By a Pond

You might think I’m trying to flood you out with so many watery posts lately but the truth is where there is water there is life, and even when I don’t show it in a post I’m never far from it. This place, a pond in Marlborough New Hampshire, is special because it is about as close as you can get to true wilderness. It’s a place you come to listen rather that speak; a place you come to when you want to be taught by nature. It is also special because of the many unusual plants that grow here. None of them are truly rare but some are hard to find and / or get close to. That means that the things you’re about to see in this post aren’t the kinds of things you’ll find just kicking around on the side of the road.

One of the plants that is often hard to find, and especially hard to get close to, is wild calla or water arum because as its name suggests it is a true aquatic and grows in water. Here though, there are large areas of sphagnum peat moss that grow out into the pond from shore, so if you’re careful you can get close to the plants without getting too wet.

I’ve found this plant in just three places, and this is the only time I’ve been able to get this close to it. It is an arum like skunk cabbage or Jack in the pulpit but unlike those plants water arum has a spadix that is easily seen. The spadix is the club shaped part that carries the tiny white flowers seen here. Arums have a spathe as well as a spadix and in this case the spathe is the white leaf like part. The flowers will be followed by green berries that will eventually turn bright red. An odd fact about this plant is how its flowers are pollinated by water snails passing over the spadix. It is thought that small flies and midges also help with pollination, because the odor from the tiny blossoms is said to be something that a fly might like.

There was a time I would have walked across this fallen tree without hesitation but these days I know I’d better just stay on the trail so I skipped it and went around. You can see all the wild callas growing down there. They were why I wanted to find a quick way down.

As I was sliding down the hill to get to the wild callas I passed a good stand of bunchberry still in bloom. I didn’t see them at the time but I can see in the photo that many of the flowers had already formed berries, so maybe this year I’ll be able to show you the bunches of red berries that give the plant its name. This is just about the biggest colony of bunchberries I’ve seen. They seem to love the mossy hillside.

I’ve never seen so many painted trilliums growing in one spot before and I was happy about that because it’s my favorite of the three that grow in this area.

Many of the trilliums had been pollinated and were showing seed pods, which I was also happy to see. They’ll turn bright red as they ripen. As far as I know painted trilliums are the only one of the three that have a seed pod that stands up on a stem as this one does. Red trillium seed pods are sessile (sit right on) the leaves without a stem and nodding trillium seed pods hang under the leaves, just as the flowers do.

I’ve never seen so many goldthread plants growing in one place either. They’re the ones with three very shiny leaves. Their small white flowers passed about a month ago. The other plants in this shot are Indian cucumber root seedlings.

And here is an Indian cucumber root plant fully grown and flowering. I saw lots of them here as well. In fact everything here seemed to be thriving. These plants grow in two tiers of whorled leaves and the unusual flowers hang under the upper tier of leaves as can be seen here. If you don’t understand how whorled leaves work the lower tier of leaves seen here shows a perfect example of a whorl. The plant gets its name from the small white root, which has the shape and flavor of cucumber. Native Americans used Indian cucumber roots as food.

The unusual flowers of Indian cucumber root have 6 yellowish green tepals, 6 reddish stamens topped by greenish anthers, and 3 reddish purple to brown styles. These large styles are sometimes bright red- brown. Each flower will become a shiny, inedible dark purplish black berry. These plants like to grow under trees in dappled light, probably getting no more than an hour or two of direct sunlight each day.

Hobblebush isn’t normally a ground hugging shrub unless there are deer in the area. Since every plant I saw looked like this one I’d guess that there are a lot of deer (or maybe moose) here. Every plant had been pruned back so hard they looked like vines.

It looked like whatever was eating the plants was also eating the unripe green fruit. These berries will ripen to red and then purple black if they are left alone.

A dead pine rose up out of the water like the skeleton of some ancient beast. It was interesting to see how all the limbs had grown mostly on one side, which was the side that received the most sunlight. Sunlight is also heat and heat falling on the trunk stimulates cell growth. If the back side of the tree is in the shade the tree “knows” that there is no point in growing branches on that side because they won’t receive any light and will just die off. Since a tree is all about turning sunlight into food, it’s going to grow all of its photosynthesizing leaves or needles where the sunlight is. If you walk around a pond or even a clearing in the forest you’ll see a lot of one sided trees.

Some plants can tolerate more shade because they have larger leaf surfaces. More leaf surface means they can gather more light. The hobblebushes we saw earlier are like that and so are the pretty little blue bead lilies seen here. But nothing, not even mushrooms, can grow in the dark, so even plants that grow in deep woods will get an hour or two of sunlight each day. That’s why, when I see a sunbeam shining on a spot in a forest I always go to where it falls to see what plants or mushrooms are growing in its light. There were lots of blue bead lilies spotted here and there throughout these woods, and that told me if I sat there and watched long enough I’d see sunlight falling on each spot. These plants are named for their beautiful electric blue berries that will follow the flowers.

This pond has a small earthen dam that controls its outflow and in the outflow stream were many native blue flag irises. They and all of the flowers here seem to be having an extended bloom. Possibly because of the two or three cool, damp days we seem to have each week.

There must have been a hatching of chalk white corporal dragonflies just before I came, because there seemed to be hundreds of them flying around. Some would rest as this one did, on stones or plants, but not for long. I never knew how aggressive these dragonflies were until I saw them chasing off beautiful blue slaty skimmers, which I’d like to get a photo of. Things will calm down after a while and the chalk whites will start to fade away so the slaty skimmers and others can have their turn in the spotlight, and then maybe I’ll get a shot or two of them.

The big red “cinnamon sticks” that give cinnamon fern its name have appeared.

Of course, this has nothing to do with cinnamon. What someone thought looked like a cinnamon stick is actually the fern’s fertile frond, and if you click on this photo and look closely you’ll find that it’s covered with many thousands of tiny, spherical, spore bearing sporangia. You’ll also find that I was a bit late because most had already opened and released their spores to the wind. These spore cases are so small the only thing I can think of to compare them to is the head of a common pin. There aren’t many cameras that I know of that can get a photo of them, so what you see here isn’t something you’ll see very often.

I suppose I’ve always kept my eyes on the ground because for me, that’s where the most fascinating things were. Since I didn’t “do” birds when I was young there was no real point in looking up at tree branches so instead I admired their roots. Some tree roots on well-traveled trails come with a story, or more accurately a question, like how many thousands of footsteps does it take to sand one down until it looks like a craftsman has taken it to his shop and made it as beautiful as it can be, and then put it back again?

There are a few lichens also growing here. This one is either pink earth lichen or bubblegum lichen, I’m not sure which. Both have what look like tiny balls of pink dough stuck on a match stick, but on bubblegum lichen the length of the stalks that the plump pink apothecia sit on are longer than they are on pink earth lichens. Both are rarely seen in this area but when I do see them they seem to always be growing near blueberries and sweet fern, as these were. I look for the whitish crusty thallus or body of the lichen, which grows on the soil surface; usually in dry, sandy places. They seem to prefer undisturbed ground in full sun.

