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Posts Tagged ‘Self Heal’

A Taste of Fall

Posted in Birds, Flowers, Insects, Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 30, 2023| 32 Comments »

I thought this scene showed signs that we are moving into fall. Other signs are shorter days of course, and also cooler nights. Things are starting to quiet down and insect activity has dropped over the past few days. Last Saturday it never got out of the 50s and was cloudy all day so that put a damper on things. It was the first noticeably cooler fall-like day and nature all of the sudden, seems to have gotten quieter.  

But quieter does not mean an ending. In fact it is a beginning, because this is when many of our most beautiful roadside flowers start to bloom. It is when fall starts to really make its presence known.

This Joe Pye weed says it all. Its leaves have gone yellow and will fall soon but right now its color is at its peak. It is as if it had to stop photosynthesizing so it could put all its effort into being beautiful.

And the New England asters this year are amazing. They like the soil to be very moist and this year they’ve got that and they’re responding with masses of bloom.

This shows how their bright yellow centers slowly turn red as they age and are pollinated.

They all seem to do it the same way no matter what color the petals happen to be. This dark purple is my favorite.

Bees didn’t care what color anything was as long as they could collect plenty of pollen. This one’s pollen sacs were filled to bursting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many bees as I have this year. This one area I was in when I took these photos must have had many thousands of bees of all kinds flying around.

Bees weren’t the only insects feasting on the asters. There were many clouded Sulphur butterflies here as well. Some were looking a little ragged but this one didn’t look bad. According to what I’ve read there are several broods of this butterfly hatching from spring until fall. Eggs hatch quickly; small green caterpillars will emerge in about a week and feed on leaves. If they need to they can hibernate over winter and will become a butterfly in spring.  

There were quite a few monarch butterflies here as well. I counted about a dozen one day and there must have been at least that many a day or two later. We’ve been short of monarchs all summer until just recently. According to what I read on a website called Monarch Joint-Venture, monarchs that emerge in late summer and early fall are the ones that migrate to central Mexico. They’ll spend the winter clustered in trees until weather and temperature conditions allow them to return to their breeding grounds. These adults can live up to nine months while adults in summer generations live only two to five weeks. What the butterflies in these photos were doing I think, is fueling up for their upcoming journey.

Light in one form feasting on light in another form.

And how beautiful all the varying forms -are.

On (or near) the fourth of July I showed you a shot of a flooded corn field, lamenting the fact that the farmer rarely gets a crop from this particular field anymore. Then, nearly a month later the corn had all died and invasive purple loosestrife had taken over, showing how wet the soil had become. This shot was taken quickly with a cell phone and isn’t very good technically, but I don’t care because it still shows how beautiful this place is.

Once again, my goal in doing this is to show you the beauty of nature so you will want to go out and see it for yourself, and as long as a photo conveys that message I don’t get too excited about f-stops and iso settings and focal lengths. That’s why I rarely talk about them here. To be honest the technical aspects of photography really don’t interest me any more than the passing interest an artist might have in the chemical composition of his paints. A camera is a tool, like a hammer or a saw, and I use it only to show you the astounding beauty of this paradise we live in. Instead of just looking at a photo I’d like you to feel the beauty that made me want to stop and take that photo.

Another recent cell phone shot of the same cornfield from a different direction is a good example of what I’m talking about. It’s a terrible photo but I had to stop and look at how beautiful this scene was. I became so lost in the beauty of it; the photo was really just an afterthought as I was about to get in the car. When I see a scene like this love is what I feel; a love of life that has somehow snuck up on me or seeped into me over the years, I don’t know. It’s all so very beautiful and I often ask myself; how could anyone not fall in love with this?

The beautiful yellow grasses lighting up that space in the previous photo are called yellow foxtail grass. Its seed heads catch the light and magnify it tenfold. The round dark bits seen along the stem are its seeds.

I thought we could play “Do you see what I see?” Do you see that strange shape way up high in that cherry tree, over on the left?

It’s the biggest paper wasp nest that I’ve seen; bigger in diameter than the trunk of the tree that supports it. I’d guess maybe 16 inches in diameter at the top, but it’s hard to tell with it being so high off the ground. I’d hate to find it in the middle of a shrub that I was trimming, that I know for sure.

I saw a mallard on a log and looked at it through the camera, admiring its beautiful feathers. I thought that it was looking away from me and I wondered if I could get closer, so slowly and quietly I snuck up on it, thinking all the while that I was pretty slick to have gotten so close without waking it. Then I looked at the photos I had taken when I got home and saw the bird’s open red eye in all of them. The mallard had been watching me the whole time and had let me get as close as I did, so I wasn’t so slick after all. I should have known.

I was surprised when this beautiful dragonfly flew past me from behind and landed on this clump of grass in front of me. It was huge as dragonflies go and its body was like a string of multi colored jewels, so you would think that something this big and this beautiful would be easy to identify, but I’ve had quite a time of it. Finally, I’ve settled on the lance tipped darner. If you look at the tip of its “tail” (rear appendages or cerci) you’ll see why. But I also settled on the lance tipped darner because it likes to perch on / in grass. Others of its kind like the green striped darner that landed on me recently like to perch on trees. All of them, says any expert you care to listen to, are very hard to identify. It is said to be certain you really have to have one “in hand” but I don’t care about names enough to be catching them. What must being caught do to a dragonfly, even if it is released afterwards?

I stood for about a half hour watching this lance tipped darner fly from plant stem to plant stem. Finally as I watched, it landed higher than we see it here and slowly slid itself down the stem until its tip reached the water. Then it shuddered. That’s the only way to describe it; it shuddered several times and each time it made ripples on the surface of the water. These dragonflies slit a plant stem with their scissor like rear appendages (see previous photo) and then lay an egg in the slit. The eggs hatch and the young naiads or nymphs live underwater, finally emerging sometimes as long as four years later, when they will shed their skin and become adults. The tricky thing about these particular dragonflies is how male and females can look so much alike.

About a week before this shot was taken I saw a red dragonfly land on this log for a few seconds and then fly away. I thought it was probably just another red meadowhawk but wait a minute; its wings weren’t clear like the other red meadowhawks I had seen. That’s because, I was to find out later, there is a red meadowhawk called a “saffron winged meadowhawk” and I believe that is what is shown here. The problem was, the saffron coloring (for me at least) was impossible to see unless it landed on something light colored like this log. I stood near here day after day wondering if one would land and finally, this one did. Compared to the 3 inch long lance tipped darner we saw previously this dragonfly is tiny at about an inch long.

I stopped at the river in Swanzey one day and saw what I at first thought was just a pile of walnut size rocks. I wondered why anyone would have collected them and put them there, but then I saw why. There was a stone with an unusually shaped pocket in it and someone had tried to find a stone with the same shape as the pocket. Finally they found one that fit perfectly, as you can see. Someone sat here for who knows how long working at creating something beautiful and then just left it behind. This once again affirms something I’ve thought for a very long time; it isn’t what we create that’s important, it’s the act of creation. I think all of us, whether we know it or not, are just trying to create something beautiful in this life any way we can.

