Early October Flowers

Well, I’ve had a little trouble finding enough flowers still blooming to do another flower post but after a couple of weeks of hunting, here is what I’ve found. I saw a meadow full of small blue asters that I think were blue wood asters (Aster cordifolius.) I’m seeing more of these this year than I’ve ever seen even though they’re blooming quite late, even for an aster. They’re everywhere I go right now and are a joy to see in October.

They’re pretty little things.

Here are those blue wood asters blooming along the river with what I think are brown eyed Susans (Rudbeckia triloba,) which have apparently escaped a garden and are enjoying life along the river. There are hundreds of them blooming there. Their native range is from New York west to Minnesota and south to Utah and Texas. 

I was surprised to find the pale yellow flowers of wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum.) These were similar in color to those of the sulfur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta) but they can also be white or pink. This plant is considered a noxious weed because it gets into forage and grain crops. Wild radish is in the mustard family and is sometimes confused with wild mustard (Brassica kaber,) but that plant doesn’t have hairy stems like wild radish. 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.

Sweet everlasting (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium) is a plant that won’t be finished until we have a real hard freeze. 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.

It’s hard to tell when a sweet everlasting blossom is actually fully opened but the papery bracts that show when the flowers have opened to release their seeds look like small flowers. If you crush a few blossoms and smell them, they smell like maple syrup. I find it growing in sunny, sandy waste areas and on roadsides.

I was really looking forward to seeing the flowers of mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) and maybe collecting a few seeds but as it turns out, according to a New York Botanical Garden botanist, a deforming fungus is attacking mugworts, so this is all I’ll see of its “sort of” flowers. My thanks go to reader and contributor Sara Rall for help with this conundrum.

I’ve become very interested in this plant because I noticed that after I handled it I started remembering my dreams. That may not seem like a momentous event until I add how since I was a boy, I’ve rarely remembered a dream. This plant was first written about in the third century B.C. and one of the things written about it is how it can affect your dreams. In fact it can help you have very vivid dreams, and I can certainly attest to that fact.

I’m sure many who read this will scoff at a plant being able to affect our dreams, even though the aspirin they take comes from the salicylic acid first found in willow bark and the liniment they use on achy muscles has camphor as an active ingredient, and camphor comes from a tree. And don’t get me started on mushrooms and marijuana. In fact according to what I have read 11 percent of the 252 drugs considered “basic and essential” by the World Health Organization are “exclusively of flowering plant origin.” Codeine, quinine, morphine and many other drugs contain plant derivatives that have been very helpful to mankind.

Most of the phlox blossoms disappeared a while ago but not this one. I like that color.

New England asters are turning in for their winter sleep. Once pollinated they have no need for flowers and are now putting all of their energy into seed production. Most of these flowers were curling in on themselves but you could still see their beautiful color.

This one looked fairly fresh.

What I call the park asters seem to have had trouble getting going this year and are quite late. These plants get about a foot and a half tall but are large and mounded and once they get going are covered with blossoms. They’re very pretty.

In the same park are these dark asters. These plants are upright, about 3 feet tall, and have an entirely different growth habit than the lighter colored ones we just saw. If I were planting a garden of asters this one would be in the back and the lighter colored ones in the front.

Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) is having a re-bloom, as it often does. The flowers are much smaller and not as robust as they are in the first bloom, but they’re still pretty. 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. This plant is also called wild carrot and if you dig up its root and crush it, you’ll find that it smells exactly like a carrot. It should never be eaten unless you are absolutely certain of the plant’s identity however, because it closely resembles some of the most toxic plants known.

Pee Gee hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata) blossoms are turning into their fall pink and when that is done they will go to brown. Eventually each flower petal will start to disintegrate and for a short time will look like stained glass. If cut at the pink stage however, the color will hold for quite a long time. These huge blossom heads dry well and make excellent dried flower arrangements.

I was hoping to find the rarer orange hawkweed but all I’ve seen is this single yellow one (Hieracium caespitosum.) The buds, stem, and leaves of the plant are all very hairy and the rosette of oval, overlapping leaves at the base of the stem often turn deep purple in winter. The Ancient Greeks believed that hawks drank the sap of this plant to keep their eyesight sharp and so they named it hierax, which means hawk. 

An obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) surprised me by blooming this late. Obedient plants get their common name from the way the stems stay where they are if they are bent; they are “obedient.” I like the flowers, but don’t like having to weed the plants out of just about everywhere. Though it is native to central and southern U.S.  it’s a very aggressive plant.

I’m still seeing a few yellow sorrel flowers (Oxalis stricta) and I expect that they’ll probably go for a little while longer. Our first frost usually appears during the third week of September on average, but this year we had freezes overnight 3 nights in a row. It is usually in October that we get freezes, and that finishes the growing season. That means all of the flowers you see here are survivors; the toughest of the lot.

Daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus) has a very long blooming period. I see them in early June blooming profusely and then sporadically through the following months. I’ve noticed that when it gets cold the small, normally white daisy fleabane blossoms take on a hint of purple. I’ve seen other white flowers do the same, so it isn’t unusual.  Many white chrysanthemums for example will turn purple when it gets cold. Fleabanes get their name from the way the dried plants repel fleas.