Being in a place like this shows you how much you can learn from nature if you let nature lead. And it will lead; before you move on from what you’ve been looking at, just look around. You’ll almost always find that, from where you stand you can see all sorts of interesting things to go and see next. There is no need for a plan. Just let nature lead you from one beautiful and / or interesting thing to the next just as a child would, and you’ll see things you hadn’t even imagined. On this day I originally went to the pond planning to spend 15 minutes or so checking to see if the sheep laurel were blooming. They weren’t in bloom that first day but the place was so peaceful and filled with interest, I ended up staying for most of the day.

When you gaze out on a quiet, peaceful meadow, next to a still pond, under a motionless blue sky, you wonder how the noisy, busy cacophony of life could have arisen from such silent, motionless beginning. ~Anonymous

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More From The Wetlands

This post is kind of a continuation of the last. I’m still spending time walking through what is really a huge wetland area, and of course I’m seeing many things which like that kind of environment. This particular visit started off quite foggy, but this photo was taken just as the fog began to break. You can still see it; gray and soft off in the distance.

These weren’t raindrops; they were condensed fog drops. It was that kind of morning.

This place is a place of water drainage and every now and then all that water drains into a low spot and becomes a pond, and they are always full of life. I’ve seen beavers, snapping turtles, great blue herons, and too many smaller birds to name here. Right now the yellow bullhead pond lilies are blooming and for the first time I’ve seen a strange thing happenig; some type of bird flies down and lands on a leaf and then hops from leaf to leaf. I think the birds that do this are red winged blackbirds but I can’t be sure yet. Whatever the birds are, they must be looking for insects.  

One of the smaller birds I met at the pond was a Kingbird, which is an amazing acrobat. It is one of the flycatcher clan. It would find a good perch and sit for a bit and then it would be off, swooping high and low and left and right before coming back to the same perch, much like a dragonfly would. That means it’s easy to anticipate where it will land and get set up for a shot of it but even so, without a tripod this was the best I could do. According to what I’ve read Kingbirds get their name from how aggressively they defend their territory, even against hawks. They are king of the hill in birdville and they have no fear of anything, humans included. Its scientific name Tyrannus tyrannus even hints at it being a bit of a tyrant, but they landed and perched near me many times as if I wasn’t even there. I watched this one catch dragonflies in mid air, which it once did so close to me I could have touched it.

Out went the wings, up came the feet and like a rocket this bird was gone so fast I didn’t even know it had left. This shot was taken purely by accident; when I clicked the shutter I think the bird was still sitting on the branch. Since plants don’t fly away I don’t need stop action camera settings so it’s just a blur. Luckily I’m not out to win any photography awards; I’m just here to show you the beauty of nature and this shot, even though blurry, shows you something not often seen. Between my old beater camera that I’ve fallen on too many times to count and my cataract dimmed eyes I’m lucky to be able to post any photos at all, so I can’t complain.

I was happy to find the oval leaves of floating pond weed floating just off shore. That meant that, though I couldn’t reach them, I could get a close look at the plant’s small, cigar shaped flower heads.

This is a better shot than I’ve ever gotten from a wave rocked kayak. I think you can just get a side glimpse of a couple of the tiny white flowers toward the top, but the rest had all gone to seed already. At least, that’s what I think this shows. If nothing else it shows the seed head, which is something you don’t see every day. Another thing you don’t see is the plant’s second set of leaves, which are grass like and stay underwater.

I was leaving the pond when this cute little thing flew past and landed on this leaf in front of me, just as you see it here. It was if it was saying “I’m ready for my photo shoot,” so here it is. Google lens says it’s a common ringlet butterfly. I looked at other examples online and it seems to be a match. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen one before; at first I thought it was a cabbage white but once I saw it on the computer I saw that there really wasn’t a lot of white on it.

For a long time I had read and heard about the wonderful scent of our beautiful fragrant white water lily but since they were always offshore just out of reach, I doubted I’d ever smell them. After all, how can you smell a flower you can’t get near? I had given up the thought of ever smelling them until one day a few years ago I walked around a pond with hundreds of them growing in it, looking for that perfect photo, when a breeze blew across the pond. Here was the delicate, fruity scent of hundreds of these beautiful flowers, as light as the breeze that carried it, and it was wonderful.

George Washington loved orchard grass because, he said: “Orchard grass of all others is in my opinion the best mixture with clover; it blooms precisely at the same time, rises quick again after cutting, stands thick, yields well, and both cattle and horses are fond of it green or in hay.” I like it because of its simple beauty. It will slowly turn purple as it ripens and become even more beautiful.

Nature is always full of surprises; that’s one thing you can count on. How, I wondered, could I have spent the better part of 60+ years outside, and even walked by this very spot for at least two decades and not seen this grass? It’s all about being in the right place at the right time, and apparently I’ve just never been here when this grass was flowering. It is called June grass, and it’s beautiful. If nothing else this illustrates why it’s a good idea to walk the same places again and again. Nature is in a state of constant change so you can’t expect to walk a trail once and think you’ve seen all there is to see.

I’ve wondered for a long time if I was seeing sheep laurel or bog laurel. The keys to identification I read weren’t really clear, and to make matters worse sheep laurel is able to grow in bogs, and bog laurel can grow on dry land. But then I found clarity: sheep laurel leaves have a stem, called a petiole, which attaches them to the main stem. Also, 3 leaves usually form a whorl around them stem. Bog laurel leaves have no leaf stem; they are sessile on the main stem and two leaves grow opposite each other. Sessile means no petiole or leaf stem. So, all of that is a long winded way to say the beautiful flowers in this shot belong to sheep laurel.

Thanks to the Maine Natural History Observatory for clearing that up.

This little mother wood duck seems to be wearing a joyful expression but the actual moment was quite different. I was walking a trail around a pond when she came gliding out of the woods and landed off shore. Then she swam in circles, whistling and hooting loudly, as if frightened. Soon I saw why; 7 or 8 little ducklings swam out from some pickerel weeds very near where I had just been walking. I walked right by them without seeing them and wouldn’t have done more than take a photo if I had, but their mother didn’t know that and she was about as agitated as a bird could be. They all swam off while I stood there watching, and it happened so fast I never did get a good shot of the ducklings.

Female wood ducks don’t quack; they kind of whistle or squeak with an urgent sound that’s very hard, if not impossible to describe. It’s also one of those sounds that, once heard you don’t forget. It’s easily found online if you’re interested.

I was thinking as I looked at this shot of a tachinid fly how, if I had taken it in a cemetery I could have said “fly on the family stone” but since it wasn’t, I won’t. It landed on a stone in a stone wall and walked around in circles as if looking for something. It might have been on the trail of a caterpillar, because they lay eggs on young caterpillars. The eggs hatch and the fly larvae begin to drink the “blood” of the caterpillar. That means the caterpillar won’t go on to become what it should have. Some call this fly the enemy of butterflies for that reason but I see it simply doing what it has evolved to do. That’s what it does and it really doesn’t matter what we think about it; nature doesn’t know or care about good or bad.

