Two of high summer’s most beautiful (albeit miniature) shows are performing now, one beneficial, the other not so much. But, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, beauty is its own excuse for being.
Above, you see white meadowsweet displaying its buds and tiny five-petalled, gleamingly white blossoms that are spiked by multitudes of reproductive stamens. This is in the spirea family, probably Spirea alba.
Below, you’ll see the stunningly translucent red berries of an Asian shrubby honeysuckle, which I guess to be Lonicera morrowii or Lonicera tatarica, These shrubs were imported into the U.S. as ornamentals for gardens and as windbreaks, since their leaves emerge early and stay late. But, these honeysuckles like to travel; they got loose and have become severely invasive, thanks to the birds who love those juicy berries.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on August10 and 14, 2026.)