Purple stemmed beggar’s ticks (Bidens connata) have gone to red; all red, even their leaves. There are nearly 200 species in the genus and many of them look nearly identical. In this part of the state this plant grows side by side with the nodding burr marigold (Bidens Cernua,) which is also called smooth beggar’s ticks. The plant gets its common name from the way its barbed seeds cling to clothing. Books say that it reaches 3 1/2 feet tall but I’ve seen some get close to six feet but they often have a often sprawling habit. I’ve also seen these plants growing in water at the edge of ponds.

Many years ago I gardened for an English lady who introduced me to the Marguerite daisy (Argyranthemum frutescens.) Never had I met a plant that once planted needed less care than this pretty thing. She’d buy them each spring and after a killing freeze they’d end up in the compost  pile, which she always had me work very diligently throughout the year. She needed compost for her vegetables of course but also for her daisies, which like a good, well-drained soil high in organic matter. This lady was the person who taught me the concept of “building” the soil and the real value of compost, so I owe her a debt of gratitude. What I learned from her I was able to take to all the other gardens I worked in, and that made for better gardens all over town and made me a better gardener.

Since I’ve seen snow falling on Montauk daisies (Nipponanthemum nipponicum) I wasn’t surprised to find a large plant blooming like it was June. This daisy is a Japanese creation also called the Nippon daisy, and it looks like a Shasta daisy on steroids. It would be an excellent addition to a fall garden.

I saw these flowers in a local park. I have no idea what their name is but they remind me of sunny side up eggs. Cheery little things they were.

The hood shaped upper petal of a monkshood (Aconitum) flower helps to easily identify it. Aconite, which monkshood is, is one of the most poisonous plants known. In fact, some species of aconite are so poisonous that their aconitine toxin can easily be absorbed through the skin while picking their leaves. In 2015 an experienced gardener in the U.K. died of multiple organ failure after weeding and hoeing near aconite plants, so I try to leave it alone. Aconite is also called wolf’s bane, leopard’s bane, Friar’s cap, and Queen of poisons. If you were found growing monkshood (Aconitum napellus) in ancient Rome there was a good chance that you’d be put to death, because the extremely toxic plant was added to the water of one’s enemies to eliminate them. 

Monkshood can take a lot of cold and its pretty, unusual blooms appear quite late in the season. Though it blooms in the cold there are insects still flying about, and if they crawl into the hood they’ll find the plant’s treasure. It’s one of the very latest flowers to bloom in this area.

What a desolate place would be a world without a flower!  It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of the heaven? ~ A.J. Balfour    

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The Last of the Flowers for 2019?

Though I’ve done it for over 60 years it’s still hard to say goodbye to the flowers in the fall. More and more of them seem to be lasting well into October these days though, so the time without them grows shorter. I was very surprised to see this nice stand of goldenrod in mid-month.

Asters too, still bloomed here and there, usually under trees where they are protected from frost. Though most are gone now many made it well toward the end of the month.

I found this New England aster blooming near a stream. It had been cut down sometime during the summer and that made it bushier, with even more flowers.

There’s that little aster, down in the left hand corner, along with goldenrod and yarrow.

Garden asters also bloomed throughout the month. There were light ones…

…and dark ones. I like the darker ones myself.

When I first saw this plant blooming while snow was falling a few years ago I thought it was a Shasta daisy on steroids, but it turned out to be the Montauk daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum) which is a Japanese creation also called the Nippon daisy. It is extremely hardy; I’ve seen it bloom after a 28 degree F. night and it is also a very late bloomer. It would be an excellent choice for a fall garden.

Flies certainly love this daisy.

This ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) was a real surprise. It should have gone to be weeks ago. This much loved flower was originally introduced from Europe as an ornamental in the 1800s. It quickly escaped cultivation and has now spread to each of the lower 48 states and most of Canada. Since cattle won’t eat it, it can spread at will through pastures and that means that it is not well loved by ranchers. A vigorous daisy can produce 26,000 seeds per plant and tests have shown that 82% of the buried seeds remained viable after six years underground.

Black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia) closed up shop early this year and most were missing even during the first week of October, but these garden varieties still bloomed.

I went to a spot I know of where hundreds of knapweed plants grow and I saw only about 4 flowers, so I think it’s safe to say that they’re done for this year. I think this is Brown knapweed (Centaurea jacea.) I’ve always thought that knapweed flowers were very beautiful but unfortunately this European plant 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.

A few purple morning glories (Ipomoea purpurea) still had their amazing inner light shining from them. They make me wonder, these flowers with their own light. I wonder if all flowers have it and we just don’t see it in all but a very few. I call it the light of creation.

Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) had a good year but their time seems to be just about over now. Though another name for this plant is “wild carrot” you had better know exactly what you’re doing if you dig and eat the root because there are very similar plants like water hemlock (Cicuta maculata) that are among the most toxic plants known.

Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) has a period of bloom in June through August and then rests for a while before giving it another go.  Mankind has had a relationship with this plant since before recorded history and dried sprigs of it have been found in Neanderthal graves. The ancient Greeks used it on wounds to staunch blood flow and so did Native Americans.

Sweet everlasting (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium) never looks like a flower until it is gone by and its bracts are all that’s left. The common name comes from the way it lasts for years after being cut and dried. An unusual fact about this plant is how it smells strongly of warm maple syrup. It was and still is used in smoking mixtures by some Native people.