I saw another large clump of yellow irises along the river bank, so this makes two now in this general area. This is an iris from Europe that is quite aggressive. I found a small pond once that was absolutely choked with them so there wasn’t even room for cattails to grow there. I’m not sure what the plants get out of growing so thickly that they starve themselves enough to stop flowering, but that seems to be what they do.

But there is no denying the unique beauty of this iris. The featureless background in this shot is the river itself, but it looks like I was holding a gray card behind the flower. I’ve never seen this happen but we’ve had some strange light, what with smoke from wildfires and lots of clouds, so I was happy to get a shot at all.

Maiden pinks can now be seen blooming just about everywhere, usually in the color seen above or in white. Originally from Europe, they escaped cultivation almost immediately but they aren’t terribly invasive. They like dry, hot, sandy soil in waste places and that’s where I find them. The name “pinks” is supposed to come from pinking shears, which leave a serrated cut in cloth that is similar to what is seen on its petals, but since the flowers must have come along much earlier than the shears, I question that theory.

But anyhow, if you like them there are garden cultivars sold under the name “pinks” which can be found at any nursery. One old red flowered variety is called “flashing lights.” It’s a name I’ve always thought was appropriate for these little flowers. I see them flashing just about everywhere I go.

Orange isn’t a common color in nature where I live so it’s always nice to see orange hawkweed coming into bloom. It isn’t anywhere near as common as yellow hawkweed but I’ve seen it a few times lately.

The flowers of this plant grow on long thin stems (pedicels) and dance in the slightest hint of a breeze, and for that reason it was named fawn’s breath. Native Americans used the powdered root as a laxative and for that reason it is also called American ipecac. That takes a bit of the sweetness away from the name fawn’s breath, but that’s the way it is. It’s a beautiful thing unless you eat it, then any thoughts of beauty might just go down the drain.

A pretty, native wild honeysuckle that blooms after all the invasive honeysuckles have finished is glaucous honeysuckle. It is also called limber honeysuckle and I can understand why, because its long branches are so limber they flop on the ground rather than stand up. “Glaucous” means blue green in color, or covered by the natural, powdery bluish wax called “bloom.” The leaves are bluish green and the stems have the same bluish powdery bloom that blueberries have, so the name fits perfectly. It likes well drained, constantly moist soil and I find it growing in gravel at the base of a small hill. This plant is the only one I’ve ever found.

The pretty flowers of glaucous honeysuckle shout honeysuckle. I haven’t seen a true native honeysuckle flower yet that didn’t have that big red, mushroom headed pistil, and here it is on these flowers. What beautiful color both the flowers and flower buds have.

Every time I see Canada anemones bloom I think back to a woman who had just bought a house and had heard about me from others in the neighborhood and wanted to meet me. As we stood in her yard one day talking and planning she made it clear that if I were to be her gardener under no circumstances would I plant anemones. Of course I had to ask about the white flowers we stood beside which were in fact anemones, but they didn’t bother her. Though I worked for her for many years I never did find out why anemones bothered her, or even which anemones she was thinking of. Since she had been in the foreign service and had lived all over the world, they could have been anything.

Called one of the most invasive weeds worldwide, creeping thistle plants are shoots that grow from an extensive network of long, thick, underground roots. Trying to pull the plants just breaks them off the underground root and new plants soon take their place. Mowing all the above ground growth just makes the roots spread more, and they can spread as much as 10 feet in a season. The plant is originally from Europe but is also called Canada thistle. Its leaves have sharp spines all along the edges so just holding on to them on a windy day to get a photo is a challenge. I’ve taken photos of its flowers for years but this year I noticed how beautiful its buds were. As pretty as it is though, you don’t want this one growing in your yard.

I hadn’t seen any caterpillars yet so from a distance I was surprised to see what I thought were tent caterpillars swarming all over a stick. When I got closer I saw that it was instead a dead weed. But what a beautiful weed. I called it Rapunzel. It reminded me once again how there is beauty everywhere you care to look on this earth. Climb a hill, step behind a tree, dig a hole or roll over a log; no matter what you do or where you do it you will surely find beauty there.

To illustrate what I said about beauty being everywhere; I happened upon a spot where someone had lifted a log from the forest floor and revealed this bright orange mushroom mycelium that had been growing under it. I thought it was a very beautiful color, and so unexpected it stopped me in my tracks. It helps I think, to know that much of the beauty of life is found in small, seemingly insignificant things that might appear at any moment as you move slowly through nature. Even a pebble can sometimes be as beautiful as a jewel, so don’t just look; open your mind and heart and really see. Perceive the beauty of life using all of your senses. These wonders are all around us. It’s all there, just waiting for us to find it.

Green was the silence, wet was the light;
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.
~Pablo Neruda

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Aquatics

I’m starting this post on aquatics with blue vervain (Verbena hastata,) only because I like its color. It isn’t a true aquatic but every time you find it there will be water very nearby. Blue vervain provides a virtual nectar bar for many species of bees including the verbena bee (Calliopsis verbenae.) Butterflies also love it. It likes wet soil and full sun and can reach 5 feet when it has both. I find it in wet ditches, on river banks and just about anywhere where the soil stays constantly moist.

Wild calla (Calla palustris) is also called water dragon or water arum, and it is a true aquatic. It is an arum like skunk cabbage or Jack in the pulpit, both of which also like wet places. I don’t know if I could say this plant is rare but it is certainly scarce in this area. It’s the kind of plant you have to hunt for, and you have to know its habits well to catch it in bloom. Like other arums its flowers appear on a spadix surrounded by a spathe. The spathe is the white leaf like part seen in the above photo. This plant is toxic and I’ve never seen any animal touch it.

I missed the tiny greenish white flowers this year. They grow along the small spadix and are followed by green berries which will ripen to bright red and will most likely be snapped up by a passing deer. This plant was in the green, unripe berry stage. One odd fact about this plant is how its flowers are pollinated by water snails passing over the spadix. It is thought that small flies and midges also help with pollination, because the odor from the blossoms is said to be very rank.

Pickerel weed is having a bad year and gone are the beautiful ribbons of blue flowers along the river’s banks. I’m not sure what is causing such a sparse bloom but I hope it rights itself because large masses of this plant in bloom can be truly spectacular.

One of the things that always surprises me about pickerel weed is its hairiness. I don’t expect that from a water plant. Its small blue / purple, tubular flowers on spikey flower heads will produce a fruit with a single seed. Once the flowers are pollinated and seeds have formed the flower stalk will bend over and drop the them into the water, where they will have to go through at least two months of cold weather before being able to germinate. 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.

I haven’t seen any berries yet but elderberries (Sambucus nigra canadensis) have bloomed well this year so we should have plenty. This is another plant that doesn’t grow in water but it grows as close as it can to keep its roots good and moist. This native shrub can get quite large and its mounded shape and flattish, off white flower heads make it very easy to identify, even from a distance.

A floating plant that is attached by roots to the pond or lake bottom is an aquatic, and that description fits floating hearts (Nyphoides cordata) perfectly. Floating hearts have small, heart-shaped, greenish or reddish to purple leaves that are about an inch and a half wide, and that’s where their common name comes from. The tiny but very pretty flowers are about the size of a common aspirin and resemble the much larger fragrant white water lily blossom. They grow in bogs, ponds, slow streams, and rivers. This flower was having trouble staying above water because it had rained and the water level had risen.

