To live in Sweden in May is to experience a veritable explosion of blooms: with nearly 20 hours of sunlight, each day something new is blooming while something else fades away. Yesterday this bright pink plant caught my attention because it so resembled the Western Bleeding-Heart that grew wild in my former home in the northern California redwood forest.
The plant was growing in the small park just outside my university office in Linköping, on the eastern side of Sweden.
It immediately brought me back to my days in the redwood forest. Western bleeding heart was the first plant I bought from the native plant nursery in the next town–I had seen the plant growing in the forest and I wanted more of it in my own little container garden.
I am not sure whether it is the same plant as that one that grows in California, Western Bleeding Heart, or Dicentra formosa. But it resembles this plant a great deal.
Lauren L, Linköping, Sweden