There can’t be an award for longevity among the flowers because there are several that will bloom from June right up until a freeze, and Black eyed Susans are one of them. They get a little lost among all the other beautiful flowers of summer, at least in my mind they do, but as all the other beautiful flowers slowly fade there they are with their cheery yellow blooms; often the only flower left to see.

Another long flowering plant is heal-all, also called self-heal or prunella. The happy little flowers are always at their best in the fall, in my opinion. They do all they can to attract insects and in so doing they make themselves beautiful, but they are very small and easily missed.

The birds have eaten all the elderberries and what is left always remind me of star charts.

Some signs of fall are quite subtle, like the beautiful splash of red that appears on the top tier of leaves on an Indian cucumber root plant. Not all plants have it but those that do almost always have ripe, deep purple berries standing just above the splash. I’ve always suspected that this splash of color was there to alert and attract birds like turkeys, which eat the berries. The ripe berries appear at just about eye level of a turkey so it makes sense, but I doubt we’ll ever really know for certain.

If you are lost inside the beauties of nature, do not try to be found. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for stopping in.

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More Mid August Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 25, 2021| 18 Comments »

If you happen to see something like this on a vine that is climbing over nearby plants you might want to take a closer look because they are groundnut flowers, one of our most unusual and pretty wildflowers. The outside of the flowers seen here always remind me of tiny Conquistador helmets.

The chocolaty brown insides of the groundnut flowers (Apios Americana) are very pretty. They are borne on a vine that winds its way among other sunny meadow plants and shrubs like blueberry or dogwood. This plant is also called potato bean because of the walnut sized, edible tubers that grow along its underground stem. They are said to taste like turnips and were a favorite of Native Americans. Henry David Thoreau thought they had a nutty flavor.

This year I was able to watch how these flowers work, and I noticed that the two maroon colored “wings” start out tucked up inside the “helmet” (standard) and slowly, over a few days, they unfurl into the position we see here. They are landing pads for visiting insects and they, along with black angular lines inside the flower, direct the insect to the prize inside. These flowers must be loaded with nectar, because I’ve seen maroon “teardrops” of nectar on their outside surfaces. Groundnuts are legumes in the pea/ bean family and this one was taken across the Atlantic very soon after Europeans arrived. It was listed as a garden crop in Europe in 1885.

Pretty little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) has quite a long blooming season but I’m seeing fewer flowers each week so I think they’re nearing the end of their run. I’ll miss seeing them swaying in the breeze, especially in the morning when they sparkle with dew.

So where have all the Shasta daisies been hiding this year? Here it is August and these are the first I’ve seen. I’m guessing two years of drought have slowed them down a bit but here they are, back with the rains. I’ve always liked their brilliant white flowers. White and gray are important in gardens with a lot of color in them, because they allow the eye to rest a bit between colors. I always tried to have white, gray and/ or silver in any garden I built, especially perennial borders.

Centaurea is sometimes called basket flower or cornflower but it’s still a knapweed used in a garden setting. I’ve always liked it.

I showed this flower in a recent flower post and called it a rudbeckia, but someone wrote in and thought it was a Gaillardia. I planted some Gaillardia for a customer probably 40 years ago and they were disappointing, so I haven’t ever used them since and really don’t know them well. Since I couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t a gaillardia I searched for its name and found that it is indeed a rudbeckia like its leaves told me it was. It is called Rudbeckia hirta, “Sonora.” Essentially a hybridized black eyed Susan.

I saw a colorful daylily that seems to be gaining in popularity, if I go by how many different gardens I’ve seen it in.

All the little heal all plants are still shouting yay! Do you hear them? Yay! How can you not feel joy in your heart when you see something like this? Heal all has been used medicinally since ancient times and the plants were once thought to be a holy herb sent by God to cure man’s ills. Or maybe they were sent simply to bring happiness. Maybe happiness is a large part of the cure.

I was surprised to find some beautiful little Deptford pinks (Dianthus armeria) still blossoming. I usually see them in July and they never seem to have a very long blooming period but you can occasionally find them still blooming in September. Though they originally came from Europe they can hardly be called invasive. I find them blooming in tall grasses usually in threes and fours.

This common arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) plant grows in a wet ditch behind a shopping center. They usually grow just offshore in ponds but I didn’t see a single one blooming in a pond this year. This plant is also called broadleaf arrowhead and duck potato, because ducks eat its small, potato like roots and seeds. The pretty, clear white flowers are about an inch across.

Native hog peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata ) flowers are small but pretty, and unusual. Like the groundnut that started this post this plant is a legume in the pea/ bean family. Like a true peanut, after pollination some of its flowers bury themselves in the soil and form a small, edible, bean like seeds that give the plant its common name. Mice collect these seeds and store them in large caches that Native Americans used to search for. They can be eaten raw or cooked. The plant also forms inch long, pea-like, above ground pods that contain three or four inedible seeds.

As usual I tried many times to get a photo looking into these tiny but pretty flowers, but this is the best I could do. They’re such an odd shape sometimes it’s hard to know which way is up. Hog peanut is a strong, wiry vine that can cover large areas of forest floor and choke out other plants. It is also good at tripping up hikers.

Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium) starts blooming in late July but it is another flower that seems late to me this year. This is the first one I’ve seen that could be said to be in full bloom and it’s now almost September. This is a good plant for gardens because monarch butterflies love these flowers.

The little lobelia called Indian tobacco (Lobelia inflata) blooms quite late but is almost finished for this year. Its small flowers are about 1/3 of an inch long and pale lavender to almost white. It is the only lobelia with calyxes that inflate after the flowers have fallen and to identify it, I just look for the inflated seedpods.

Indian tobacco gets its name from the way its inflated seed pods resemble the smoking material pouches that Native Americans carried. The inflata part of its scientific name also comes from these inflated pods. The pods form so quickly that they can usually be found on the lower part of the stem while the upper part is still flowering.

I found this beautiful white phlox blooming in a local garden. Tall garden phlox is often very fragrant but I couldn’t smell any scent from this one at all.

Even though they are everywhere I go I’ve had to search all summer for a queen Anne’s lace flower head (Daucus carota) with a tiny purple flower in the center, and I finally found one recently. They aren’t usually so hard to find.

Legend says the tiny purplish / reddish flower at the center of the flower head is a drop of blood shed when Queen Anne pricked herself while making the lace. A more believable story says that it helps attract pollinators, but the truth is scientists don’t really know why it’s there. I’ve seen lots of insects go to them but then turn away as if there was nothing of interest there for them. These flowers are so small I can’t think of anything to compare them to. A tick, maybe? I’ve never seen one with white specks on it like this one had. I assume they must be pollen from the white flowers.

For years now I’ve found one or two Asiatic dayflowers (Commelina communis) in a local park but that bed has now been dug up, so I was happy to find a large colony of this pretty little flower at the local college. It’s supposed to be highly invasive but it really doesn’t fit that description in this immediate area.

Obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) gets its common name from the way it will stay in position for a while after the stems are bent. Individual flowers will do the same. Though it is native to central and southern U.S.  it’s a very aggressive plant and can take over a garden if it isn’t kept under control. Flowers can be white, pink, or purple and there are cultivars available. An particularly unusual thing about this plant is how I can’t find any reference to it being used by Native Americans, medicinally or otherwise. I think I can only say that about two or three plants, after years of searching to see what uses plants had.

I found willowleaf angelonia (Angelonia salicariifolia) growing in a local garden and had no idea what it was at the time. After some digging, I found that it is a perennial native to Puerto Rico and grows year-round there. The plant is covered with sticky hairs and has spikes (racemes) of small, pretty 5 lobed flowers that come in a few different colors including pure white. Another name for it is granny’s bonnets. This is a hard plant to find any good information on but it would be worth searching for. It’s about a foot or so tall and in my opinion is very pretty. Because of the location I found it in I would guess that it wants plenty of sunlight.

Here is this week’s look at our late summer roadside flowers. No New England asters yet but there is boneset, Joe Pye weed, Goldenrod and purple loosestrife here. They made a beautiful scene, I thought.

I’m going to leave you with two quotes today from two men born more than 60 years apart; one a physicist, the other a naturalist, each saying the same thing.

Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star. ~Paul A.M. Dirac

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. ~John Muir

Thanks for coming by.

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Mid June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2021| 28 Comments »

Common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) blooms here and there along the edges of woodlands, and about mid-June is when I first start seeing it. I don’t see it in the wild that often but it seems to escape gardens and find places that suit its temperament and there it stays, sometimes forming small colonies. There were 5 or 6 plants in this group and they were beautiful. The plant is originally from Europe but it could hardly be called invasive.

I always like to try to get a bee’s eye view of foxglove blossoms. The lower lip protrudes a bit to give bees a landing pad, and from there they follow the spots, which are nectar guides, up to the top of the blossom where they find the nectar. While the bee is busy with the nectar the anthers above it rub on its back and deposit the flower’s pollen, which will then be taken to another blossom. If successfully pollinated a foxglove plant can produce from one to two million seeds.

These foxglove blossoms looked quite different with their somewhat pinched openings. I don’t know if I saw them before they had fully opened or if this is some type of natural cross with this habit. In old England picking foxglove was unlucky, and its blooms were forbidden inside because it was believed that they gave witches access to the house. I tried to think back to all the times I might have picked it and find that there are maybe two. It isn’t a plant that makes me want to pick it like a daisy or a rose might.

I’m always of two minds when it comes to black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia.) Though I like to see them I think of them as a fall flower, so in my mind June always seems far too early for them to appear. Are they really blooming earlier these days or have they always bloomed in June? Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. I did notice that this one had a lot of red in its petals, but only on half the flower.

Native spreading dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium) is a perennial wildflower that looks like a two foot tall shrub. It spreads by both seeds and underground stems and is considered a weed in some places. I find large colonies of it growing in sandy soil along sunny forest edges. The plant in related to milkweed and many species of butterflies rely on it.

Spreading dogbane has small, light pink, bell shaped flowers that have deeper pink stripes on their insides. They are fragrant but their scent is hard to describe. Spicy maybe. This plant is pollinated by butterflies and the flowers have barbs inside that trap short tongued insects. That’s how it gets another of its common names: flytrap dogbane. Each flower is just big enough to hold a pea.

The name peached leaved bluebells (Campanula persicifolia) comes from this plant’s leaves resembling those of the peach tree. I’ve read that it grows in the Alps and other mountain ranges in Europe, but its natural habitat is woodland margins, rocky outcrops in broad-leaved woods, meadows and stream banks. It is very easy to grow-literally a “plant it and forget it” perennial and it is said to be an English cottage garden classic.

Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) trees can be messy but they’re one of our most beautiful trees. Imagine a tree covered in large white, orchid like blossoms and you’ll have a good idea of the catalpa. This tree is used ornamentally, but it needs plenty of room because it gets very large. When I was in grade school I had to walk under a big catalpa tree to get to school and I loved seeing it bloom because that meant school was almost over for the summer. In the fall when school started again the trees were filled with what looked like string beans. Each catalpa flower becomes a long, bean like seed pod and we called them string bean trees. Luckily we were never foolish enough to eat any of the “beans” because they’re toxic. Then the leaves, as big as our heads, began to turn yellow and fall before too long. They were the biggest leaves any of us had ever seen, but we were only in second grade.

At 1-2 inches across catalpa tree flowers are large and beautiful. The word catalpa comes from the Native American Cherokee tribe. Other tribes called it catawba. Some tribes used its inner bark to make a tea which had a sedative effect and is said to be mildly narcotic. The bark tea was also used to treat malaria.

White daisy fleabane flowers (Erigeron strigosus) can appear pink in the right light, as these did. This plant will bloom right up until fall, when it will sometimes be confused with asters. I regularly find fleabane growing in sunny spots quite deep in the woods where you wouldn’t expect it to be.

The first perforate St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) flowers have appeared and they’re beautiful as always. Originally from Europe, St. John’s wort has been used medicinally for thousands of years. It likes to grow in open meadows in full sun. The leaves are yellow-green in color with scattered translucent dots of glandular tissue, and that’s where the perforatum part of the scientific name comes from. These dots can be seen better when held up to the light but you can just see them in the small leaf in the lower center, partially hidden by the flower. They do make the leaf look perforated with pin holes.

Five pale yellow heart shaped petals surround a center packed with 30 stamens and many pistils in a sulfur cinquefoil blossom (Potentilla recta.) Close to the center each petal looks like it was daubed with a bit of deeper yellow. This is a very rough looking, hairy plant that was originally introduced from Europe. It grows in unused pastures and along roadsides but it is considered a noxious weed in some areas because it out competes grasses. I like its soft, butter yellow color.

White campion (Silene latifolia) can sometimes shade towards pink but this one was pure white. You can see the deep cleft or split in the petals, which is a good way to identify it. It has 5 petals that at first glance look like 10. This plant is dioecious, meaning that male and female flowers are borne on different plants. One way to tell if a flower is male or female is by counting the veins on the bladder (calyx) behind it. Male plants have 10 parallel veins on their calyx and females have 20. This well-known plant was introduced from Europe and prefers fields and waste places with soil on the dry side.

Catchfly (Silene armeria) is an unusual plant that I rarely see. I’ve seen four or five of them this year, but all in the same general area. It is originally from Europe and is also called sweet William catchfly. It is said to be an old fashioned garden plant in Europe and is supposed to be a “casual weed” in New Hampshire. The name catchfly comes from the sticky sap it produces along its stem. I’ve felt it and it is indeed quite sticky. Small insects are said to get caught in it and I can see how that would happen. Its leaves and stems are a smooth blue grayish color and along with the small pinkish purple flowers they made for a very pretty little plant that I’m hoping to see more of.