Forget me nots are not an aquatic plant but I keep finding them in very wet places. This one grew right at the edge of a pond so its roots must have been at least partially in water. The ground they grew in was also so saturated my knees got wet taking this photo. Many plants that are thought of as terrestrial are able to tolerate submersion in water and can live where they’re exposed regularly to water and from what I’ve seen, this is one of them.

Water lobelia (Lobelia dortmanna) is probably the rarest of all the aquatics that grow in this area. I still know of only one pond it grows in and there are only a handful of them there. I’ve read that the plant has the unusual ability of removing carbon dioxide from the rooting zone rather than from the atmosphere. It is said to be an indicator of infertile and relatively pristine shoreline wetlands. This year I saw only 4 or 5 plants in a small group. The small, pale blue or sometimes white flowers are less than a half inch long and not very showy. They have 5 sepals and the base of the 5 petals is fused into a tube. The 2 shorter upper petals fold up. I’ve read that the flowers can bloom and set seed even under water. True aquatic plants are plants that have adapted to living in aquatic environments (saltwater or freshwater) and this one has adapted well.

I saw a strange looking bubble which had ripples coming from it, as if it were moving. It was in a pond, just off shore.

Of course if you go looking for aquatic plants, you’re going to see dragonflies like this widow skimmer.

I’m also seeing lots of what I think are spangled skimmers this year. On this day all of them were watching the water.

Pipewort plants (Eriocaulon aquaticum) are also called hatpins, and this photo shows why perfectly. Pipewort plants have basal leaves growing at the base of each stem and the leaves are usually underwater, but falling water levels had exposed them here. Interestingly, this photo also shows the size difference between a floating heart, which is there in the center, and a standard water lily leaf, which you can just see in the top left. Floating hearts are tiny in comparison.

Pipewort stems have a twist and 7 ridges, and for those reasons it is called seven angle pipewort. The quarter inch diameter flower head that sits atop the stem is made up of minuscule white, cottony flowers. I think it’s interesting how their leaves can photosynthesize under water.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if there are any flowers in view. The light is enough.

I saw what I thought was a pretty clump of grass right at the very edge of the river bank but when I looked closer, I saw that it wasn’t any grass that I had ever seen before and I think it is reed sweet-grass (Glyceria maxima,) which is invasive. It is native to Europe and Western Siberia and is a semi-aquatic, perennial grass with unbranched stems that get up to 8’ tall. There is a reddish tint on the lower parts of the stems. This plant towered up over my head but I can’t swear it had red on the stems because I have trouble seeing red. Reed sweet-grass invades wetlands and crowds out natives, and is not suitable for nesting. It is also a poor food source for our native wildlife.

Meadowsweet (Spirea alba) grows in the form of a small shrub and is in the spirea family, which its flowers clearly show with their many fuzzy stamens. It’s a common plant that I almost always find near water.

Meadowsweet flowers are fragrant and have a sort of almond-like scent. A close look shows that clearly, they belong in the spirea family. Before long their pretty purple cousins the steeple bushes will come along.

In my opinion swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) is the most beautiful milkweed of all. It grows onshore but a few yards away from the water’s edge on land that rarely floods. Many insects were visiting it on this day. I know of only a single plant now, so I hope it produces plenty of seeds. The flowerheads always remind me of millefiori glass paperweights.

Swamp candles (Lysimachia terrestris) are not true aquatics but they do grow close enough to water to have their roots occasionally flooded. They are common along the edges of ponds and wetlands at this time of year. Their name comes from the way their bright color lights up a swamp, just as they did here.

Swamp candles have a club shaped flower head (raceme) made up of 5 petaled yellow flowers. Each yellow petal of a swamp candle flower has two red dots at its base that help form a ring of ten red dots around the five long stamens in the center of the flower. The petals are also often streaked with red and this is common among the yellow loosestrifes. Reddish bulbets will sometimes grow in the leaf axils. I’ve read that our native yellow loosestrifes were thought to have soothing powers over animals so people would tie the flowers to the yoke of oxen to make them easier to handle.

Pretty little sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) will sometime grow in standing water but only when it rains and the water level rises. By choice they live right at the water’s edge. On the day I saw these I saw thousands of flowers blooming on the banks of a pond.

Here is a closer look at the flowers. Sheep laurel is part of the Kalmia clan, which in turn is part of the very large heath family, which includes rhododendrons, blueberries and many other plants. I know of only three Kalmias here and they are Mountain, Sheep and Bog laurel. The flowers of all three, though different in size and color, have ten spring loaded anthers which release when a heavy enough insect lands on the flower. It then gets dusted with pollen and goes on its way.

You can always tell that you’ve found one of the three Kalmias by looking at the outside of the flower. If it has ten bumps like those seen here you have found one of the laurels. Each bump is a tiny pocket that the tip of an anther fits into. If the flowers are anything but white it is either a sheep or bog laurel. If the flowers are white it’s a mountain laurel, though I’ve seen mountain laurels with pink flowers in gardens for the first time this year.

Fragrant white water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) are having a good year, I’m happy to say. They’re one of our most beautiful native aquatics. If you could get your nose into one you might smell something similar to honeydew melon or cantaloupe, but getting your nose into one is the tricky part.

I went to a local pond and saw what I thought were two-foot-tall white flowers on an island offshore. The pickerel weeds growing near the island told me the water could be up to six feet deep, so I certainly couldn’t wade out to them. My only choice was the zoom on my beaten-up old camera so I put it on the monopod and gave it a shot. When I looked at the photo I was stunned to see that the flowers weren’t white, they were pink. That was because they were rose pogonia orchids (Pogonia ophioglossoides,) a most rare and beautiful flower that I had been searching for in the wild for probably twenty years. And here they were, at a pond I had visited a hundred times. Why had I not seen them before? Because I had never come to this exact spot on the shore at this exact time of year before. That’s how easy it is to miss seeing one of the most beautiful flowers found in nature in bloom.

I’m sorry these are such poor photos but if you just Google “Rose Pogonia” you will see them in all their glory. This is a fine example of why, once you’ve started exploring and studying nature you feel that you really should keep at it, because you quickly learn that right around that next bend in the trail could be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. I hope you have found that this is true in your own walks through nature.

Away from the tumult of motor and mill
I want to be care-free; I want to be still!
I’m weary of doing things; weary of words
I want to be one with the blossoms and birds. 
~Edgar A. Guest

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Oh That Magic Feeling (Nowhere to go)

Here on my first day of retirement I don’t think the reality that I have nothing I have to do and nowhere I have to go has fully sunken in yet. Maybe I’ll need time to decompress after 50+ years of working. It was an odd career that went from gardener to mechanical engineer and then buildings and grounds maintenance. Though I started out fine with maintenance nearly 7 years ago I didn’t end fine. The job, always a dirty and dusty one, became increasingly difficult due to weakening lungs and I could feel myself slowing down, so it was time to go. One of the more pleasant memories of those last 7 years that comes to mind is of the many beautiful things I saw on those 25-mile drives to and from work; like clouds of mist rising up out of the forest in Marlborough, or the morning sunlight turning the snow-covered peak of Mount Monadnock to pink and orange. These sights were always unexpected and, though the drive wasn’t always welcome, they always were.

