Our aquatic plants have started blooming here in the southwestern part of New Hampshire and queen among them, at least in my opinion, is the fragrant white waterlily (Nymphaea odorata.) I happened to be with someone recently who crawled out on a fallen tree to smell one of these beauties. When I told him that people said they smelled like honeydew melons he agreed. Sort of-it was a hard fragrance to describe, he said, but a pleasant one. I’m happy just seeing them; I like the golden fire that burns in their center.
Pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata) is another aquatic that has small purple, tubular flowers on spikey flower heads that produce a fruit with a single seed. Ducks and muskrats love the seeds and deer, geese and muskrats eat the leaves. If you see pickerel weed you can almost always expect the water it grows in to be relatively shallow and placid, though I’ve heard that plants occasionally grow in water that’s 6 feet deep. It’s a plant that often forms large colonies.
A small sampling of what was a very large colony of pickerel weed. Native Americans washed and boiled the young leaves and shoots and used them as pot herbs. They also ground the seeds into grain. The plant gets its name from the pickerel fish, which is thought to hide among its underwater stems.
One of my favorite aquatics is American burr reed (Sparganium americanum,) more for its quirky appearance than for any other reason. Its round, spiky female flowers grow at the bottom of the stem and the male flowers with yellow stamens above them. Burr reed usually grows right at the edge of ponds and rivers in waterlogged soil but it will sometimes grow in still water. Ducks and other waterfowl love the seeds.
Purple loosestrife is an invasive 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.
Purple loosestrife chokes out native plants and forms monocultures. These colonies can be so large that finding a single plant like the one pictured above is becoming very difficult. I read of an experiment going on in Dublin, a town east of here, in which the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture is releasing European beetles to feed on purple loosestrife. The thought is that the beetles will control the plant but my question is, suppose they do control the plant and suppose one day there isn’t any more purple loosestrife. What will the beetles feed on then, native plants? Will we be any better off? I think we need to be very careful what we wish for.
Though it is much hated you can’t deny the beauty of purple loosestrife. I’ve worked for nurseries and have had people come in wanting to buy “that beautiful purple flower that grows in wet areas.”
Mad dog skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) gets its common name from the way that the calyx at the base of the flowers look a bit like a medieval helmet, called a skull cap, and how the plant was once thought to cure rabies because of its anti-spasmodic properties. Another skullcap, marsh skullcap (Scutellaria galericulata,) looks very similar and the two are difficult to tell apart. Both grow in full sun on grassy hummocks at the water’s edge.
There is powerful medicine in both mad dog or marsh skullcap and when Native Americans wanted to go on a spirit walk or vision quest this was one of the plants they chose. The small blue and white flowers always grow in pairs in the leaf axils. Those of mad dog skullcap are slightly smaller.
Meadowsweet (Spiraea Ulmaria) is another plant that I look for at the water’s edge, though it doesn’t usually grow close enough to get its feet wet. It grows in the form of a small shrub and is in the spirea family, which its flowers clearly show with their many fuzzy stamens. The flowers are fragrant and have a sort of almond-like scent. This plant was one of three considered most sacred by the Druids and has been used medicinally for many thousands of years. Here in America it is an introduced invasive, but little is heard about it and nobody seems to mind.
NOTE: The scientific name I meant to use for this plants is Spirea alba.
I find soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) growing along river banks. The plant gets its common name from the way the chopped and boiled leaves produce a soapy lather that is particularly good at removing grease. This plant is a native of Europe and is thought to have been brought over by colonists to be used as a soap substitute. It is said to be especially useful for waterproofing wool, and museum conservators use it for cleaning delicate fabrics that can be harmed by modern soaps.
Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum) is just coming into bloom and I like its dusty rose pink color with the beautiful blue of vervain. I found them on the rocky banks of the Ashuelot River.
Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) isn’t covered with sharp spines like the larger bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) that most of us have tangled with. Though it does have spines along the leaf margins and stem, they are quite small. Despite its common name the plant is actually a native of Europe but has spread to virtually every country in the northern hemisphere. It has a deep and extensive creeping root system and is nearly impossible to eradicate once it gains a foothold. For that reason it is considered a noxious weed in many states.
Along with lilacs and peonies, the common orange daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) is a plant you’ll find growing near old stone cellar holes out in the middle of nowhere and along old New England roads. It is also found in cemeteries often planted beside the oldest graves. It is one of those plants that were passed from neighbor to neighbor and spread quickly because of it. It is also very tough; my brother used to mow his when they finished blooming and they still came back and bloomed year after year. It is both loved for being so easy to grow and hated for being so common.