Crown vetch (Securigera varia) has just come into bloom and I’m happy to see it because I think it’s a beautiful flower, even if it is invasive. It’s another one of those that often seem to glow with their own inner light and I enjoy just looking at it for a time. Crown vetch has seed pods look that like axe heads and English botanist John Gerard called the plant axewort and axeseed in 1633. It is thought that its seeds somehow ended up in other imported plant material because the plant was found in New York in 1869. By 1872 it had become naturalized in New York and now it is in every state in the country except Alaska.

Tickseed coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) gets its common name from the way that its seeds cling to clothing like ticks. The plant is also called lance leaved coreopsis and that is where the lanceolata part of the scientific name comes from. Coreopsis is found in flower beds as well as in the wild and can form large colonies if left alone. It is often used to stabilize embankments as can be seen in the above photo.

The pretty, bright yellow flowers of tickseed coreopsis are about an inch and a half across and stand at the top of thin, wiry stems. This is a native plant with a cousin known as greater tickseed that grows in the south. It can be a bit weedy in a garden but the seedlings are easily recognizable and usually pull easily.

Red clover is doing well this year and I’m very happy that I can say that, but it wasn’t always so; there was a time when I cursed this plant. It was an ugly, ungainly weed that was hard to pull, looked terrible when it was mowed or weedwhacked, and quickly made a garden look there was no gardener tending it.

But then one evening a single ray of sunlight fell on a red clover blossom at the edge of the woods and I went and knelt by it to take its photo. I think it was really more practice photo than anything; after all who would want to see a photo of an ugly old weed? But then I saw the beauty of each tiny orchid like flower, and how each one had an inner light shining out from it. I have never looked down on it or any other plant or flower since. Telling this story always reminds me of the words from the hymn Amazing Grace: “I once was blind but now I see,” because that’s truly the way it happens. Your eyes can be opened to whatever they fail to see in a millisecond, even when what they fail to see is you.

Heal all (Prunella lanceolata) is also called self-heal and has been used medicinally since ancient times. It is said to cure everything from sore throats to heart disease, and that’s how it got its common name. Some botanists believe that there are two varieties of the species; Prunella vulgaris from Europe, and Prunella lanceolata from North America. Native Americans drank a tea made from the plant before a hunt because they believed that it helped their eyesight. To me heal all flowers always look like they’re shouting “Yay!” Why would they be so happy? Because they’re alive. They exist. All of nature is in a state of ecstasy because it simply is. That’s another lesson nature tries to teach us, but we’re usually far too busy to pay attention.

Common speedwell (Veronica officinalis) is another common weed, maybe not hated but certainly stepped on by many a heel because of its ground hugging, sprawling habit. But as is often the case when you really look at some neglected thing, you find beauty. Common speedwell has been used medicinally for centuries in Europe and its leaves were used as a tea substitute there. Though it isn’t really invasive it is considered an agricultural weed. It sends up its vertical flower stalks in May and each flower stalk (Raceme) has many very small blue flowers streaked with dark purple lines. They’re beautiful little things, but they sure aren’t easy to photograph.

The aspirin size flowers of white wood sorrel (Oxalis montana) are smaller than the leaves and hide beneath them, so you have to look closely to find them. Looking for them always makes me feel like I’m sneaking up on a rabbit or a deer or some other shy creature.

It’s worth looking closely, because white wood sorrel flowers are pin striped and very beautiful. This plant is scarce here; I’ve seen it in only two places.

This shot of ox-eye daisies is for Ginny, who a couple of posts ago admired the way they stood so straight and tall compared to garden variety Shasta daisies, which flop all around. These examples were some of the tallest I’ve ever seen, and stood ramrod straight. They proved her point perfectly.

Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.  ~A.A. Milne

Thanks for coming by. Happy Summer!

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More Late September Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 4, 2017| 29 Comments »

It has been so hot and dry here lately some of the lawns have gone crisp and make a crunching sound when you walk on them, but there was a single dandelion blooming on one of them all the same. I was surprised to see it because dandelions rest through the hottest part of the summer and don’t usually bloom until it gets cooler in fall. I hope this isn’t the last one I see this year. It’s a cool rainy day as I type this, so maybe that will convince more of them to blossom.

Heal all (Prunella lanceolata) is still blooming in lawns everywhere I go. This plant is also called self-heal and has been used medicinally for centuries. It is said to cure everything from sore throats to heart disease, and that’s how it comes by its common name. Native Americans drank tea made from the plant before a hunt because they believed it improved their eyesight. The tiny orchid like flowers look like a bunch of little mouths, cheering on life.

Bluestem goldenrod (Solidago caesia) grows in the shade away from the hot sun but it has still been hot enough even there to melt all of the wax crystals from its stems. It is this natural wax coating, the same “bloom” found on plums and blueberries, that makes the stems blue and without it this looks like many other goldenrods, and that makes them a little harder to identify. Luckily these examples are old friends and I know them well, so there is no doubt.

I think this was an example of the bushy American aster (Symphyotrichum dorsum) which has small blue flowers and looks much like the small white American aster (Symphyotrichum racemosum) in size and growth habit.  Each flower is about a half inch across and plants might reach waist high on a good day, but they usually flop over and lean on the surrounding plants as this one has. It likes dry, sandy fields and that’s exactly where I found it growing.

I found a tiny, knee high bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) with a single flower head on it, in a color that I’ve never seen it wear before. It had a lot of white in it and bull thistle flowers are usually solid pinkish purple. It is also called spear thistle, and with good reason; just look at those thorns.

Here’s another look at the bull thistle flower head. I’ve never seen another like it. I wonder if it’s some sort of natural hybrid. Or maybe, because it is so loose and open, I’m just seeing parts of it I haven’t seen before.

I was surprised to find creeping bellflowers (Campanula rapunculoides) still blooming. This pretty flowered plant was introduced as a garden ornamental from Europe and escaped to find nice dry places in full sun, which it loves. It’s usually finished blooming by the time the goldenrods start but this year it looks as if this plant will outlast them. It’s a plant that is very easy to identify, with its pretty blue / purple bell shaped flowers all on one side of its stem.

I don’t know if it’s the unusual hot temperatures we’ve had or if there is another reason but I’m seeing a lot of summer flowers that I shouldn’t be seeing now, like this St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum.) It usually blooms in June and July and should be long since done by now but I guess it can do whatever it wants. In any event it’s a pretty thing and I was happy to see it. Originally from Europe, St. Johnswort has been used medicinally for thousands of years. It likes to grow in open meadows in full sun.

Yet another plant that I was surprised to find still blooming was purple flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus.) This plant is in the rose family and has flowers that are 2 inches across and large, light gathering leaves that it needs to grow in the shade. It usually blooms in July for about 3 weeks but I was happy to see it in September.