A lone phlox bloomed on the banks of the Ashuelot River. I think it’s probably a garden escapee.

Since I like the color blue so much it’s hard not to like vetch, even though it is invasive and is probably responsible for more than a few gray hairs on this head. Once it gets in a garden it is close to impossible to eradicate by pulling alone, and I know that because I tried many times in many gardens over the years. It’s especially annoying when it gets into shrubs. I think this example might be hairy vetch (Vicia vilosa,) which was originally imported from Europe and Asia to be used as a cover crop and for livestock forage. It’s now found in just about every meadow in New Hampshire.

The monkshood (Aconitum napellus) in a local children’s garden still bloomed. People have died from the sap being absorbed through their skin so this is a very dangerous plant indeed, and though I have touched it several times I would never cut it or pick it without good stout gloves on. Another name for it is winter aconite, so it wasn’t a surprise to see it still blooming.

What bothers me about this particular plant is where it grows. It’s not a good choice for a children’s garden I wouldn’t think. But it all the times I’ve been there I’ve never seen anyone actually working there. The plant gets its common name from the way each flower resembles the hood worn by medieval monks.

This is the first time I’ve ever gotten a photo of the inside of a monkshood blossom. I see what looks like a lot of stamens. Poison or not it’s all about the continuation of the species, just as it is with all plants.

Our native witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) starts blooming sometimes as early as mid-September, so seeing it isn’t a great surprise. It’s doing well this year and each plant is loaded with blossoms. 

Witch hazel blossoms are pollinated by owlet moths, which are active in winter and are called winter moths, but this year the moths may have help from several other insects I’ve seen still flying.

Every corny thing that’s said about living with nature – being in harmony with the earth, feeling the cycle of the seasons – happens to be true. Susan Orlean

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The Last of the Fall Foliage?

As I write this 3 straight days of November rains have finally stopped but now there’s a howling wind blowing, so I expect the landscape will look very different tomorrow, possibly with more leaves on the ground than in the trees. Will this be the last fall foliage post? It could be, but the oaks and beeches are still in full color and I even saw a few maples that were still hanging on, so maybe not.

Here’s what the maples and birches looked like one recent sunny day.

Oaks have an amazing color range but their colors don’t shout it out quite like the maples.

When you’re in the woods and a beech tree gets between you and the sun it can be amazingly beautiful. They seem to glow under their own power. Luminous is the word, I think.

Many birches and especially gray birches like those shown here are still hanging on to their leaves. Or at least they were before this wind. The weather people say there are 60 mph gusts blowing in parts of New England.

This is a good post to compare foliage colors on cloudy and sunny days. It was drizzling when I took this photo of young maples. I think the color is often more intense on cloudy days. Perhaps it’s the gray background.

But there’s a lot to be said for sunshine too, as this road leading to my workplace shows.

The colors of the oaks along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey looked a little dull on a rainy day, I thought. In fact everything is on the dull side in this photo.

We’ve had large amounts of rainfall since July; 11 inches above average in fact, and the Ashuelot River was flooding in places on this day.

No matter where you go the woods are flooded by large puddles like this one. The ground is completely saturated and the two or three inches of rain falling each week simply has nowhere to go. We need a dry week or two to dry things out but it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards. Many are also hoping for a drier winter. If all this rain was snow we’d all be doing some serious shoveling.

The invasive burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) along the river seemed to glow on a recent rainy day. Before they drop their leaves they will become a soft pastel pink to almost white. Right now they’re in their loud orange / red / yellow stage. It’s too bad they’re so invasive because they really are beautiful, but as you can see they dominate the understory and create so much shade nothing else can grow.

Here is a closer look at a burning bush. I’ve seen thousands of these shrubs along the river drop their leaves overnight when the weather is cold enough and I’m hoping that doesn’t happen this year so I can show them to you in their pastel pink stage. It really is a beautiful sight.

You can find color in unexpected places. This is the first time I’ve noticed how yellow the foliage of slender fragrant goldenrod (Solidago tenuifolia) becomes.

I pay attention to lake sedge (Carex lacustris) in the fall because I like the way it seems to flow like the waves of the pond and lake shores it grows on. It is really the wind and its own weak stems that make it bend so, but I think it makes a pretty display. Lake sedge is native to Canada and the northern U.S. and can at times be found growing in water. Waterfowl and songbirds eat its seeds.

The blue of this monkshood (Aconitum napellus) I saw growing at a local bank was a complete surprise. I went looking for this plant at a local children’s butterfly garden earlier and found that it had finally been removed. That’s a good thing, because monkshood is one of the most poisonous plants known. People have died from its sap simply being absorbed through their skin, and in ancient Rome you could be put to death if you were found growing it. That was because to the Romans the only reason you would grow such a thing was to poison your enemies.

Toxic or not monkshood has a beautiful flower. Another name for it is winter aconite because it blooms so late. If you look at the side view of a flower you can see how it resembles the hoods that medieval monks wore, and that’s how it comes by its common name. I’m not sure which insects would pollinate it this late in the season, but there must be some that do.

