This is commonly called "Cardinal Flower" (Lobella cardinalis) and is one you have to see to believe! It is beyond gorgeous! The late naturalist Roger Peterson called it "America's Favorite. I found a patch of it several years ago about a mile from home along a dirt road in a swampy area. Not a common flower. The individual flowers are about 1" tall grow on a spike similar to a Gladiolas. The red is intense and appears as scarlet velvet. The color reproduction here doesn't do it justice. It generally grows on stream banks, swamp edges etc and other non handicapped accessible areas and blooms in late August-Sept. This one was about 6' away from me in a wet ditch (where else!) full of briers, chiggers, snakes, poison ivy and who knows what else. I used my 300 mm hummingbird lens with a 1.4X teleconverter and extension tube to get it to close focus.
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