Here are a few more examples of what’s blooming in southwestern New Hampshire right now.
Native button bush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) is blooming along rivers and ponds now, but it isn’t real common. This plant is a shrub that can reach 12 feet tall. The flowers are unusual-the spiky pistils stick out quite far above the petals, giving the round flower head the look of a pincushion. Native Americans used the roots and bark of these shrubs medicinally but modern science has found that the plant contains a compound called cephalanthin, which destroys red blood cells.
American bur reed (Sparganium americanum) looks almost like a miniature version of the button bush in the previous photo. Since they both like water they are often found growing together on the same stretch of shoreline. The round, spiky female flowers of burr reed grow at the bottom of the stem and the male flowers with yellow stamens above them. Ducks and other waterfowl love the seeds.
In New Hampshire native partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculate) is a quiet little plant that grows in the tall grass at the edge of the woods and you really don’t hear much about it. In other areas it is often grown for honey production. This annual plant is a legume in the pea family and is a great addition to a wildflower garden because it attracts a large variety of insects and wild life.
Showy tick trefoil (Desmodium canadense) is another legume in the bean family but it is a perennial. I like it because it blooms in late summer along with goldenrod and I think that the colors go well together. This plant gets its name from the little barbed hairs that cover the seed pods and stick to clothing like ticks. Deer, rabbits, woodchucks and even cows love to eat this plant. Books and websites say its flower is pink but my color finding software sees purple in this photo, and so do I.
I see a lot of white hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium) but not many bi-color flowers like this one. It’s a beauty.
Yellow toadflax was introduced from Europe and Asia as an ornamental but as the old, familiar story goes; it escaped cultivation and is now found on roadsides and in pastures of every state in the country except Hawaii. Called butter and eggs, this plant is hated by cattlemen because it can take over large areas of pasture. Cattle know it is toxic and don’t touch it.
Virgin’s bower (Clematis virginiana) is a late summer blooming native clematis vine that drapes itself over shrubs so it can get all of the sunshine that it wants. I’ve also seen it climbing into trees.
The flowers of virgin’s bower resemble those of sweet autumn clematis (Clematis paniculata), which is a nonnative garden climber that has escaped. The plant is also called old man’s beard and devils’ darning needles. An extract made from it is hallucinogenic and was used by Native Americans to induce dreams. Mixed with other plants like milkweed, it was also used medicinally. It is a very toxic plant that can cause painful sores in the mouth, so it no part of it should ever be eaten.
Native wild cucumber (Echinocystis lobata) is another late summer blooming vine that climbs on shrubs and trees. It likes to grow in sandy soil and prefers shade over full sun. The flower spikes (Racemes) grow to 6 inches or more all along the main stem. These plants are annuals and grow from seed each year. The spiny, 2 inch long fruits have a watermelon shape and boys have been throwing them at each other for as long as I’ve been around. The fruit is not edible.
The greenish white, star shaped male flowers of wild cucumber have 6 petals that are twisted slightly. The female flowers are yellowish green and not at all showy. They grow at the base of the male flower stems. There is usually only one female flower for every 5 or 6 male flowers, which is why there are so few fruits seen on each vine.
Plant breeders have been trying for centuries to breed a plant with black flowers but nature beat them to it with black swallow-wort (Cynanchum louiseae). The flowers can be black to dark purple and look like tiny stars. This plant is native to Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain and in 1854 it escaped from a botanical garden here in the U.S. and has been trying to take over since. It grows long, wire-like vines that are strong enough to trip you up without breaking. It is for that reason its other common name, dog strangler, came about.
The seed pods of native mad dog skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) might look like an old fashioned skullcap, but the only thing the plant has to do with mad dogs is the erroneous belief that the it cured rabies. Mad-Dog Skullcap has the smallest flowers among the various skullcaps and they always grow in pairs in the leaf axils. These plants are quite small to begin with but many plants that grow on river banks where the river floods regularly can be stunted and quite smaller than usual, and I think that is what happened to these plants. These flowers were very small-no more than 1/8 of an inch long.
Dwarf St. Johnswort (Hypericum mutilum) grows on the riverbank with the mad dog skullcap but it grows small naturally instead of being stunted. These flowers were about the same diameter as a pencil eraser. Like its bigger cousins the leaves of this plant contain a compound called hypericin, which can make light skinned people more susceptible to sunburn by way of a photosensitive reaction.
Another small flower I find on the upper gravel part of the riverbank is the forked blue curl (Trichostema dichotomum.) These are annual plants that grow from seed each year and I was afraid that all the seeds would have washed away in last spring’s flooding, but here they are. They are very small and you have to get down on your hands and knees for a view like this but it’s worth it because they are beautiful. This native plant grows as far west as Texas.
If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment. ~Georgia O’Keefe
Thanks for coming by.
I just love your blog. I can invariably go out on a hike or kayak adventure, see a whole slew of plants, wonder what they are, and come home to find that you have posted about those very things. The joy of having a plant pro blogging right here in New Hampshire!