When I finally got to work each day, there on the shores of Half Moon Pond in Hancock, it wasn’t that uncommon to find something like this waiting. Each morning I would cross the road and stand on the shore in the quiet and watch as the sun rose behind me. It was a wonderful way to start the day and it wasn’t long before I felt that I had stumbled into paradise. I might not miss the work but I will miss the place.

You could feel an energy on the shores of the pond; an infectious childlike spirit, and that’s because children have come here for over 100 years to learn about and enjoy nature. The land, all 700+ acres, is known as The Sargent Center for Outdoor Education, owned by Boston University and currently in use by Nature’s Classroom, which is an outdoor environmental education program. Children, musicians, artists and other groups come from all over the world and the happy shouts and laughter of children can be heard all day every day, almost all year round. It was like music to me and I loved hearing them and seeing them having so much fun, but then covid came along and everything had to stop for a time. I can’t see that the place will ever stop attracting children though; after a fallow year in 2020 they returned for 10 weeks last summer and this summer looks like it will be even better.

The children come to what we call the camp to learn about nature and though that wasn’t my reason for coming, I learned right along with them. This was the first place I had ever seen dragonfly nymphs clutching the pond weeds, waiting to shed their exoskeletons. Once free they are apparently disoriented for a time. (I know how they feel) I had them land on me several times over the years and their empty shells, called exuvia, can be found here and there all along the shoreline.

This was the only place I knew of where I could get close enough to the big mother snapping turtles to see them laying their eggs. It was a slow, seemingly exhaustive process.

Before I went to work there, I had to drive for half an hour to see a rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) in bloom but that first year I found them along the shoreline. I was able to get to know them like I never could before. They’re one of our most beautiful early spring flowers and it was great to know that I could now find them with ease.

The same is true for sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia). I used to have to drive for miles to find it and even then I had a hard time, but there it was right on the shore of the pond. This is another relatively rare and beautiful native shrub which blooms later than the rhodora. Our native laurels have 10 anthers that fit into tiny pockets and spring out when an insect lands on the blossom, dusting it with pollen. The thought of it always fascinates me.

Before I started working at the camp the only way I could see a beautiful marsh St. John’s wort (Hypericum virginicum) was from a kayak, and if you’ve ever tried taking photos while sitting in a kayak you know how that went. Here, I could walk right up to them and see them in all their beautiful glory. It’s a relatively rare plant so I was happy to find them growing right along the shoreline. This is the only St. John’s wort I know of with pink flowers; all of our others St John’s worts are yellow.

A little further up on shore I found my favorite milkweed, swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). As I watched over the years one plant became two, and the first plant grew more and more flowers. The pretty flower clusters always remind me of millefiori glass paperweights.

Humble little Narrow leaf cow wheat plants (Melampyrum lineare) grew and bloomed by the hundreds there. I know of only one other place to find them and they don’t grow well there. This little, shoe top high plant may look innocent but it has a secret; it is a hemiparasite, which is a plant that can photosynthesize and create its own food but is still a parasite on surrounding plants. It seems to want more than its share. 

One year I cut a large area of brush right along the pond edge to open up a view and the following year I was surprised to find it full of wildflowers, including the beautiful little fringed polygalas (Polygala paucifolia) above. This is one of the last of our spring ephemeral flowers to bloom and it’s a signal that it’s time to start looking for flowers out in the sunny meadows rather than in the woods. Other plants that grew in this spot were pink lady’s slippers, painted trillium, blue bead lily, and partridge berry.

In certain places in the camp woods you can sometimes find large colonies of painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum). Throughout my experience I have found only one or two plants here and there, so finding large numbers of them here in this place was surprising. And beautiful; painted trilliums are our most beautiful trillium, in my opinion. They will bloom in May, just about the same time as the rhodora we saw earlier.

I was also surprised to find so many broad leaved helleborine orchids (Epipactis helleborine) growing at the camp because I normally see so few of them. They were introduced from Europe in the 1800s and almost immediately escaped gardens and are now considered an invasive orchid; the only one I’ve ever heard of. Scientists have discovered that its nectar contains the strongest narcotic compounds found in nature, and wasps have been seen moving away from it in a kind of staggering flight. Strangely, the plants have chosen to grow in the shade around building foundations.

Since I’m colorblind, before I started working at the camp I had seen only one cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), and that was only because a kind reader had sent me directions to it. But it was across a stream, so I could never get close to it. When a red cardinal lands in a green tree it disappears to these eyes, so I almost stepped on the plant in this photo before I saw the red flower. It grew in a peaceful place beside a stream at the camp. It was a real treat to finally see them up close after so many years of looking for them but now I know that I should stop looking, because the only way I’ll ever find them is by luck. If I should happen to stumble across them again well, that will be a lucky day.

Another plant that I had never seen before working at the camp was the ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi). Like the cardinal flower it is a plant I searched for for many years. I stumbled across it growing in a lawn, which is the last place I’d have thought to look for it. Though there are native plants called ragged robin in the U.S. this particular plant was introduced from Europe into New England.

As I think back on my time at the camp, I can see that it was really just one discovery after another, and I could probably fill two posts with all the “firsts” I saw, like the eyed click beetle (Alaus oculatus) above. Its “eyes” are really just eye spots, there to mesmerize and confound predators. It has a spine that it can click and use to propel itself away from predators, and it used it to jump and hit me in the back, otherwise I’d have never seen it. One day a bobcat walked past a group of us from just feet away, and one morning I saw a young moose come up out of the pond. Several people told me that a black bear walked just 10 feet from me when I was blowing leaves one day, but I never heard or saw it. This was also the first and only place I ever heard the song of a whippoorwill. It really is a magical place that is filled with natural wonders, and I’m very grateful to have had the chance to spend time there.

Another wonder was the cluster of Dryocosmus deciduous galls I found on a red-oak leaf one day. These galls are created when a tiny wasp in the Dryocosmus genus lays eggs on the midrib of a red oak leaf. Each tiny gall has a single larva inside. As the scientific name reveals, these galls are deciduous, and fall from the leaf before the leaf falls from the tree. I remember how amazed I was when I read that about them.

One of the jobs I had at the camp was mowing a 13-acre meadow. The first time I mowed it I noticed that there were one or two chicory plants (Cichorium intybus) in it, so I started mowing around them. Year by year their numbers increased until last year there must have been 15 plants, all blooming together. Several people asked me about them over the years and I think everyone enjoyed the blue flowers, even though they looked a little odd out in such a big expanse of grass.