You might think that this was a big yellow tree but you’d be wrong because it’s actually a big green tree; a white cedar that is covered by invasive Oriental bittersweet vines (Celastrus orbiculatus.) These twining, wire like vines want all the sunshine they can get and they will climb anything to get it. Trees, telephone poles, and even houses aren’t safe from it, and it will most likely pull this tree down eventually. Not only does it block all the light from the host tree, it also wraps around the tree’s trunk and slowly strangles it.

Oriental bittersweet berries are big, plump and showy and birds love them, and that’s why man will never defeat this invader. Even its seeds germinate faster than those of our native American bittersweet.

The hillsides that surround Keene are still showing quite a bit of color thanks to the big old oaks. There could be some beech and maples here and there as well.

We’ve had a beautiful fall season this year and it might not be over yet, but even if it is there is still plenty of color to be seen. I hope you are able see beauty like this wherever you may live.

How beautiful leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. ~John Burroughs

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Mid October Flowers

I think, in the seven years that I’ve been doing this blog, that this is only the second time I’ve been able to do two full flower posts in October. Though we’ve had a couple of morning frosts it is still very warm here, and some days could even be called hot. Black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) aren’t just blooming right now; they’re thriving, and I’m seeing them everywhere.  Is there any wonder I always think of them as fall flowers?  When they appear in June it always seems to me that they’re trying to rush things along a bit, but life would be a little less cheery without them so I don’t begrudge their early arrival too much. I think they must hold the record for our longest blooming flower; almost a full 5 months this year.

This purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) looked like it had been through the wash. Its color had faded to a kind of pinky brown and its dry petals felt like paper, but the camera saw what it wanted to see and voila; a new flower was born! Now if only I could learn how to make the camera do those kinds of things when I wanted it to.

Most jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) plants are finished for the season but I found a small colony of plants blooming away under some trees at the edge of the woods. Apparently they didn’t get the message that their time was up because they looked as fresh as they do in July. There are still plenty of pollinators about too, and I’m sure they’re happy to see more flowers blooming.

Most knapweed plants (Centaurea jacea) in this colony dried up from the heat and then were mowed down, but they’ve come back with renewed vigor and several were blooming, much to the delight of all the bees and butterflies that were swarming around them. Brown knapweed is very invasive in some states but we don’t seem to have much of a problem with them here. This is an established colony that has been here for years but it doesn’t seem to get any bigger. When I need to visit with knapweed this is where I come.

Perennial bachelor’s button (Centaurea) is in the same family as knapweed, so it’s no wonder they look so much alike. I found this one growing in a local park. This plant self-seeds readily and can take over a garden corner if its seedlings aren’t pulled.

There are a few things about the Stella D’ Oro daylily (Hemerocallis) that don’t appeal to me. Though it’s supposed to be a “re-blooming daylily” after its initial flush of bloom in late spring it blooms only sporadically throughout the rest of summer. It is also very short, which isn’t a problem in a bed full of daylilies but it always seems to look out of place in the front of a bed of mixed perennials. The third thing that doesn’t appeal to me is its over use. I see it everywhere I go; banks, gas stations, malls, and anywhere else that someone wants flowers but doesn’t want to have to fuss with them. But I can easily forgive all of that at this time of year because quite often they are the only flower still blooming. It’s a tough plant; I’ll say that for it.

Native wild geraniums (Geranium maculatum) are still blooming but instead of in the woods this one bloomed in a local park. Native Americans used these plants medicinally in a tea to treat toothaches and as a nerve tonic. The seed pods have long beaks and for that reason the plant is also called crane’s bill. It has quite a long blooming period and is very hardy.

When I first saw this plant blooming while snow was falling a few years ago I thought it was a Shasta daisy on steroids, but it turned out to be the Montauk daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum) which is a Japanese creation also called the Nippon daisy. It is extremely hardy; I’ve seen it bloom after a 28 degree F. night and it is also a very late bloomer. It would be an excellent choice for a fall garden.

The bumblebees were certainly happy to see the Montauk daisies blooming. The warmth has kept the bees going but it hasn’t kept many flowers blooming so now when I see a plant in bloom it is almost always covered with bees.

Polyantha roses still bloomed in another park. This small flowered rose usually blooms from spring through fall, often covered in flowers. It is usually disease resistant but this example’s leaves were covered in black spot, which is a fungus, and were tired looking. In general they’re good low maintenance roses that are small enough to be used in just about any size garden. A good fungicide would take care of the black spot on this one, but the leaves should also be raked up in the fall and destroyed.

We do love our asters here in New Hampshire, enough to grow them in our gardens even though the meadows are full of them. This hybrid version of a dark purple New England aster grew in a local park.

I found this New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) blooming even though it was only about 3 inches tall. It was on a roadside that had been mowed earlier, but even after being cut it still bloomed. I’ve seen other plants do the same.

I had never seen an azalea blooming in October until I saw this yellow evergreen azalea doing just that. It had about a dozen flowers on it, and I wonder if it will have a dozen fewer in the spring.

The cultivated speedwell I found in a garden last summer was still blooming. This is an attractive plant, about two feet across with hundreds of the small blue flowers shown all blooming at once. I haven’t had much luck identifying it yet. I think it must be a hybrid of germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys.)

