More Early September Flowers

Our biggest and showiest aster, the New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae,) has just started blooming this week and I’m seeing lots of my favorite one, which is of the deepest purple. They come in much paler shades of purple and the paler ones are easier to find, but I always search for the dark ones.

They’re a very beautiful flower and as asters go they’re the easiest to identify because of the big blossoms and tall plants. You can easily spot them across a field. Native Americans burned both flowers and leaves of many aster species in their sweat lodges. The smoke was said to revive the unconscious and was used to treat mental illness, nosebleeds, and headaches.

Here is a paler example.

Monarch butterflies certainly like New England asters, as do bumblebees.

A cabbage white butterfly liked this particular aster, which I haven’t been able to identify. There are over 100 species of aster and as I tried to identify this one I found one site where even botanists were throwing up their hands in defeat. I decided a long time ago that life was simply too short to try to identify all the asters, goldenrods, and small yellow flowers out there, so I just enjoy them.

The cabbage white obligingly opened its wings for me.

As I was searching for dark purple asters I found a new place where there were hundreds of slender gerardia (Agalinis tenuifolia) plants growing, and still blooming. The tiny purple flowers would be easy to miss if it weren’t for the large numbers of them on each willow leaved plant. It has the odd habit of dropping all its flowers each afternoon and opening a new crop the next morning, so you have to catch it before noon if you want to see unblemished blooms.

This nodding bur marigold plant (Bidens tripartita) grew along the river’s edge It’s a plant that likes wet feet and often grows in standing water.

This nodding bur marigold blossom was unusual with its smooth petals. They’re usually quite deeply pleated. The flowers usually look something like a miniature sunflower and are supposed to be good for honey production. The plants usually grow to about knee high, but I have seen them waist high as well. I find them  at the edges of rivers and ponds, sometimes in quite large numbers.

I often find purple stemmed beggar’s ticks (Bidens connata) growing in the wet soil at the edges of ponds and rivers too. They’re a close relative of the nodding bur marigold in the previous photos and I often find them growing side by side.

Purple stemmed beggar’s ticks have curious little yellow orange ray-less disc flowers that never seem to fully open and dark, purple-black stems. It is also called water hemp because of the leaf shape. The name beggar’s tick comes from its barbed seeds that stick to fur and clothing like ticks. It is an annual that grows new from seed each year.

This is what the purple stem of purple stemmed beggar’s ticks looks like. The name fits.

I usually find wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) in the spring or early summer, so I was surprised when I found about twenty plants all in bloom. The plants I find always have pale yellow flowers similar in color to those of the sulfur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta) but they can also be white or pink. I almost always find it growing at the edges of corn fields, not because it likes growing with corn but because it likes to grow in disturbed soil. Everyone seems to agree that this is a non-native plant but nobody seems to know exactly where it came from or how it got here.

Blue stemmed goldenrod (Solidago caesia) appears early on in summer but waits until September to bloom. Its stems grow vertically until the flowers begin to open and then they fall over into a more horizontal position, as if to show off the yellow blooms that grow in tufts all along the stem. This plant isn’t considered rare but I know of only one or two places where it grows. It is also called wreath goldenrod.

The stems of blue stemmed goldenrod get their blue color from the same natural wax coating that is found on grapes, plums, blueberries and other plants. The coating is called a bloom and plants use it as a form of protection against moisture loss. It’s made up of tiny powdery, whitish crystals which reflect and scatter light in ways that can make the surface that they cover appear very blue. I couldn’t find a stem that was blue this year because the wax crystals can be washed off by rain or melted by the sun, and we’ve had some very hot weather this summer. All of the stems were green this time, so I used this photo from 2015 to show you what the stems would normally look like.

Downy goldenrod (Solidago puberula) plants reach about a foot and a half tall on a good day, but some books say they will reach 3 feet. The narrow, stalked flower heads (panicles) grow on (usually) unbranched plants that live at the edges of forests in dry sandy soil. Though still small the bright yellow 1/4 inch flowers of downy goldenrod seem big when compared to other goldenrod flowers. 9-16 ray petals surround the central disc. Native Americans used goldenrod for treating colds and toothaches and it has been used for centuries in to treat kidney stones and urinary tract infections. In colonial times goldenrod growing naturally by the cottage door meant good fortune.

The white heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) is a plant that is so loaded with small white flowers along its stems that it doesn’t look as if you could fit one more on it. For that reason it has another common name; the many flowered aster. It is also called small white aster, smooth white aster, and old field aster. 

There are many asters that look alike and to complicate matters they cross breed and create natural hybrids. One of the features that help with the identity of the heath aster is how it has nearly every inch of free stem covered by a blossom, all of them on the sunny side of the stem. The shrubby little plants are about knee high and I find them growing in unmown fields and pastures. The blossoms are fairly small; 1/4 to 1/2 inch across at best.

Friends of mine grew this red sunflower in their garden. I think it’s the first completely red one I’ve seen.

I don’t see too many mallow plants but I saw what I think was a musk mallow (Malva moschata) growing on a roadside. Since it’s another plant that is originally from Europe it was probably a garden escapee, but you could hardly call mallows invasive. I see them once in a blue moon. They’re quite big and pretty flowers.

I think it must be time to say goodbye to pretty little forked blue curls (Trichostema dichotomum.) These little beauties get barely ankle tall and like to grow in sandy soil in full sun. I was surprised to see them blooming this late.

Lots of people see forked blue curl flowers but what they don’t see are the tiny seed pods, all decked out in their fall colors. Each seed pod has four tiny round, dimpled seeds. Since the plant is an annual it relies heavily on these seeds to germinate the following year.

Out in the open field of flowers I could feel the sun and see how every golden blossom faced the light… I knew that if I stayed there long enough, the flowers would follow the path of the sun across the sky. It seemed like they knew what they were doing, and at least for a little while, I wanted to be part of that.
~Kimberly Sabatini

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