The meadow that I mowed was full of tiny black insects which I think must have been weevils. There were so many thousands of them I could feel them peppering any uncovered spot on my body as I mowed, so I had to always wear glasses and keep my mouth closed tight. But mowing was when I first noticed something strange; a group of dragonflies would fly alongside the tractor, a few on either side, and every now and then one or two would peel off for a moment or two before coming back to rejoin the group. I realized then that the dragonflies were eating all the insects that were being scared up by the mower. I also realized that they were intelligent creatures. They must also have some type of a memory, because they flew along beside me every time I mowed the meadow in summer. The one in this photo was so used to me mowing I rode right up to it and took this shot with my macro camera as it perched on a chicory plant. If a fish can learn to come when it is called at feeding time, why can’t a dragonfly?

Because I spent most of my time outside, I could keep a close eye on the local monarch butterfly population, which seemed to rise and fall quite a lot from year to year. Last summer seemed to be a good one for them and I hope the future will be kind to them.

I realize as I work on this post how much there was to see and discover in an area smaller than the center of an average small New England town. It’s just amazing, but it isn’t just the beauty of it all; it’s also the rarity of the things found here, like the dewdrop (Dalibarda repens) flowers above. I’ve seen them in exactly one other place in over 50 years of wandering through nature.  

And then there is the purple fringed bog orchid (Platanthera grandiflora) I found growing beside a trail through a swamp one day. People had been walking by it without seeing it perhaps for years and if I hadn’t caught just a glimpse of color out of the corner of my eye, I would have done the same. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget how I felt that day. I think it has to be the most beautiful flowering plant I’ve ever seen in these New Hampshire woods.

All of the animals, plants, insects, and amphibians that have made this place their home is what makes it so special. Just think of all the children, more than a hundred years’ worth of them, who came to this place and might have seen one, two or all of the things in this post. Think of how much they might have learned. This place, full of beauty, wonder and enchantment, should always be here for them.

Last year a group of artists came to stay for a week and my co-workers cajoled one of them into doing an oil painting of the bog orchid, which they gave me on my last day. It was a great gift and it now hangs here where I’ll see it every day. Though I doubt I could ever forget the camp, this painting will make sure I don’t. I hope many people who pass through the camp will get to see and admire the flower that inspired it, especially the artist. He did the painting from a photo that I had taken.  

There was a time when I could sit in the quiet of dawn on a summer morning and listen to the birds sing through the open windows, and that’s what I’m looking forward to doing again more than anything else. In the evening I can walk to the stream down the road and watch the sunset turn it to liquid gold, and then when it gets dark I can sit outside and watch the stars while listening to the the spring peepers. These are some of the things that are most important to me, and I’ll have time now to do them and anything else that comes to mind. The possibilities are infinite.

One sweet dream, came true today. ~The Beatles

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Early to Mid June Flowers

Our beautiful fragrant white water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) have just started blooming but as this photo shows, the leaves are already being eaten. Each blossom lasts only 3 days before the stems coil and pull them underwater to set seeds, but there are so many of them constantly coming into bloom it seems like the flowers last all summer. This is the most beautiful of all our aquatics, in my opinion. Some say the scent reminds them of honeydew melon. 

I don’t know if I could think of a more beautiful name for a plant than “fawn’s breath.” This plant (Gillenia trifoliata) gets that name from the way that its very pretty flowers dance at the ends of long stems at even the hint of a breeze. Even presumably, the breath of a fawn can set them dancing. It is also called bowman’s root but I’ve never been able to discover why. This is a native plant which grows in 21 of the lower 48 states but here I have to find it in gardens. The roots of the plant were used as a laxative by Native Americans so it is also called Indian physic.

My color finding software calls this color “plum,” “rose,” or “orchid” but many websites call it pink. Since the plant is named maiden pink (Dianthus deltoids) that would make sense, but colorblindness means my opinion doesn’t really matter. Whatever color it is that these eyes see is beautiful.

And whatever color you choose to see them as will be beautiful as well. Maiden pinks are originally from Europe and have escaped cultivation but they aren’t terribly invasive. They seem to prefer the edges of open lawns and meadows but they will also grow in abandoned lots and other waste areas in almost pure sand. I’ve read that the name “pinks” comes from the way the outer edges look as if they were cut with pinking shears but I don’t know how true that is. I’m sure the flowers have been here longer than pinking shears.

You might have noticed some small yellow flowers in that photo of maiden pinks. They were the flowers of silver leaved cinquefoil (Potentilla argentea.) It is not silverweed (Potentilla anserina) and shouldn’t be confused with that plant. It comes from Europe and is considered invasive but it is quite pretty and it can often be found in the same areas that maiden pinks grow in. The leaves are silvery white on their undersides, and that’s where the common name comes from.

In this part of the state the only lupines that could be thought of as wild are the ones that grow along the sides of highways, but they are not truly wild because the seed was put down by the highway department when the roadsides were redone. I knew of two places where these highway lupines grew but this year there wasn’t a sign of them, so this one comes to you from a local park. Tame or wild doesn’t matter really. It’s their beauty that matters and these had lots of it.

It’s clematis time and I like this one very much. It comes from the bud dark as you see here and over the course of time it lightens to a paler blue with a darker stripe down the center of each petal.

I believe its name is Ramona.

And here is Loreley. (Lorelei) The name refers to the sirens that would perch on cliffs along the Rhine and entice sailors to their doom with their enchanting song, much like the sirens who lured Ulysses and his crew in the Odyssey. It was introduced in Germany in 1909 and its beauty has been pleasing people ever since. Indeed this iris has pleased me my entire life. My mother planted it before she died and if I were to search my memory for a flower as far back as I could reach, this is the one I would find there. I’ve carried both the memory and the actual plant with me throughout my entire life.

This iris lives in the water at the edge of ponds and rivers and though it might have enticed a sailor or two it has pleased few people in this country, because it is very aggressively invasive. I once saw a small pond that was so full of them nothing else could grow there so that’s why, even though it is exceedingly beautiful, it is hated by many. It is the yellow flag (Iris pseudacorus) and it is originally from Europe. It was introduced here in the mid-1800s as a garden plant. Of course it escaped and began to naturalize and was reported near Poughkeepsie, New York in 1868 and in Concord, Massachusetts in 1884. Today it considered highly invasive and its sale and distribution is banned in New Hampshire. As you can see though it distributes itself, and how do you ban that?

Orange hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca) is also from Europe and is also considered invasive but the difference between it and the yellow flag iris is that it isn’t aggressive. I see thousands of examples of yellow hawkweed for every one orange hawkweed and I’m not sure why that is. The color orange is virtually invisible to bees so that might account for its relative scarcity here. In fact orange wildflowers as a group are hard to find. The only other orange wildflower I can think of is jewelweed (Impatiens capensis.)

Sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) is blooming and I love its dime size purple flowers with their ten anthers all tucked into their own pockets. It is thought that by having the pollen bearing anthers in  pockets like they do laurels keep the pollen from being washed away by rain, but I don’t think that is a scientific fact. What is a fact is the anthers reside in the pockets under tension, so when a heavy enough insect lands on the flower the spring loaded anthers release from their pockets and dust it with pollen.

