White Moth Mullein and Pinks Traditional Cache

White Moth Mullein is not a separate species from the yellow variant, but pretty enough to deserve its own cache, shared with the tiny Pinks.

This is the view from GZ. The big Common Mullein is in the right center. The smaller White Moth Mullein to the left of it. The pinks are closer, also to the left, but too small to show. They close up in the afternoon.

White Moth Mullein

Verbascum blattaria, or moth mullein, is a flowering biennial weed belonging to the  Scrophulariaceae(Figwort) family. An invasive species native to Eurasia and North Africa, it has naturalized in the United States and most of Canada since its introduction. It has been declared a noxious weed by the state of Colorado.

Verbascum blattaria is more commonly referred to as the “moth mullein”. It is so named because of the resemblance of its flowers' stamen to a moth’s antennae. This is not to be confused with the more popular and widely known “common mullein” (Verbascum thapsus), a close relative of V. blattaria.

The Moth Mullein flowers can be either yellow or white and typically have a slight purple tinge. The stamens of the flower are orange in color and are covered in purple hairs, reminiscent to a moth’s antennae. They bloom between June and October of the second year.

The moth mullein grows a small, simple fruit that is spherical in shape and has a diameter of less than a half-inch. Each fruit is dark brown in color and contains numerous dark brown seeds. The fruit capsule splits in two and falls to the ground when mature.[9] Each plant produces over 1,000 fruit capsules. The fruit of the mullein develops, matures, and falls from the plant all in the second year of growth. In certain regions of the world, finches have been known to consume and distribute the seeds.

In a famous long-term experiment, Dr. William James Beal, then a professor of botany at Michigan Agriculture College, selected seeds of 21 different plant species (including Verbascum blattaria) and placed seeds of each in twenty separate bottles filled with sand. The bottles, left uncorked, were buried mouth down (so as not to allow moisture to reach the seeds) in a sandy knoll in 1879. The purpose of this experiment was to determine how long the seeds could be buried dormant in the soil, and yet germinate in the future when planted. In the year 2000, one of these bottles was dug up, and 23 seeds of V. blattaria were planted in favorable conditions, yielding a 50% germination rate.

Deptford Pink

Dianthus armeria (Deptford Pink or Grass Pink is a species ofDianthus ("pink") native to most of Europe, from Portugalnorth to southern Scotland and southern Finland, and east to Ukraine and the Caucasus. It is also found in North America.

It is a herbaceous annual or biennial plant growing to 60 cm tall. The leaves are hairy, dark green, slender, up to 5 cm long. The flowers are 8–15 mm diameter, with five petals, bright reddish-pink; they are produced in small clusters at the top of the stems from early to late summer.

It will grow in the worst, leached out soils (up to 12" tall), although it will grow taller in good soil with adequate water. D. Armeria is not native to the USA, but it does well in the wild without being dominant, in the temperate areas. The blooms close up in the afternoon.

Cultivation and uses

It is widely grown as an ornamental plant in gardens. Populations have been introduced to and have become naturalised in New Zealand and much of North America. Deptford Pink is also sometimes called mountain pink, but this may refer to several different species.

The cache is a tied in, camoed, "micro" pill bottle. The Push down hard to open and close,... I think. (If it has 2 arrows on the lid, that's it.) It has only a rolled log with a rubber band in a tiny plastic bag. Please BYOP and return as you found it, including the camo. The flowers are across the trail from the cache, to keep them from being trampled during a search. The tall Common Mullein stands guard over the smaller White Mullein and the tiny Pinks.