This plant was introduced into the United States from Asia in the late 1800s as an ornamental and plant breeders have now registered over 40,000 cultivars, all of which have “ditch lily” genes and all of which have the potential to spread just like the original has. If you find yourself doing battle with a particularly weedy daylily, no matter the color, there’s a very good chance that the common orange is one of its parents.
Phlox whispered that fall is on the way but I didn’t want to hear it. It seems like just yesterday that I was taking photos of spring beauties.
Herb Robert is a geranium that has never appeared on this blog because I’ve never found it in the wild until just recently on the banks of the Ashuelot River in Surry, which is north of Keene. My question, once I had identified it, was: Robert who? As it turns out Robert was a French monk who lived in 1000 AD and cured many people’s diseases using this plant, and that leads to another common name: Saint Robert’s Herb. If you crush its leaves they are said to smell like burning tires, so yet another common name is stinky Bob.
A very curious fact about this plant is how many people, scientists included, have discovered that it grows most abundantly in areas that have high levels of radiation. It is thought to absorb the radiation from the soil, break it down and disperse it. If I had a Geiger counter I’d go back and check the bedrock outcrop that I found it growing on.
Friends let their radishes go to seed this year and among the rows of plain white flowers was a beautiful pink one. Since Henry David Thoreau instilled a spirit of nonconformity in me when I read his words as a boy, I was happy to see this plant breaking ranks and doing its own thing. Many of the plants found in nurseries are those that have done the same.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau
Thanks for stopping in.
The loosestrife is common here but not so much that I see a great deal of it. How strange it has become so invasive there?
There’s nothing here to stop it. We also have a lot of swampy ground that it seems to like, so it just takes it over and grows like crazy.
You find the most interesting things. Are phlox blooming earlier this year? Seems to me they used to bloom closer to the end of July (I would tell my early August born daughter they were her birthday flower so she wouldn’t pick them before they had a chance to blossom). Great quote….goes for listening and hearing too.
Thank you Jocelyn,
My own phlox have just started blooming so I’d say they are a mid to end of July flower. I have three different varieties that all bloom at different times and the one that just started is the earliest. The one in the photo was in a local park so I don’t know its name, but it was very early.
Informative as always. So nice that you were able to find so many different varieties of flowers. Blooms are not as abundant as they were in the spring.
Thank you Wendy. No, spring has the other seasons beat but summer is when the roadsides turn into flowering meadows.
Mad dog skullcap sounds like the name of some leather-clad biker! It and the marsh skull cap are very lovely to look at. I was unaware that Herb Robert is found on land with radiation. Herb Robert grows everywhere here. Perhaps I’d better find a geiger counter too?!
Mad dog skullcap is a funny name that really doesn’t apply to anything that has to do with the plant, except in someone’s imagination. As a medicine it is used as a nerve tonic / tranquilizer and because it calmed affected people down (and even put them to sleep) it was thought to “cure” those with rabies. Of course it didn’t.
There are many websites that mention the ability of herb Robert to absorb and disperse radiation but I can’t seem to find the original source. I’d like to know if it was true or not.
Many of these statements are apocryphal but it would be very interesting to find that it was true.
I agree!
Back in 1999 a local land trust partnered with the NH Dept. of Agriculture in setting up test plots for beetle use with loosestrife. This was done only after questions such as the ones you pose were addressed to the satisfaction of all. You can read some FAQs on this page: http://agriculture.nh.gov/divisions/plant-industry/faq-purple-loosestrife.htm There is also more info in http://agriculture.nh.gov/publications-forms/documents/purple-loosestrife-2003.pdf
Loosestrife is difficult to eradicate by pulling it up, tho it can work in small, young colonies. However, it can reproduce even more if roots break off and remain underground. But the beetles have been effective. In other countries, the beetles do not eradicate loosestrife, but keep it under control. There has been no evidence that the beetles spread to other plants.
A single mature loosestrife plant can release an estimated two to three million seeds per year. Given that loosestrife often grows near water, this makes it easy for new colonies to establish downstream. Removing the flower or seed heads can help. One of the common ways loosestrife is spread is through roadside construction when soil is imported from other locations. Here is more info: http://www.purpleloosestrife.org/faq/
Thank you Pat. I read the information you passed along and I remain a little apprehensive from reading that the European beetles have no known enemies here. It’s an interesting experiment that only time will show is successful or not.
Thanks again for the informative links.
While they might not have a dedicated enemy, one of the articles mentioned that spiders and other such predators (birds too, I suppose) might predate them just as they would any other bug. As you say, time will tell. Prevention would be the best cure (not planting purple loosestrife, even if unintentionally by moving dirt contaminated with seeds), but it is a vigorous enemy for native communities.
I agree with you on prevention being the best method but I don’t think we’ll ever learn. We still import many plants and plant products into this country each year.