At about 2 or 3 times the size of a standard raspberry the berry of the purple flowering raspberry looks like an extra-large raspberry. It is said by some to be tart and dry but others say it tastes like a raspberry if you put it on the tip of your tongue. This was an important plant to the Native Americans. They had over 100 uses for it, as both food and medicine.

Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium) starts blooming in late July and is usually finished by now, but you can still see them here and there. Joe Pye is thought to have been a Native American healer who used this plant to treat early Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers suffering from typhoid fever, but the discussion over the origin of the name goes back and forth. For instance I’ve read that a Native word for the plant was “jopi,” which meant typhoid, and it is thought by some that jopi the plant name became Joe Pye the person’s name. I learned just this year that monarch butterflies love these flowers.

Most purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) plants stopped blooming weeks ago so I was surprised to find one still blooming. This is an invasive perennial that came over from Europe in the ballast of a cargo ship in the 1800s. The beach sand ballast, loaded with purple loosestrife seeds, was originally dumped on Long Island, New York. The seeds grew, the plant spread and now it covers most of Canada and all but 5 of the lower Untied States. It likes wet, sunny meadows but will grow just about anywhere. It’s hard to deny its beauty, especially when you see a meadow full of it growing alongside yellow goldenrods, but the plant chokes out natives including goldenrod and creates monocultures.

I was also surprised to see an ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) blooming but that’s one of the great things about nature study; there is always another surprise right around the next bend. I’m always grateful to be able to see and smell flowers but even more so in at this time of year because it is then, when they really shouldn’t be blooming, that I remember what a great gift they are. The plant came over from Europe in the 1800s but is much loved and many believe it to be a native.

Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) still blooms here and there but it’s pretty well finished for this year. Its final act will be to drop millions of seeds before it dies back completely until spring. This plant was brought to Europe from Japan sometime around 1829. It was taken to Holland and grown in nurseries that sold it as an ornamental. From there it found its way across the Atlantic where we still do battle with it today. It is one of the most invasive plants known and the only plant I have ever seen overtake it is purple loosestrife, which is also an invasive weed. Japanese knotweed is also a tough plant that is very hard to eradicate once it has become established.

Japanese knotweed does have pretty flowers but they aren’t enough to convince people that it’s a plant worth having on their property. It can take over entire yards when left alone.

Bugbane (Cimicifuga racemosa) bloomed in a local children’s butterfly garden. This plant gets its common name from its powerful fragrance that is said to chase away bugs when bouquets of its long racemes are brought inside. Other names for it include black snakeroot and black cohosh. Native Americans used it for centuries to treat pain, fever, cough, pneumonia, and other ailments. They also taught the early European settlers how to make a tonic from the plant to boost women’s reproductive health; a kind of spring tonic.

The pee gee hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata) is a “panicled” hydrangea, meanings its flower heads are cone shaped rather than round. These plants grow into large shrubs sometimes reaching 10-20 feet tall and nearly as wide. Though originally introduced from Japan in 1862 this plant is thought to be native by many and is a much loved, old fashioned favorite. What I like most about this hydrangea is how the flower heads turn a soft pastel pink in the fall. When they’re cut and dried they’ll hold their color for quite a long time.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) starts blooming usually in June and then takes a rest in the heat of summer before re-blooming when it cools off again. Its flowers are sparse at this time of year but I find it blooming here and there. Humans have used this plant in various ways for thousands of years. It is mentioned in the Chinese I Ching, which is said to pre date recorded history, and it has been found in an excavation of a Neanderthal grave site. Yarrow was known as the soldier’s woundwort and herbe militaris for centuries, and was used to stop the flow of blood. It was a valuable healing herb, one of the nine “holy herbs,” and was traded throughout the world since before recorded time, and that is believed to be the reason for the plant being found in nearly every country on earth today. Native Americans used it for everything from snake bites to deodorant.

I never thought I’d see chicory (Cichorium intybus) blooming in September but here they were on the roadside and I was happy to see them. The flowers were small for chicory at about 3/4 of an inch across, but their beautiful shade of blue more than made up for their small size.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

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Early October Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2016| 37 Comments »

 

1-asters

I’ve seen the white of frost on rooftops a couple times but it was very light and from what I can see didn’t harm a single plant, so we’re still seeing a few flowers. Our average first frost date is September 15th, so we’re very lucky to be seeing them nearly a month later. I found this nice clump of what I think is purple stemmed aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum) growing on the shore of a pond recently.

2-asters

I’m seeing this aster everywhere right now. It has flowers that are quite small and grows at forest edges and other dry locations. I think it’s the late purple aster (Symphyotrichum patens.) It’s rough, hairy stems tell me that it isn’t the smooth aster (Symphyotrichum laeve.) Whatever its name is, it’s a beautiful small plant that’s loaded with blossoms.

3-globe-amaranth

I’m not sure why but as a gardener I never had much to do with globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa) but I saw some recently in a town garden. It’s a native of Central and South America so it must have loved the warm weather we had this summer. I’ve read that blossoms can be purple, red, white, pink, or lilac.

4-globe-amaranth

This globe amaranth reminded me of red clover.

5-globe-amaranth

There was also a darker colored variety that I thought was pretty.

6-mum

It can’t be fall without mums (Chrysanthemum) and this pink one was given to me by a friend many years ago. It has grown well all that time with no special treatment and it’s very cold hardy; it has survived -35 °F (-37 °C.) I’m hoping that it will never have to again.

7-bottle-gentian

I had to walk out to where the bottle gentians (Gentiana andrewsii) grow in their moist, shaded spot along the banks of the Ashuelot River. I hoped to see plenty of them but just these 3 were left, so I’m guessing they’re done this year. I love their beautiful blue color but I wish they’d open like a fringed gentian. Bees have to pry them open to get inside. I’ve read that these plants won’t tolerate drought so we’ll have to see what next year brings.

8-viburnum-blossoms

I first saw this viburnum growing beside a box store a few years ago and have wondered its name ever since. It’s the latest blooming viburnum I’ve ever seen but since there are something like 150–175 species, I’m not surprised. I’m fairly sure after a few years of off and on research it must be a viburnum cultivar called “Dart’s Duke” (Viburnum x rhytidophylloides.)

9-viburnum-blossoms

Dart’s Duke is a big viburnum which can reach 8’ tall by 8’ wide in sun or shade.  It has large, showy white flower heads in May and can rebloom in the fall as I’ve seen it do for several years running.  The flowers are followed by bright red berries. The large, leathery leaves are said to be deer resistant.

10-dandelion

I’m still seeing dandelions but only occasionally. The very hot and dry summer seems to have knocked the wind from their sails.

11-queen-annes-lace

Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) sometimes has a second blooming period. Though the flowers are smaller and not as tall they can almost fool you into thinking that it’s summer again.  When freshly cut Queen Anne’s lace flowers will change color depending on the color of the water in which they are placed, so if you put a bouquet into purple water you’ll have purple Queen Anne’s lace.

