, that stands up to 24 inches tall and has two, curling flower stems, has the most beautiful habitat; the edges of streams and ponds in sunny, green meadows.  Several flowers bloom along each curved stem and each tiny, lovely bloom has five, light-blue petals and a yellow "eye " in the center.
     Ground ivy is an alien from Europe that is common on many eastern North American lawns, particularly partly shaded ones.  This type of mint is a small, ground-hugging vine that has a pungent scent all its own when its rounded, scalloped leaves are cut or crushed and produces large patches of itself.  This kind of plant produces purple flowers that are quite lovely.
     The lovely flowers of these small plants are a joy to see on the human-made habitats they adapted to with no help from people.  Their adapting to built environments has given them additional room to grow and produce seed.  And they give us much beauty, free.  They are, to me at least, win/win species that I enjoy seeing every summer.