I wonder what Native Americans would have thought of seeing wild strawberry blossoms (Fragaria virginiana) in October. I think they would have been happy to see them, though probably a bit confused. Strawberries were an important food and were eaten raw or mixed with cornmeal and baked into strawberry bread. They were also dried and preserved for winter, often added to pemmican and soups. Natives also made a tea from the mashed berries, water and sassafras tea.  It was called Moon tea in honor of the strawberry moon in June. A tea made from strawberry leaves was used to clean teeth and stimulate the appetite.

A spaghetti squash grew in the compost pile where I work.  It’s late for squash plants to be blossoming but stranger than that is how nobody can remember a spaghetti squash ever having been cooked or eaten there. How the seeds got into the compost pile is a mystery. We picked one good squash but the one in the photo looks like it has slug or some other kind of damage, so it’ll probably stay in the compost pile.

This bumblebee’s pollen bags were full of yellow pollen but I don’t know if it came from this globe thistle flower head (Echinops) or not. It was working the long tubular blossoms over furiously. Even though globe thistle is originally from Europe and Asia our native bees love it. It should be done blooming by now but this plant had this blossom and three more buds on it.

If you were found growing monkshood (Aconitum napellus) in ancient Rome there was a good chance that you’d be put to death, because the extremely toxic plant was added to the water of one’s enemies to eliminate them. It was used on spear and arrow tips in wars and in hunting parties. It is also called winter aconite and is so poisonous its aconitine toxins can be absorbed through the skin of some people. I’ve touched it many times with no ill effects but I wouldn’t pick it or rub the sap on my skin. People who have mistaken its roots for horseradish have died within 4-6 hours after eating them. Knowing all of this I shudder each time I see this plant, because it grows in a local children’s butterfly garden.

When the blossoms are seen from the side it’s easy to see why this plant is called monkshood. It is also called friar’s cap, leopard’s bane, wolf’s bane, devil’s helmet, and queen of poisons. In 2015 an experienced gardener in the U.K. died of multiple organ failure after weeding and hoeing near aconite plants.

Though I’ve seen dandelions blooming in January witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is considered our last flower of the season and they’ve just started blooming. The flowers are pollinated by owlet moths, which are active in winter and are called winter moths. The moths raise their body temperature by shivering, and can raise it by as much as 50 degrees F. This allows them to fly and search for food when it’s cold.

 

There’s nothing more cheering on a cold fall day than coming upon a thicket of witch hazel in bloom. They might not look very showy but their fragrance makes up for that lack. Tea made from witch hazel tightens muscles and stops bleeding, and it was used for that purpose by Native Americans. You can still buy witch hazel lotion. My father always had a bottle of it and used it on his hands.

Chances are there will be flowers popping up here and there in future posts, but this will most likely be the last post devoted entirely to flowers this year. Now, though it is supposed to be sunny and 70 degrees today, we wait for spring.

Beauty is something that changes your life, not something you understand. ~Marty Rubin

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Things I’ve Seen

Do mushrooms wait until it rains before they fruit? This purple cort (Cortinarius iodeoides) would have me answer yes to that question because it’s the latest I’ve ever seen them. I usually find them in August. Mushrooms are the fruiting body of mycelium, which is found underground. The mycelium could be compared to a tree and the mushroom its fruit. The fruit is what we see growing above ground, but this fruit has spores instead of seeds. Rain helps mushrooms spread their spores., so it would make sense for them to wait for rain to fruit. We had a good day of rain recently and finally, here are the mushrooms. Purple corts often have a slimy cap and are toxic enough to make you sick. Slugs are the only critters that I’ve seen eat them.

Velvet foot (Flammulina velutipes) mushrooms are considered a “winter mushroom” and they can usually be found from October through early spring. Though many say that they grow on logs I always find them growing in clusters on standing trees, particularly on American elm (Ulmus americana) as they were in this photo. They are very cold hardy and I sometimes find them dusted with snow. This group had just appeared and was very small; no more than an inch and a half high.

On another nearby elm tree this grouping, probably about six inches from top to bottom, grew. The orange caps of these mushrooms often shade to brown in the center and are very slimy and sticky. The stem is covered in fine downy hairs that darken toward the bottom and that’s where their common name comes from. When the temperature drops below freezing on a winter day it’s a real pleasure to see them.

Still another grouping of velvet foot mushrooms grew on another nearby elm, and these had reached full size, with caps maybe 3 inches across. Though the caps are slimy it was raining on this day so they were also wet. They aren’t usually this shiny. I’ve never been able to find an answer to the question of why some mushrooms wait until cold weather to fruit. Another one that is commonly seen when it gets cold is the fall oyster mushroom (Panellus serotinus.)

Turkey tails (Trametes versicolor) have been all but invisible this year but I did find the brown ones pictured here recently. I was hoping for another year like last year when they grew in beautiful shades of blue, purple, and orange but I suppose the drought has affected them. This bracket fungus gets its common name from the way it resembles a turkey’s tail, and according to the American Cancer Society there is some scientific evidence that substances derived from turkey tail fungi may be useful against cancer.

Bear’s head, also called lion’s mane mushroom (Hericlum americanum) is a beautiful toothed fungus that looks like a fungal waterfall. Soft spines hang from branches that reach out from a thick central stalk. As it ages it will change from white to cream to brown, and the brown tips on this example means it has aged some. This one was small; about the same size as a hen’s egg, but I’ve seen them as big as a grapefruit. They seem to fruit toward the end of summer but this year they’re later than in recent years.

