There’s a mass of native plants competing for that good, southern sunlight along the muddy shore of Wellfleet’s Silver Spring — cardinal flowers, elderberry, bramble, swamp loosestrife, jewelweed — all of them stretching up from the muck as tall as their genes will let them. Standing in front of them all and hogging the most daylight is a seven-foot giant: Hibiscus moscheotus, the swamp rose mallow. From the northern stretch of the encircling nature trail, only a pair of its dinner-plate blooms are visible through the vegetation, but from the southern bank the entire glorious spectacle comes into view, made double by its reflection between the water-lilies.