Thank you for the vote of confidence. I don’t know if I’m a plant pro, but I try hard for accuracy. I’m glad you’re seeing the plants shown here blooming elsewhere.
Found you by chance – and am I glad, I did!! I follow you now. Carina 🙂
Thank you Carina. I’m glad that you like it!
It’s amazing that you have so many beauties in bloom this late in the year! Here very few species still bloom, even in the medium-high elevations. These photos are gorgeous!
Thanks Montucky. It’s slowing down a bit but we still have flowers just about everywhere you look. I haven’t seen any purple asters yet, so thosee will be coming along soon.
Beautiful plants, great photos. I never found a blue curl, such a pretty flower. My guide shows a few places it grows here in Michigan. I’ll keep an eye out for that one.
Thanks Chris,
It’s a small plant with real small flowers that’s easy to miss. It grows about shin high in dry, sandy soil and likes full sun. Here it grows quite high up on river banks so it doesn’t get wet feet.
Forked bluecurls is one of my favorites.
Mine too!
What a great blog! I just picked up a book from the library on N. American wildflowers because I want to use more native plants…..and to think you’re my next door neighbor (NH & MA) and what you posted is so relevant for me! Thank you!
You’re welcome. I’m glad you’re getting good use out of this blog. It is also searchable. If a flower has appeared here and you type its name into the search box at the top right, you’ll see all the posts that flower has appeared in.
Another collection of wildflowers that make me quite jealous because we just don’t have them. Well, we do have the Virginia bower, the bindweed and the St John’s Wort but you seem to have so much more in New Hampshire than we have here. Thank you for all the bending down and laying on the ground, much appreciated 🙂
You’re welcome. There was a lot of it going on.
The button bush picture is very good.
Thank you!
Great post, my friend. The button bush seems so engaging but do the buttons appear all over the large shrub or just new growth on top? Love the subtlety of the native clematis. Common names can be entertaining and how can one not crack a smile when first learning of the silly but ever so appropriate dog strangler name? Never silly if you’re battling it, though.
Thanks Patrick. You’ve really got to wonder what people were thinking when they named some of these plants, although I’ve weeded this one out of enough gardens to know that dog strangler really fits-it’s tough!
The buttons on button bush appear at all stages of growth and all over the bush, but there are so few mature flowers at any given time that they look kind of sparse. I’ve never seen one “covered with flowers” but under cultivation that might change.
Very interesting stuff, and you leave me wanting to know more. Like why does wild cucumber invest so little in female flowers? Who pollinates that forked blue curl that has such an overhanging set of anthers and stigma? Another great post with really beautiful photos!
Thanks Sue. I’m not sure that anyone knows why wild cucumbers don’t have more female flowers. I’ve searched for the answer and can’t find it. Since each fruit has only 4 seeds you would think that the plant would want to produce far more fruit than it does. The forked blue curls are said o be pollinated by bees and “other insects.” The long lower petal serves as a kind of landing pad. Looking at the curved stamens, I would think that most of the pollen would end up on a bees back. There must be a good nectar pool down inside.
I actually recognize about half of these! I guess that means that your posts over the past few years haven’t been lost on me after all. Keep up the great work, there is no one so noble as he who shares his knowledge with others!
I’m glad that plant knowledge is rubbing off on you Jerry. I’d bet that if i started chasing birds I’d find the same thing was true because of what I’ve seen on your blog. I don’t know about noble but I like trying to show people what they can see if they’ll look.
I’m staggered by the number of wild flowers you find in your area. We rarely appear to overlap but we have yellow toadflax at the moment too. I love it and before I had many flowers in the garden I always used to bring the flowers into the house for decoration.
The large variety of different wildflowers that grow here is fairly impressive, and it’s like that for most of the season. I like toadflax too. They always remind me of snapdragons.
The button bush is the only one of today’s flowers that I recognize. We have a lot of them at the marsh that I often visit and butterflies seem to like the button bushes. It’s amazing to realize how small the blossoms are for so many of these flowers. Wow. I especially love the way you were able to frame the shot of the forked blue curl.
Thanks Mike. Button bushes are butterfly magnets. I don’t see too many of them here, but I know of a couple of places where they grow.
Some of these are very tiny and hard to get a decent shot of. I had to go back 2 or 3 times for some of them because I wasn’t happy with what I had.
I was lucky with the forked blue curls because there was a large brownish boulder beside them that I was able to use for a nuetral background. That doesn’t happen often!
I love the skullcap photo! I have some growing near my pond and the flowers are sooo tiny! It’s hard to get a good picture of them. So many beautiful finds! Is bindweed in the same family as morning glory?
Thanks Laura. I’ts interesting that your skullcaps are small too. Most of those I’ve seen are much bigger than these. These were very hard to get a photo of!
Hedge bindweeds are in the morning glory family but one difference is they are perennials while true morning glories are annuals.