I keep my eye out at this time of year for what look like small, pea size white or pink puffballs. They aren’t puffballs though, so if you squeeze them you’ll be in for a surprise.

The “puffballs” are actually a slime mold called wolf’s milk slime mold (Lycogala epidendrum) and if you squeeze them when they’re young instead of the smoke like spores you would expect from a puffball, you often get pink or orange liquid. Though books say that the consistency is that of toothpaste I almost always find liquid like that seen in the photo. As it ages the liquid will become like toothpaste before finally turning into a mass of brown powdery spores. By that time the outside will have also turned brown and at that stage of its life this slime mold could probably be confused with a small puffball. I think these examples were very young.

Something you don’t hear much about until you have a drought is how the dryness weakens the trees enough to make them topple over. Dryness can cause the root system to shrink and makes it hard for the roots to hold onto the dry soil. Without a good strong root system trees can become almost top heavy. Sometimes all it takes is a gust of wind to bring down a big tree like the one in the above photo, so you have to watch the weather before going into the woods. I just heard that, rather than a single summer of drought, this current one has been ongoing for about 4 years. Though that may be true this was the first year that it was so obviously dry in this corner of the state.

Falling trees or not I’ll be going into the woods because that’s where you find things like this beautiful maple leaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium.) The leaves on this native shrub have an amazing color range, from purple to orange to pink, but they always end up almost white, with just a faint hint of pastel pink.

There are many berries ripening right now and the birds are happy. Unfortunately they love the berries of invasive Oriental bittersweet and help it in its quest to rule the world. This vine is very strong like wire and as it twines its way around tree trunks it strangles them. Once it reaches the tree canopy it grows thickly and covers it, stealing all the light from the tree. It’s common to see a completely dead tree still supporting a tangle of bittersweet, and sometimes the vine is the only thing holding it up.

Another invasive that’s fruiting right now is burning bush (Euonymus alatus.) It’s a beautiful shrub in the fall but Its sale and importation is banned here in New Hampshire now because of the way it can take over whole swaths of forest floor. Birds love the berries and spread the seeds everywhere, so it isn’t uncommon to find a stand of them growing in the woods. I know a place where hundreds of them grow and though they are beautiful at this time of year not another shrub grows near them. This is because they produce such dense shade it’s hard for anything else to get started.

Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) is described as “a dominant understory perennial flowering plant” and dominate it is, often covering huge swaths of shaded forest floor. It forms monocultures in forests and also invades woodland gardens, where it is almost impossible to eradicate. Its tiny white four petaled flowers become red berries that are loved by many birds and small animals. It’s a native plant that acts like an invasive.

The native cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) have ripened and normally you’d get your feet wet harvesting them, but this year they were high and dry because of the drought. The pilgrims named this fruit “crane berry” because they thought the flowers looked like sandhill cranes. They were taught how to use the berries by Native Americans, who used them as a food, as a medicine, and as a dye. Bears, deer, mice, grouse and many other birds eat the fruit.

Each year for as long as I can remember hundreds of Canada geese have stopped over on their way south in the fall to glean what they can from the cornfields. The harvester must spill quite a bit to feed such large flocks of geese.

Early settlers noticed this fern’s sensitivity to frost and named it sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis.) This fern loves low, damp places so when you see it it’s a fair bet that the soil stays on the wet side. I don’t know if they eat it or use it for bedding, but beavers harvest this fern and I’ve seen them swimming with large bundles of it in their mouth.

A Forsythia couldn’t seem to make up its mind what color it wanted to be.

Another odd thing about this drought is how trees like oak are loaded with acorns and shrubs like witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) have more flowers than I’ve ever seen. They’re very beautiful this year, and fragrant too.

Witch hazels might be late bloomers but so is aconite, commonly called monkshood (Aconitum napellus.) It’s a beautiful flower which, if you look at it from the side, looks just like a monk’s hood.  This plant can take a lot of cold and its blooms appear quite late in the season. Though beautiful the plant is extremely toxic; enough to have been used on spear and arrow tips in ancient times. In ancient Rome anyone found growing the plant could be put to death because aconite was often used to eliminate one’s enemies. It is also called wolfbane, because it once used to kill wolves.

Beauty is something that changes your life, not something you understand. ~Marty Rubin

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Mid October Flowers

The weather people said we were in for a growing season ending killing freeze last Saturday night so I went looking for late bloomers before it happened. I’ve seen dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) blooming in January so I wasn’t real surprised to see one in October, but over the last two years these flowers have been very scarce. I saw 5 or 6 on this day though so I wonder if the very hot temperatures we’ve had in summer lately have something to do with their scarcity, as some of you suggested the last time I mentioned not seeing any.

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.  Its leaves look like smaller and narrower versions of dandelion leaves. The plant is also called cat’s ear, possibly because of the bracts along its stem that look like tiny cat’s ears.