For years I’ve gone back and forth on whether these were sheep laurel or bog laurel. Since I kept finding them growing in standing water I thought they were bog laurels, but sheep laurels are the only ones that have flower clusters with new growth coming out below to grow up around them, and the photo above matches more than a handful of examples I have seen online. It took a while to see this clearly but luckily I have helpers who often gently prod me in the correct direction. I’m very lucky to have them and grateful that I do.  

I once gardened for a lady who absolutely despised anemones and forbade me to plant any in her yard. She never told me why she didn’t like them but she had spent considerable time in Europe and the Middle East so I assumed she must have foreign anemones (maybe windflowers?) in mind. When I pointed out that the white flowers that grew in one corner of her recently purchased yard were anemones she was surprised but she also thought they were pretty, and said they could stay. Of course they were native meadow anemones (Anemone canadensis.)

Meadow anemone is an old fashioned garden favorite that has much larger flowers than our other native wood anemone. Though it seems to spread out in a garden it’s easy to control. It’s also called crowfoot because of the foliage and it is also known as Canada anemone. Native Americans used this plant medicinally and its root and leaves were one of the most highly regarded medicines of the Omaha and Ponca tribes. It was used as an eye wash, an antiseptic, and to treat headaches and dizziness. The root was chewed to clear the throat so a person could sing better, but I’d want to find out what toxins it might contain before I tried it.

Pretty little bird’s foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) has come into bloom. It is in the legume family and grows about a foot tall, and is a common sight along roadsides and waste areas. It gets its common name from its clusters of brown, 1 inch long seed pods, which someone thought looked like a bird’s foot. The plant has 3 leaflets much like clover and was introduced from Europe as livestock feed, but has escaped and is now considered invasive in many areas. It can form large mats that choke out natives.

The flowers on our native viburnums like the maple leaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) shown will almost always have five petals, and the leaves though quite different in shape throughout the viburnum family, are usually dull and not at all glossy. In fact I can’t think of one with shiny leaves. Each flattish maple leaved viburnum flower head is made up of many small, quarter inch, not very showy white flowers. If pollinated each flower will become a small deep purple berry (drupe) that birds love to eat. This small shrub doesn’t mind dry shade and that makes it a valuable addition to a native wildflower garden. The Native American Chippewa tribe used the inner bark of this plant to relieve stomach pains. What I like most about this little shrub is how its leaves turn so many colors in fall. They can be pink, purple, red, yellow, and orange and combinations of two or three, and are really beautiful.

Multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) has beautiful small white (rarely pink) flowers that are about an inch across but unfortunately it is very invasive and forms prickly thickets that nobody I know would dare to try and get through. It is from Japan and Korea and grows to huge proportions, arching up over shrubs and sometimes growing 20-30 feet up into trees. A large plant bearing hundreds of blossoms is a truly beautiful thing but its thorny thickets prevent all but the smallest animals from getting where they want to go. Its sale is banned in New Hampshire but since each plant can easily produce half a million seeds I think it’s here to stay.

I love to look deep into a multiflora rose blossom, and I love to smell their heavenly fragrance. It’s very easy to understand why it was originally brought here.

I am always reminded each spring that one of the great delights of wandering in the New Hampshire woods is the amazing fragrance of wild grape flowers that wafts on the breeze. Their perfume can be detected from quite a distance so I usually let my nose lead me to them.

I’m always surprised that such a big scent comes from such tiny flowers, each no bigger than the head of a match. Each will become a grape when pollinated. We have a few varieties of wild grape here in New Hampshire including fox grapes (Vitis  fruitlabrusca), and frost or river grapes (Vitis riparia.) The fruit is an important food source for everything from birds to bears.

Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) has been used medicinally for nobody knows how long; it has even been found in Neanderthal graves. The scientific name Achillea comes from the legend of Achilles carrying the plant into battle so it could be used to staunch the flow of blood from his soldier’s wounds. Yarrow was a valuable healing herb, one of the nine “holy herbs,” and was traded throughout the world since before recorded time, and that is believed to be the reason for the plant being found in nearly every country on earth today.

Lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea) flowers are small but there are enough of them so the plant can’t be missed. They grow at the edges of fields and pastures, and along pathways. The stems of this plant live through the winter so it gets a jump on the season, often blooming in May. It is a native of Europe and is also called chickweed. The 5 petals of the lesser stitchwort flower are split deeply enough to look like 10 petals and this is one way to tell it from greater stitchwort (Stellaria holostea,) which has its 5 petals split only half way down their length. The common name Stitchwort refers to the plant being used in herbal remedies to cure the pain in the side that we call a stitch. It is also called starwort and I love seeing its pretty flowers twinkling in the tall grasses that they grow among.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. ~Rumi

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Late June Flowers

Last year I stumbled upon a single catchfly (Silene armeria) plant and this year I’ve seen four or five of them. This plant is originally from Europe and is also called sweet William catchfly. It is said to be an old fashioned garden plant in Europe and is supposed to be a “casual weed” in New Hampshire. The name catchfly comes from the sticky sap it produces along its stem. I’ve felt it and it is indeed quite sticky. Small insects are said to get caught in it and I can see how that would happen. Its leaves and stems are a smooth blue grayish color and along with the small pinkish purple flowers they made for a very pretty little plant that I’m hoping to see more of.

Bittersweet nightshade vine (Solanum dulcamara) is a native of Europe and Asia and is in the potato family, just like tomatoes, and the fruit is a red berry which in the fall looks like a soft and juicy, bright red, tiny Roma tomato. The plant climbs up and over other plants and shrubs and often blossoms for most of the summer. Bittersweet nightshade produces solanine which is a narcotic, and all parts of the plant are considered toxic. In medieval times it was used medicinally but these days birds seem to be the only ones getting any use from it. I always find that getting good photos of its small flowers is difficult, but I’m not sure why.

Usually the flowers of bittersweet nightshade look like this, with recurved petals, but you can catch them before they curl if you’re lucky. According to the Brooklyn Botanic garden folklore says that a sachet of the dried leaves and berries placed under the pillow will help heal a broken heart.

Humble little narrow-leaf cow wheat (Melampyrum lineare) seems like a shy little thing but it is actually a thief that steals nutrients from surrounding plants. A plant that can photosynthesize and create its own food but is still a parasite on surrounding plants is known as a hemiparasite.  Its long white, tubular flowers tipped with yellow-green are very small, and usually form in pairs where the leaves meet the stem (axils). I find this plant growing in old, undisturbed forests. It is quite common, but so small that few seem to notice it. The tiny flowers bloom at about shoe top height.

I find mallow plants (Malvaceae) growing in strange places like roadsides but I think most are escapees from someone’s garden. Like all plants in the mallow family this plant’s flowers were large and beautiful. Other well-known plants in this family include hibiscus, hollyhocks, and rose of Sharon.

It’s easy to see that this hollyhock is in the same family as the mallow plant.

Our viburnums and native dogwoods are just coming into bloom and the flowers on the maple leaf viburnums (Viburnum acerifolium) have now fully opened. Each flattish flower head is made up of many small, quarter inch, not very showy white flowers. If pollinated each flower will become a small deep purple berry (drupe) that birds love to eat.

