Friday flowers…royal beauty

During the walk where I found all the flowers featured in my recent blog posts, I also found one plant with beautiful red flowers. I’ve never seen one before and there was only this one (and maybe one other in another spot), so I was curious whether it was rare.

Not only is it rare, it’s royal. The US Wildflower site says:

Silene regia – Royal Catchfly. Royal Catchfly – Silene regia is a plant of rocky prairies, glades, and open woods with attractive scarlet red flowers. It appears similar to Fire Pink – Silene virginica – but Silene regia has a much smaller distribution – 12 states, and in 6 of those states it is protected due to its rarity, having Rare, Endangered, or Threatened status. It is possible that it has no longer survived in Knox County, the only county in Tennessee where it was found.

There’s no mention as to whether it really catches flies, but it certainly caught my eye.