Spotted knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) is terribly invasive and hated by pasture owners but its flowers are beautiful. This plant is native to Europe and Asia and was accidentally imported in a hay seed shipment in the late 1800s. One reason it is so strongly disliked is because it releases a toxin that can hinder and prevent the growth of neighboring species. It grows in all but 5 states. Though mowed down earlier by highway crews these plants bounced right back and are again covered with flowers.

It must have gotten too cold for this bumblebee because it died as it lived, hugging a flower.

Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) sometimes has a second blooming period like yarrow does. 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.

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 pink in the fall. When they’re cut and dried they’ll hold their color for quite a long time.

Goldenrods (Solidago) still bloom but now the flower heads are smaller and they’re spottily seen here and there rather than everywhere like they were a month ago. According to English apothecary and botanist John Gerard in 1633 goldenrod was “strange and rare” in England and “the dry herbe which came from beyond the sea sold in Buckler’s Bury in London for halfe a crowne for an hundred weight.” It was highly regarded of as a cure for bleeding ulcers and for healing bleeding wounds. The plant must also have been very valuable to early colonials but seeds must have found their way to England because it was eventually found growing wild there and the bottom fell out of the imported goldenrod business.

Slender fragrant goldenrod (Solidago tenuifolia) is one of the easiest to identify because of its scent, which is said to resemble anise and sassafras. Since I’ve never smelled anise and sassafras I can’t confirm this, but its fragrance is pleasant so I always bend to give it a sniff when I see it. This plant closely resembles lance leaved goldenrod (Solidago graminifolia) but its leaves are narrower and have a single vein in each leaf. Lance leaved goldenrod leaves have 3-5 veins.

Red clover (Trifolium pretense) is very cold hardy and make up some of the latest blooming flowers we see here. I’m never disappointed when I stop to take a closer look at these beautiful little flowers. Though it isn’t a native plant Vermonters loved it enough to make it their state flower. It’s easy to see why; some flowers seem to glow with their own inner light and this is one of them.

Asters of every kind bloom here and after seeing so many you can find yourself thinking if I’ve seen one I’ve seen them all, but this one stopped me in my tracks because of the central blue / purple disc flowers. The center disc flowers of an aster are (almost) always yellow or brown and I can’t remember ever seeing any that were this color. The flowers were quite small; no more than 1/2 inch across with ray flowers that had an odd curving habit. If you know this aster’s identity I’d like to hear from you. I’ve looked in books and online and haven’t found anything like it.

Since it blooms in early June seeing gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa) blooming this late in the year was a surprise.  An unusual thing about this shrub is its white berries. White usually signals that the fruit is poisonous, like those of poison ivy, poison sumac, or white baneberry, but though I’ve read that gray dogwood berries aren’t edible I haven’t read anything saying they’re poisonous. Birds certainly love them and gray dogwoods make an excellent choice for those trying to attract them. Though the flowers in this photo look a little sad an 8 foot tall gray dogwood covered with white blossoms in June is a sight not easily forgotten.

Black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) flowers in October were as much of a surprise as dogwood flowers. Though it seemed to have only three petals instead of five the flower in the upper right had plenty of anthers. This plant prefers disturbed ground and I see it everywhere. One way to identify it is by looking at the undersides of the leaves, which are whitish and tomentose, which means kind of matted with flattened hairs. Raspberry and blackberry leaves have green undersides.

Those are snowflakes and ice pellets on that sedum. Only the toughest plants will bloom from now on.

David Marsden of The Anxious Gardener blog wrote a great post on aconite (Aconitum napellus) recently. He highlighted the plant’s toxicity in an informative and fun to read post and reminded me of a large group of aconite plants that I found growing in a children’s park once. I decided to go back and see if they were still there and as the above photo shows, they were. The plant can take a lot of cold and its blooms appear quite late in the season. Though beautiful the plant is extremely toxic; enough to have been used on spear and arrow tips in ancient times. In ancient Rome anyone found growing the plant could be put to death because aconite was often used to eliminate one’s enemies.

A side view of the blossom shows why aconite is also called monkshood. It’s a beautiful thing but I question the wisdom of growing it in a children’s garden.

I saw this daisy like flower blooming in a local park when snow was falling. It looked like a Shasta daisy on steroids, growing two feet tall with tough leathery leaves that looked much like Shasta daisy leaves. After a little research I think it might be a Montauk daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum,) also called Nippon daisy, which tells me that it must be from Japan. It was blooming beautifully after a 28 °F night, so it’s certainly cold hardy. Those are ice pellets on its petals. If only it was a Shasta daisy just come into flower in June.