I found Herb Robert growing in a sloping garden during our recent visit to Toronto. Canadians seem divided as to whether it is an acceptable garden flower or a noxious weed.
I’m not really sure either. It doesn’t seem that invasive.
Awesome to see your summertime flowers – the opener was stunning!
Thank you Mary. The fragrant white water lily is one of my favorite summer flowers.
Can’t decide which I love more about your posts, the glorious photos or the fascinating tips about how these plants got here and what they were used for by the Native Americans. Lovely!
Thanks Martha. I like both plants and history so you’ll usually find a lot of both here if I can squeeze it in.
Beautiful flowers for this late in the year! The star of this show was the white water lily!
With the drought that we’ve been having, there are hardly any wildflowers in bloom at the lower elevations now, and it’s been too hot to climb the trails.
Thanks Montucky! I’m sorry to hear that you’re still in a drought. We were too through May, but thankfully it started raining again in June. I hope the same happens there soon!
I do love the photos, they are absolutely magnificent. The colors, shapes, and textures are such a treat.
Thanks very much Charlie. We’re very lucky to be surrounded by such wonders!
Enjoyed! It is a shame people really don’t see what they look at.
Thanks! That’s true, a lot of them don’t. I remember meeting two college age girls coming out of a park once. I asked them if they had seen any wildflowers and they both said no. I was disappointed until I started looking around and saw flowers everywhere. They were small, but they were there. It’s sad that people miss out on such beauty.
I like to think you and I (and others) make a difference in how people look at nature.
I hope so. That’s what this blog is all about.
I like plants such as the Mad Dog which have their mouths open. I used to be fascinated by snapdrogons when I was a child.
You’ll have to get Mrs. T to plant some penstemons if she hasn’t already. Many of the plants in that family have the same type of flower and are very pretty.
I’ll check.
Where do I start? I think that it would be unwise to introduce beetles here from Europe in hopes that they’ll only feed on purple loosestrife. Who knows how the beetles will behave once they get started here. I think that Australia attempted to import predators to take care of invasive species, now they have even more invasive species, the original ones, and the predators.
I’d rather not hear that fall is coming so soon, but I can see that it is already on its way. This summers must be on a rocket sled, it’s moving so fast.
It seems odd that a plant would be attracted to radiation, but nature is full of strange wonders like that.
By the way, great post and great photos!
Thanks Jerry! I agree that introducing European beetles would be a bad idea. What if they decide they like wheat or corn when the loosestrife disappears?
I noticed today that the sarsaparilla and deer tongue grass leaves are changing already. That was my thought-where did summer go? I wouldn’t mind so much if winter went as fast!
I can’t even guess why herb Robert would be attracted to radiation. It does seem odd to me, too.
NHG, I particularly liked your description of the “golden fire that burns in [the] center” of the water lily. I never tho’t of it that way, but it’s beautifully true. Couldn’t get a better description! MCS
Thank you Mary. That’s just how it appeared to me when I was looking at the photos of the lilies. They’re beautiful things!
Lovely shots! Pickle weed is one of my favorites bringing back memories of the shallows of clear lakes in Michigan where water levels are fairly stable. Not so common here in Ohio where varying reservoir levels make it harder for it to gain a foothold.
Thanks! That’s interesting that the water levels fluctuate so much in Ohio. Also interesting how plants like pickerel weed are affected by it. That’s something I never thought of. It’s probably safe to assume that water levels are stable wherever you see it growing.
You had me with the opening shot of the water lily, Allen, and I thoroughly enjoyed the other beautiful flowers as well. I like the way that you pulled back for one of your shots of Pickerel Weed. As always, you included such fascinating tidbits about the plants. I especially liked the explanation about Mad Dog Skullcap, a name that causes me to smile every time that I see it.
Thanks Mike. It’s tough getting a shot of the blue water along with a water lily. The angle of the sun has to be just right, so I took several versions of that shot. This year the aquatics are growing like crazy too, so finding a single flower was tricky.
I should pull back more often, I keep telling myself!
Mad dog skullcap is a fascinating little plant in spite of its strange name. It was a Native American tranquilizer long before anyone even knew what one was.
I have over half of these plants growing in or near my ponds! The pickerel weed spreads so fast, every year I have to get in and thin it out or it would take over the entire pond. My fish love to hide in it. I’m not listening to the phlox either!
I’m not surprised that you have a lot of these Laura. It’s almost impossible to keep them out of ponds. I can’t imagine having to thin out the pickerel weed. That sounds like an awful lot of work!
You find such apt quotes, this one was a winner. I loved all the plants by water especially the white water lily. I wish I could have smelled your picture!
Thank you Susan. I’ve always liked that quote by Thoreau too. He certainly lived by it.
I’d like to smell a white water lily one day too. I’ve never gotten close enough to one to be able to.