12-blaxk-eyed-susans

I’m not seeing very many now but black eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) still blooms here and there. It’s one of our longest blooming flowers, often blooming from June to our first hard freeze. I found this pair growing near a pond. Since the water is warmer than the air now the pond probably moderates the nighttime temperature. By October 19th the probability that we’ll have a hard freeze is around 90%.

13-sweet-everlasting

Sweet everlasting (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium) is another plant that won’t be finished until we have a freeze but it doesn’t start blooming as early as black eyed Susans do. I finally remembered to crush a few blossoms and smell them, and they really do smell like maple syrup. The plant’s common name comes from the way it lasts for years after being cut and dried. Usually the plant has many buds rather than open flowers, as this example shows. An odd name for it is rabbit tobacco, given to it by Native Americans because they noticed that rabbits liked to gather where these plants grew. Because of these gatherings they thought that rabbits must smoke the plant as a way to communicate with the Creator. They apparently decided to try smoking it too because it was and still is used in smoking mixtures by some Native people. I’ve never seen a rabbit near it.

14-datura-metel-fastuosa-double-purple-blackberry

The gazania blossom in my last flower post was a big hit so I went back to our local college to get more photos of other examples, but every blossom had closed up, so instead I got a shot of this ornamental Datura (Datura metel) blossom.  I’ve seen Datura many times, but never as beautiful as this. A little research leads me to believe that it is a black Datura hybrid called Datura metel Fastuosa “Double Purple Blackberry.” A native Datura found here is called Jimson weed, which is a corruption of the original Jamestown weed, signaling where it was first found. Each blossom opens in the evening and lasts until about noon the following day.

15-bee-on-datura

Bees were all over the Datura, but some were moving slowly and seemed confused. The blossoms are doubled with many ruffles and bees in the know crawled in from the side and then down into the trumpet, but a few like the one pictured just crawled around the outside looking for a way in. Datura contains several powerful toxic compounds and even the honey made from its flowers can sometimes lead to poisoning.

16-datura-seed-pod

Another name for Datura is thorn apple because of the spiny seed pods that appear on some varieties.  The seeds and flowers are the most toxic parts of the plant, but they were used in sacred rituals for many thousands of years by Native American shamans and the plant is still called “Sacred Datura” by many. Native Americans knew the plant well though, and knew what dosages would and wouldn’t kill. Many with less experience have died trying to test the hallucinogenic effects of the plant.

17-datura-seed-pod

The black Datura, Datura metal, has unusual seed pods but the seeds within are just as toxic as other varieties. If the plant wasn’t so toxic I’d hollow out a seed pod and dry it to see if it would hold its color and shape. It’s very unusual.

18-heal-all

Heal all has been known for its medicinal value since ancient times and has been said to cure everything from sore throats to heart disease, and that’s how it got its common name. Its tiny flowers have an upper hood and a lower lip which are fused into a tube. Tucked up under the hood are the four stamens and forked pistil, placed perfectly so any visiting bees have to brush against them. Native Americans believed the plant improved eyesight and drank a tea made from it before a hunt.

There are Botanists who believe that there are two varieties of heal all; Prunella vulgaris from Europe, and Prunella lanceolata from North America.

19-witch-hazel

In a recent post I said that witch hazels (Hamamelis virginiana) would bloom once the leaves fell off, but I should have said that the flowers would be easier to see once the leaves fell. The flowers are there now but most are surrounded by leaves and can be hard to see. Native Americans used the plant to treat skin irritation in the same way it is used to this day. The common English name witch hazel was given to it by early settlers after the Wych Elms (Ulmus glabra) that they knew in England. Wych means pliable or bendable.

20-witch-hazel-blossoms

Witch hazel flowers are our latest blooming native flower and are always worth looking for, starting in October. I can’t think of any others quite like them. It can be quite a surprise to come upon a whole grove of them on a cool day in November. I’ve seen them blooming as late as January in a warm winter.

A beautiful thing, though simple in its immediate presence, always gives us a sense of depth below depth, almost an innocent wild vertigo as one falls through its levels. ~Frederick Turner

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Mid June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 20, 2015| 50 Comments »

1. Catalpa

Imagine a tree 100 feet high and 50 wide full of orchids and you’ll have a good idea what the northern catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) looks like in full bloom. Of course the flowers are not orchids, but they’re very beautiful nevertheless. At 1-2 inches across they are also large, and so are the heart shaped leaves. These trees have long, bean like seed pods and when I was a boy we called them string bean trees. Luckily we were never foolish enough to eat any of the “beans” because they’re toxic. The word catalpa comes from the Native American Cherokee tribe. Other tribes called it catawba.

2. Catalpa Leaf

For those who have never seen a catalpa leaf, here is my camera sitting on one. I took this photo last fall.

3. Heal All

And since we’re thinking about orchids, here is our old friend heal all (Prunella lanceolata,) whose tiny hooded flowers also remind me of orchids. The plant is also called self-heal and has been used since ancient times. It is said to cure everything from sore throats to heart disease, and that’s how it got its common name. Some botanists believe that there are two varieties of the species; Prunella vulgaris from Europe, and Prunella lanceolata from North America. Native Americans drank a tea made from the plant before a hunt because they believed that it helped their eyesight.

4. Knapweed

Brown knapweed (Centaurea jacea) has started to bloom. I’ve always thought that knapweed flowers were very beautiful but unfortunately this plant is also from Europe and according to the U.S. Forest Service is a “highly invasive weed that is capable of forming large infestations under favorable conditions.”  The large infestations crowd out native plants including those used for forage on pasture lands, so it is not well liked by ranchers. The brown bracts below the flower are what give the plant its common name.

5. Partridge Berry

The unusual twin flowers of partridge berry (Mitchella repens) fuse at the base and share one ovary. They will become a single small red berry that has two dimples that show where the flowers used to be. Partridgeberry is one of the lowest growing evergreen plants on the forest floor, hardly growing more than 3 or 4 inches high. Plants have a vining habit but don’t climb. Instead they form dense mats by spreading their trailing stems out to about a foot from the crown. Roots will often form at leaf nodes along the stems and start new plants. Ruffed grouse, quail, turkeys, skunks, and white-footed mice eat the berries.

6. Mt. Laurel

June is when our native mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) blooms. The pentagonal flowers are very unusual because each has ten pockets in which the male anthers rest under tension. When a heavy enough insect lands on a blossom the anthers spring from their pockets and dust it with pollen. You can see flowers with relaxed anthers in the upper center and left parts of this photo. Once released from their pockets the anthers don’t return to them.

7. Mt. Laurel from Side

What once may have been five petals are now fused into a single, cup shaped blossom. A side view of a single mountain laurel blossom shows the unusual pockets that the anthers rest in. Another old name for mountain laurel is spoon wood, because Native Americans used the wood to make spoons and other small utensils.

