Early September / Late August Flowers

Tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) lived up to its name near the Ashuelot River. It was a full head and shoulders taller than me. This is the time of year that goldenrods get blamed for everyone’s allergies, but pollen grains that cause hay fever symptoms are very small and dust like and carried by the wind. The pollen grains of goldenrod are very large, sticky, and comparatively heavy and can only be carried by insects. Even if you put your nose directly into a goldenrod blossom, it is doubtful that you would inhale any pollen.

Ragweed and many grasses on the other hand, are wind pollinated and release their pollen at about the same time that goldenrod blooms. These plants aren’t as showy as goldenrod however, so they escape notice. People focus their anger on what they see rather than the facts, and some refuse to accept the truth even when it’s right in front of them.

I think almost everyone knows what goldenrod looks like but not everyone has seen silverrod. Silverrod (Solidago bicolor) is in the goldenrod family and is also called white goldenrod. It is the only native white flowered goldenrod found in the northeast. Every single small flower in this photo has at least one ant on it.

I always find silverrod in dry, gravelly places at the edge of the woods at the end of August. It’s hard to get a photo of because it’s usually surrounded by other plants and rarely grows alone. It grows about knee high and isn’t seen anywhere near as often as the yellow goldenrods.

The flowers of false dandelion (Hypochaeris radicata) look much the same as those of true dandelions in a photo, but in the field they are much smaller and stand on 6-8 inch long, wiry stems. The plant is also called cat’s ear, possibly because of the bracts along its stem that look like tiny cat’s ears. I see them almost everywhere I go at this time of year. This one had a friend visiting.

Both dandelions and false dandelions have a rosette of edible leaves and a central taproot, bur the flower stems of false dandelion are solid, tall and wiry while those of true dandelions are hollow and much shorter. False dandelion leaves are also much smaller and narrower than the dandelion’s leaves. The plant is a native of Europe.

Though smooth gerardia (Agalinis purpurea) is also called false foxglove, I don’t see it. The flowers are tubular like foxglove but that’s where the similarities end. The flowers are much smaller than foxglove blossoms and point upwards instead of downwards like foxglove. I find gerardia every year on the flanks of Mount Caesar growing in hot, dry sand but these 1 inch long examples that grew along the Ashuelot River were twice as big.

I’ve never seen a foxglove blossom that looked like this. Two upper lobes, two side lobes, and a lower lobe spread from the mouth of a smooth gerardia blossom. The inside of each blossom is very hairy and has two yellow patches with dark purple spots that serve as nectar guides.

Nodding smartweed (Persicaria lapathifolia) gets its common name from its drooping flower heads and the very sharp, peppery taste of the stems, which makes the tongue smart. It doesn’t seem to bother ducks, geese, and all of the other animals that eat it, though. This is also called curly top smartweed; obviously because of the way the long flower spikes droop. It is originally from Europe.

Each nodding smartweed flower spike is made up of many pink to white, very small flowers. The flowers never seem to fully open, which can make it hard to count any of their reproductive parts, but each one has 5 sepals and no petals. There are also six stamens, two partially fused carpels and two styles.

It isn’t uncommon to see a carpet of knee high, white blooms in the woods at this time of year. White wood aster (Aster divaricatus) is known for its drought tolerance and will grow under a heavy leaf canopy. The stalked, coarsely toothed, heart shaped leaves help with identifying this plant.

The small, one inch flowers of white wood asters can have red or yellow centers. This aster is very easy to grow and makes an excellent choice for a dry shaded woodland garden. It is best used in mass plantings as the natural grouping in the previous photo shows. Many nurseries sell native plants grown from seed. Where I work they’re used as under plantings for lilacs, but the choice was theirs and the native plants moved under the lilacs completely on their own.

Pokeweed is just starting to set fruit. The name pokeweed comes from the Native American word for blood and refers to the red dye that can be made from the purple / black berries. The juice was used as a dye by the early colonists and they also used it to improve the color of cheap wine. All parts of the plant are considered toxic and should never be eaten unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) flowers are about 1/4 inch wide and have 5 petal-like, rounded sepals. In the center of the flower are green carpels that come together and will form the berry. It happens quickly and you can find both flowers and fruit in all stages of growth on a single flower head (Raceme.)

A few posts ago blogging friend Rich asked if I knew an easy way to tell a Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) from a woodland sunflower. I told him that I didn’t and in fact had put all 70 species of Helianthus into my too hard basket, because many are so much alike that only an expert can tell them apart. But as it turns out that isn’t entirely true, because the Jerusalem artichoke is different than all the others and that makes identifying relatively easy.

Jerusalem artichoke grows in large numbers where the conditions are right. This large colony and several others as large grew along the edge of a forest. The Jerusalem artichoke isn’t an artichoke and has nothing to do with Jerusalem, and nobody seems to know how it came by the name.  One theory says that the Puritans, when they came to the New World, named the native plant after the “New Jerusalem” they believed they were creating in the wilderness, but that’s just a theory.

Anyhow, it turns out that Jerusalem artichoke is the only Helianthus that has leaf stems (petioles) longer than a half inch and has wider leaves than other species. It also has a hairy stem, and those three things make it different from nearly all of the other Helianthus species.

I put this photo of a Jerusalem artichoke leaf here so we could see the difference between it and the leaves on the plant that follows.

I found this photo of a woodland sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) on Wikipedia and was surprised to see that it was taken by our old blogging friend Jomegat. I hope he doesn’t mind my using it, but I wanted to show the short leaf stems and smooth leaf edges on this plant. If you scroll up and down between this photo and the previous two the differences are easily seen.

Jerusalem artichokes were cultivated by Native Americans for thousands of years for their tuberous roots, which they cooked and ate much like we do potatoes. They are said to be starchy with a nutty flavor and they were immediately adopted by the early settlers. The tubers have fewer calories than potatoes and the plant’s carbohydrates and sugars can be assimilated by the digestive tract without insulin. This makes them an excellent choice for diabetics.

Yellow toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) is considered an invasive species but I don’t see it that often and when I do it’s in fairly small colonies of up to maybe a hundred plants.  When the plant is grown under cultivation its flowers are often used as cut flowers and are said to be long lasting in a vase. It has been used medicinally in Europe and Asia. It always reminds me of snapdragons.

Fragrant white water lilies have bloomed in huge numbers this year; more than I’ve ever seen, and they still continue to bloom. Somehow they’ve moved into a pond where I’ve never seen them before and that’s where this one was. They’re beautiful things and I wouldn’t mind if they moved into all of our ponds.

We are beings who seek the infinity of beauty over the finitude of time. ~J.M. Campos

Thanks for stopping in.