May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life. ~Apache Blessing

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From The Garden

Flowers, both wild and cultivated, are everywhere you look right now. Since I’ve never met a flower that I didn’t like, I like to occasionally show a few garden flowers on this blog along with the wildflowers and other bits of nature. After all, all flowers were once wild. I found this strange dwarf sunflower (Helianthus) plant in a local park. The thing that made it so strange, I thought, were the large flowers on such a small plant. They had to have been the size of a small dinner plate and looked odd on a plant only 18 inches tall. But that’s just my opinion and in any case, they were very beautiful flowers. A longtime garden favorite of mine is the painted daisy (Chrysanthemum coccineum.) This plant is in the Chrysanthemum family and is also called pyrethrum.  Gardeners may recognize the word pyrethrum from the natural insect sprays that are made from this plant. Pyrethrum has been used as an insecticide for centuries and is still used today by people not wanting to use chemical pesticides. One of these grew in my garden for many years but I think the recent unusually warm winter was too much for it since it never came up this spring.  The plant pictured grows at a local school. The hood shaped upper petal of a monkshood (Aconitum) flower helps to easily identify it. I found this one growing in a local children’s park, which is disturbing since Aconite, which monkshood is, is one of the most poisonous plants known.  In fact, some species of aconite are so poisonous that their aconitine toxin can easily be absorbed through the skin while picking their leaves. Aconite is also called wolf’s bane, leopard’s bane, and Friar’s cap. People who have mistaken its roots for horseradish have died 4-6 hours after eating them. This plant has been known medicinally for centuries and has long been used to poison arrows and spears.  Children should always be warned about its dangers. Spirea (Spiraea ) is a very common shrub often seen planted in store and bank parking lots because it needs very little care. The old fashioned white varieties were called bridal wreath but now many hybrids exist and usually have white to pink flowers. However, some I’ve seen look almost neon blue, so plant breeders are still working on it. The plant pictured was a very low growing dwarf that was absolutely covered with mounds of pink flowers. I found it growing in a store parking lot. This plant fools a lot of people because the leaves look a lot like sumac leaves. Then the flower buds appear and it’s clear that it isn’t sumac, but what is it?  Its name is false spirea (Sorbaria sorbifolia.) If you look at the spirea plant in the previous photo you’ll see small round, pink flower buds. The false spirea has small, round, white flower buds and when they open like in the photo below the flowers look almost like those of spirea. The beautiful plumes of false spirea (Sorbaria sorbifolia) flowers cover this small shrub that looks much like stag horn sumac. Its round white buds and long stamens on the flowers point to it being something very different than sumac though. Common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea ) blooms in my yard wherever it happens to grow because it self-sows so easily. Since I no longer have small children I don’t have to worry, but this is another plant that children should be warned away from. The heart medicine digitalis was originally made from plants in this family. All parts of the plant are poisonous and people who have mistaken the leaves for those of comfrey have died. One half of a gram of dried seed is deadly. Other names for foxglove are witches’ gloves, dead men’s bells, thimbles, fairy cap, fairy glove, fairy thimbles, fairy finger, fairy bells, dog’s-finger, finger flower, lady’s-glove, lady’s-finger, lady ‘s-thimble, popdock, flapdock, flopdock, lion’s-mouth, rabbit’s-flower, cottagers, throatwort, Scotch mercury, bloody fingers, and virgin’s glove. The plant is originally from Europe and has been used medicinally for centuries. In old England picking foxgloves was unlucky, and its blooms were absolutely forbidden inside because it was believed that they gave witches and / or Beelzebub access to the house. This blossom is probably seen coast to coast, because it is the very popular Stella d’ Oro daylily (Hemerocallis.) The reason this plant is so popular is because it was one of the first “ever blooming” day lilies. The dwarf plant has flowers that only last a day like any daylily but there are so many of them that it blooms for months and will often be the latest blooming daylily in a flower bed. This plant was developed in 1975 and is still seen all along city streets and in commercial parking lots. This one grows at a local bank. Also growing at the same bank as the Stella d’ Oro daylily were large beds of ornamental flowering onion (Allium.) Alliums are useful bulbs that are a bridge between spring and summer flowering bulbs. The globular heads of star shaped flowers come in pink, white, blue, purple, and rarely yellow. These plants aren’t common but they should be used more than they are because they will bloom for a month or more. The flat topped flowers and feathery leaves of the common white roadside yarrow (achillea) are repeated in garden yarrow. The major difference is color and size of bloom; garden yarrow can be pink, yellow, white, red, and even apricot and the flowers are generally much larger than common yarrow. Yarrow is a native plant that is useful in sunny, dry spots in the garden. Its flower heads retain their color well when dried.Astilbe (Astilbe ) (pronounced ah-still-bee) is a perennial that doesn’t need fussing over. I planted several in my yard years ago and have hardly touched them since. I like the unusual feathery flower heads. I grow white, pink and red varieties, which is the extent of their color range. They are excellent for semi shade areas and look good planted alongside ferns and hostas. These flowers also dry well and will hold their color for months.Since Indigo is the color of a blue dye it seems strange to name a plant Yellow false indigo, but here it is. False indigo (Baptisa) is a shrub-like perennial with blue, purple, and even yellow flowers that resemble pea blossoms.  This is a very tough, 3-4 foot tall plant that can stand a lot of dryness. As the photo shows, bumble bees love it.  I found this example in a local park. This Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum maximum) that I grow had tiny little flies all over it the day that I took this picture. I don’t know what they were and I’ve never noticed them on the plant before. The Shasta daisy was developed by plant breeder Luther Burbank over 100 years ago and was named for the white snow of Mount Shasta. These plants are a hybrid cross of the common roadside ox-eye daisy and an English field daisy called Leucanthemum maximum. They are one of the easiest perennials to grow and, other than weeding, need virtually no care. Dwarf varieties are less apt to have their stems bent over by heavy rains.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty, if only we have the eyes to see them. ~John Ruskin

I hope you enjoyed a small glimpse of what New Hampshire flower gardens have to offer. Thanks for stopping in.

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