8. Hedge Bindweed

I saw a beautiful bicolor hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium) flower one day. Though for many years all I ever saw were white flowered hedge bindweeds these bicolor ones have become more numerous over the last few years. Bindweeds are perennial and morning glories are annuals and one good way to tell them apart is by their leaves; morning glory (Ipomoea) has heart shaped leaves and bindweed has arrowhead shaped triangular leaves.

9. Red Sandspurry

This is the first time that red sandspurry (Spergularia rubra) has appeared on this blog, maybe because it is so small I’ve never noticed it. The tiny flowers aren’t much bigger than a BB that you would use in an air rifle, but grow in groups that are large enough to catch your eye. I find them growing in sand at the edge of roads and parking lots.

10. Red Sandspurry

The pretty little flowers of red sandspurry are pinkish lavender, so I’m not sure where the red in the common name comes from. This plant was originally introduced from Europe in the 1800s. An odd fact about the plant is that it has reached many states on the east and west coasts but doesn’t appear in any state along the Mississippi river except Minnesota. It must have been introduced on both coasts rather than first appearing in New England and then crossing the country like so many other invasive plants have.

11. Silky Dogwood

Silky dogwood has just started blooming. One way to tell that it’s a dogwood that you’re looking at is to count the flower petals. Dogwoods have 4 and viburnums have 5. What I like most about this shrub are its berries. They start off white and slowly turn deep blue, but for a while they are blue and white and remind me of Chinese porcelain. In fact I’ve always wondered if the Chinese got the idea for blue and white porcelain from these berries. This shrub is also called swamp dogwood. I usually find it growing on the banks of rivers and streams.

12. Columbine

I saw these beautiful wine red columbines in a friend’s garden. I think they probably started life as flashy bicolor hybrids and now the seedlings reverted back to one of the parents.

13. Sulfur Cinquefoil

Five pale yellow heart shaped petals surround a center packed with 30 stamens and many pistils in a sulfur cinquefoil blossom (Potentilla recta.) Close to the center each petal looks like it was daubed with a bit of deeper yellow. This is a very rough looking, hairy plant that was originally introduced from Europe. It grows in unused pastures and along roadsides but it is considered a noxious weed in some areas because it out competes grasses. I like seeing its pale yellow flowers among the purple maiden pinks and white ox-eye daisies.

14. Tulip Tree Blossom

The tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) gets its common name from the way its flowers resemble tulips, at least from the outside. As the photo shows, the inside looks very different. The fruit is cone shaped and made up of a number of thin, narrow scales which eventually become winged seeds. Another name for this tree is yellow poplar. It is the tallest hardwood tree known in North America, sometimes reaching 200 feet. Native Americans made dugout canoes from tulip tree trunks.

15. Crown Vetch

I love all flowers but some seem to have a little extra spark of life that makes me want to kneel before them and get to know them a little better. One of those is the lowly crown vetch (Securigera varia.) I know it’s an invasive species that people seem to either despise or ignore but it’s also beautiful. In fact if I had to design a beautiful flower, I don’t think I could do better than this.

If you love it enough, anything will talk with you. ~George Washington Carver

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Mid June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 25, 2014| 45 Comments »

1. Flowering Raspberry

Native flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus) is in the rose family but they look like roses that didn’t have time to iron their petals before they put them on. Still, they are one of my favorites. Each blossom is an inch and a half to two inches across. Later a red fruit that looks like a large raspberry will form, but the fruits are on the dry side and don’t taste much like raspberries.

2. Crown Vetch 2

Crown vetch (Securigera varia) is terribly invasive but also very beautiful, with its rounded clusters of pea like, purple and white flowers. Native to Africa, Asia and Europe, it was imported in the 1950s to be used for erosion control and almost immediately began to spread until today it is present in every US state except North Dakota, and throughout much of Canada.

3. Mountain Laurel

June is the month when our native mountain laurels (Kalmia latifolia) bloom. The wood of this shrub twists and turns and can form dense, almost impenetrable thickets when it grows in suitable locations. An older name for mountain laurel is spoon wood, because Native Americans used the wood to make spoons and other small utensils.

4. Mountain Laurel Front

The pentagonal flowers of mountain laurel have ten pockets in which the male anthers rest under tension. When a heavy enough insect lands on a blossom the anthers spring from their pockets and dust it with pollen. You can see a flower with relaxed anthers in the upper left part of this photo. Once released from their pockets the anthers don’t return to them. Though related to the blueberry, all parts of this plant are very toxic.

5. Mountain Laurel Side

What once may have been five petals are now fused into a single, cup shaped blossom on mountain laurels. This side vies shows the cups that the anthers fit into. The way that these flowers work to make sure that visiting insects get dusted with pollen is really amazing.

 6. Black Eyed Susan

I have mixed feelings about black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) because, even though I like seeing the cheery flowers they remind me of how fast time is passing. It’s as if they mark the half-way point of the warm weather, if only in my mind.

7. Heal All

Heal all has been known for its medicinal value since ancient times and has been said to cure everything from sore throats to heart disease, and that’s how it got its common name. Its tiny flowers have an upper hood and a lower lip which are fused into a tube. Tucked up under the hood are the four stamens and forked pistil, placed perfectly so any visiting bees have to brush against them. Native Americans believed the plant improved eyesight and drank a tea made from it before a hunt.

There are Botanists who believe that there are two varieties of the species; Prunella vulgaris from Europe, and Prunella lanceolata from North America.

8. Yarrow

Another plant that was known well in ancient times for its medicinal qualities is common yarrow (Achillea millefolium.) It is mentioned in the Chinese I Ching, which is said to pre date recorded history, and yarrow has also been found in an excavation of a Neanderthal grave site. I think yarrow must be the plant with the most common names, probably because it has been known for so long. Some of them are: Bad man’s plaything, bloodwort, carpenter’s grass, carpenter’s weed, devil’s nettle, devil’s plaything, dog daisy, fern weed, field hoop, herb militaris, knight’s milfoil, little feather, milfoil, nosebleed, old man’s pepper, sanguinary, soldier’s woundwort, squirrel tail, staunch grass, staunch weed, thousand-leaf, thousand-seal, thousand-weed, and yarroway.

 9. Tulip Tree Flower

The tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) gets its common name from the way its flowers resemble tulips, at least from the outside. As the photo shows, the inside looks very different. The fruit is cone shaped and made up of a number of thin, narrow scales which eventually become winged seeds. Another name for this tree is yellow poplar. It is the tallest hardwood tree known in North America, sometimes reaching 200 feet. Native Americans made dugout canoes from tulip tree trunks.

10. Tradescantia

Spiderwort flowers (Tradescantia virginiana) are usually blue or violet blue, but not this one-it looked very purple to me. Since I found it in a local park I wondered if it might not be a cultivar of the native plant. This plant always reminds me of my father who, when I was a young boy, used to wonder why I was “dragging all those damn weeds home.” I often found plants growing along the railroad tracks and transplanted them to our yard. This was one of my favorites, but he didn’t seem to care much for them.

 11. Maple Leaf Viburnum

Maple leaf viburnums (Viburnum acerifolium) have started blooming. The size of the flower heads on this shrub can vary greatly depending on how shaded they are. This one was the size of a golf ball but I’ve seen some as big as a grapefruit. They are valuable plants to wildlife. Many songbirds eat the berries and beavers, rabbits, deer and moose eat the bark, twigs and leaves. What I like most about this plant is the way its leaves change colors in the fall. They can go from deep maroon to orange red to light, pastel pink and can be mottled with several different colors at once.

 12. Sulfur Cinquefoil

If you’ve ever seen sulfur then it will make perfect sense why this plant is called sulfur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta.) The flowers are pale yellow, just like the mineral they were named for. This very hairy plant is a native of Europe and Asia and is considered a noxious weed in many parts of the U.S., especially in states with a lot of pastureland. Sometimes its flowers can be white or deeper yellow.

13. Wild Radish

Another sulfur colored flower is found on wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum), but these blossoms have only four petals instead of five like sulfur cinquefoil. The flowers of wild radish can be white, sulfur yellow, or light purplish pink. The petals often have purple veins, but they weren’t very noticeable on the ones in this photo. I find this plant growing at the edges of cornfields.

 14. Milkweed Flowers

I could spend a lot of time and effort explaining how complicated the process of pollination is for a milkweed blossom, but I won’t do so today. That information is easily found elsewhere and I’d rather readers just appreciate the beauty of these blossoms, found on a plant that so many consider a weed not worth looking at. Sometimes by losing ourselves in the natural beauty of this world we find ourselves, and begin to see that the observer and observed are one and the same.

Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air. ~George Bernanos

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Early June Wildflowers

Posted in Nature, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2013| 39 Comments »

Here are a few more of the flowers I’ve seen recently.

1. Blue Flag Iris

Last year I saw two native blue flag iris (Iris versicolor ) on the far side of a local pond. This year they are on all sides of the pond, so they spread fast. If you happen to be a forager and like making flour from cattail roots you want to be sure that you don’t get any iris roots mixed in, because they are very toxic.

2. Bunchberry

These bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) like growing on the side of this oak tree. These plants are often seen growing on or near rotting logs, so a lot of their nutrients must come from there. If bunchberry flowers remind you of dogwood blossoms, that’s because both dogwoods and bunchberry are in the same family. (Cornaceae) Just like with dogwoods blossoms the white parts of the bunchberry blossom are bracts, not petals.

 3. Bunchberry

The actual bunchberry flowers are the small bits in the center of the white bracts. The flowers will become “bunches” of bright red berries later on. The berries are loaded with pectin and Native Americans used them both medicinally and as food. The Cree tribe called bunchberry “itchy chin berry” because they can make you itch when rubbed against the skin.

4. Honey Locust Blossoms

Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) grows in all but two of the lower 48 states in the country. People in Oregon and Washington won’t get to see and smell its beautiful blooms but the rest of us will. This tree gets its common name from the sweet pulp found on the inside of its long, ripe seed pods. This tree has some very sharp thorns and is also called thorny locust.

5. Native Pink Azalea aka Rhododendron periclymenoides

 Last summer I found a shrub that looked like an azalea, so this year I went back and found that, sure enough, the shrub was our native pink azalea (Rhododendron periclymenoides .) In my experience this shrub is very rare-I’ve only seen two of them in my lifetime, and this is one of those. I’ve since discovered that it is listed as endangered in New Hampshire .The flowers had mostly all gone by before I re-visited it, so next year I’ll have to visit it a little earlier. It’s a beautiful thing rarely seen, so it is well worth the effort.

6. Columbine

Other plants that I found last year were some columbines (Aquilegia) growing along a roadside. It was well past their bloom time so I made a note to revisit them this spring. Unfortunately a road crew had come along and scraped up all but two plants. I visited those that were left several times this spring until they finally bloomed.  Again unfortunately, instead of being our native red flowered Aquilegia they were a pinkish / purple garden escapee. I’ve included their photo here only because it took 7 months and a good dose of patience to get it.

7. Ashuelot Wildflowers

Native blue lupines (Lupinus Perennis) are blooming along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey, New Hampshire, along with yellow bird’s foot trefoil. The town has decided that this area will be a park, so the lupines and many other wildflowers that grow here will most likely be destroyed. How ironic that blue lupines are listed as a threatened species in New Hampshire.

 8. Maiden Pink

 Maiden pinks (Dianthus deltoids) get their common name from the way the petals look like they were edged with pinking shears. This European native has escaped gardens and can be found in lawns and meadows in many states in the U.S. Oddly enough, it is listed as a nationally scarce species in England. I think we could send them boatloads, just from the stock we have here in New Hampshire. A very similar plant is the Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria) but its flowers have much narrower petals.

 9. Blue Eyed Grass

There are several species of Blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium) that grow from coast to coast in the U.S. Though its common name says that it is a grass the plant is actually in the iris family. The flowers have 3 petals and 3 sepals and all are the same color blue. Blue eyed grass is an old favorite of mine.

 10. Oxeye Daisy

Ox eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) bloomed early this year. If ever there was a flower that said it was June this is it, but I found a few blooming in May. This is another European native that escaped gardens and is now found in meadows in every state in the U.S. including Alaska and Hawaii. A vigorous plant can produce up to 26,000 seeds. In tests 82% of those seeds remain viable even after being buried for 6 years, so don’t look for this one on the endangered list any time soon.

 11. Heal All

Heal all (Prunella vulgaris) has just started blooming this week here. Its tiny purple flowers are always a welcome sight. Nobody seems to agree on where this plant originated because it is recorded in the histories of several countries before the history of travel was recorded. Maybe everyone should agree that it is a plant known since ancient times and leave it at that. It was once thought to be a holy herb sent by God to cure man’s ills. The name heal all comes from the way that It has been used medicinally on nearly every continent on earth to cure virtually any ailment one can name.

 12. Yellow Hawkweed

Yellow hawkweed (Hieracium caespitosum) flowers can rise to a height of up to 3 feet on wiry, leafless stems. The leaves are in a cluster at the base of the long stem and this makes photographing the plants in their entirety very tricky, unless you are an expert in depth of field. I’m not, so you get to see the flowers and not the leaves. This plant hails from Europe and is considered a noxious weed in many states. The common name of hawk weed came about because Pliny the elder wrote that hawks ate the plants to improve their vision. I wonder if Pliny himself had vision problems.

 13. Orange Hawkweed

Orange hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) doesn’t get quite as tall as yellow, but getting the entire plant in one photo is still a challenge. This plant is another that was introduced from Europe and is now considered a noxious weed. I like it for its color because orange isn’t seen that often in nature. One common name of orange hawkweed is Devil’s paintbrush. When I was a boy everyone called it Indian paintbrush even though true Indian paintbrush (Castilleja) is an entirely different plant.

None can have a healthy love for flowers unless he loves the wild ones. ~Forbes Watson

Thanks for stopping in.

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