Smooth arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) has yellowish white, mounded flower clusters and is blooming along stream banks and drainage ditches right now. Red twig dogwoods are also beginning to bloom, but they have four petals and the viburnums have five. Dogwood flower clusters also tend to be much flatter on top and seem to hover just above the branch. Smooth arrowwood viburnum has a much more rounded flowering habit. Later on the flowers will become dark blue drupes that birds love. It is said that this plant’s common name comes from Native Americans using the straight stems for arrow shafts. They also used the shrub medicinally and its fruit for food.

This plant goes by many common names but I’ve always called it peach leaved bluebells (Campanula persicifolia) which comes from its leaves resembling those of the peach tree. It is very easy to grow-literally a “plant it and forget it” perennial. I planted one here years ago and not only is it still growing, but many seedlings from it are also growing all over the property. I usually give several away each summer to family and friends, but I’ve given it to so many people that now they say “no more.” It’s a good choice for someone just starting a garden.

Annual fleabane (Erigeron annuus) is an easy flower to ignore and I’m often guilty of doing so, maybe because it’s so common and I see it everywhere all through the summer, from June to October. At this time of year it would be easy to mistake annual fleabane for an aster if the fleabanes didn’t start blooming so much earlier. There’s also the fact that they just don’t have the “aster look” when you see the entire plant. There can sometimes be 40-50 small, half inch flowers blooming at the same time.

I found a white maiden pink (Dianthus deltoids) among thousands of purple ones in a meadow. It’s quite a rare thing around here, and also quite beautiful. I see a handful of these each year compared to uncountable numbers of purple / pink ones.

I always find wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) growing at the edges of corn fields at this time of year, 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. The flowers can be pale yellow, pink, or white and honey bees seem to love them no matter what color they are.

I always like to see the butter yellow flowers of sulfur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta.) Close to the center packed with 30 stamens and many pistils each petal looks like it was daubed with a bit of deeper yellow. This is a very rough looking, hairy plant that was originally introduced from Europe. It grows in unused pastures and along roadsides but it is considered a noxious weed in some areas because it out competes grasses. Here in this area it could hardly be called invasive; I usually have to hunt to find it. This beautiful example grew in an unmown field.

Multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) has beautiful, small white (rarely pink) flowers that are about an inch across but unfortunately it is very invasive and forms prickly thickets that nobody I know would dare to try and get through. It is from Japan and Korea and grows to huge proportions, arching up over shrubs and sometimes growing 20-30 feet up into trees. A large plant bearing hundreds of blossoms is a truly beautiful thing but its thorny thickets prevent all but the smallest animals from getting where they want to go. Its sale is banned in New Hampshire but since each plant can easily produce half a million seeds I think it’s here to stay.

It’s easy to see why it is in the rose family but if it wasn’t for their scent you might as well be looking at a raspberry blossom because multiflora rose blossoms are the same size, shape, and color, and raspberries are also in the rose family.

Such a beautiful thing. Though its flowers are small on a multiflora rose there are enough of them to give off a fragrance powerful enough to be smelled from quite a distance. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was imported more for its scent than any other reason, because to smell it is like smelling a bit of heaven on earth.

Wood sorrel (Oxalis montana) is on the rare side here and I think that is because it’s a climax species, which are plants that grow in mature forests. It likes to grow where it’s cool and moist with high humidity and I found this one in a shaded area near a stream.

June is when our native mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) blooms and I’m guessing that this eastern tiger swallowtail had a pollen bath before he left this one.

The pentagonal mountain laurel flowers are very unusual because each has ten pockets in which the male anthers rest under tension. When a heavy enough insect (like a butterfly) lands on a blossom the anthers spring from their pockets and dust it with pollen. Once released from their pockets the anthers don’t return to them.

Sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) has much the same flower as mountain laurel, except for the color and size. The small, dime size flowers are bright pink and very beautiful. Like many laurels this one is poisonous enough to kill and no part of the plant should ever be eaten. It grows in bogs, swamps and along pond edges where it gets plenty of water. I’ve read that many Native American tribes considered this plant extremely dangerous but some used it in a poultice to treat skin diseases.

Northern bush honeysuckle (Diervilla lonicera) is showing its tubular, pale yellow flowers right on schedule. This low growing shrub is interesting because of its orange inner bark. It isn’t a true honeysuckle, but gets its common name from its opposite leaves that resemble honeysuckles. It is native to eastern North America. One of the easiest ways to identify it is by the flower’s long red, mushroom shaped pistil and its hairy throat.

When I find a rose in the forest or some other unexpected place I look at it as a gift, and this one was all of that. Their scent is unequaled among flowers, though I have smelled peonies that have come close. Fossil records show that roses have been here on earth for millions of years, so they’ve been pleasing mankind since the first men and women walked. I wonder what they thought of them.

None can have a healthy love for flowers unless he loves the wild ones. ~Forbes Watson

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Late June / Early July Flowers

Like a tree full of orchids, that’s what the northern catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) looks like in full bloom. Of course the flowers are not orchids, but they’re very beautiful nevertheless. These big trees are blooming all over the area right now, about a week later than usual.

At 1-2 inches across catalpa flowers are large, and so are the heart shaped leaves. Each one is made up of petals that have fused to form one large, frilly petal. Yellow, orange and purple insect guides can be seen in the throat. The opening is quite big; easily big enough to put your finger in, with room to spare. These trees have long, bean like seed pods and when I was a boy we called them string bean trees. Luckily we were never foolish enough to eat any of the “beans” because they’re toxic. The word catalpa comes from the Native American Cherokee tribe. Other tribes called it Catawba.

From huge flowers to small flowers. I can’t call cow wheat blossoms tiny, but they are small. Narrow-leaf cow wheat (Melampyrum lineare) seems like a shy little thing but it is actually a thief that steals nutrients from surrounding plants. A plant that can photosynthesize and create its own food but is still a parasite on surrounding plants is known as a hemiparasite.

Cow wheat’s long white, tubular flowers tipped with yellow-green are very small, and usually form in pairs where the leaves meet the stem (axils) but this year I’m seeing more single blooms than pairs. I find this plant growing in old, undisturbed forests. It is quite common, but so small that few seem to notice it. The flowers bloom at about shoe top height. I thought I’d put one on a penny so you could see how small they really are.

Cow wheat blossoms seem big compared to the tiny blossoms of enchanter’s nightshade (Circaea lutetiana canadensis.) This woodland plant is a shade lover and I notice it along trails only when it blooms in July. It gets its scientific name Circaea from Circe, an enchantress in Homer’s Odyssey with a fondness for turning men into swine. There are similar plants native to Europe and Asia.

Each tiny 1/8 inch wide enchanter’s nightshade flower consists of 2 white petals that are split deeply enough to look like 4, 2 green sepals, 2 stamens, and a tiny central style. At the base of each flower there is a 2 celled ovary that is green and covered with stiff hooked hairs, and this becomes the plant’s bur like seed pod, which sticks to just about anything. When a plant’s seed pods have evolved to be spread about by sticking to the feathers and fur of birds and animals the process is called epizoochory. The burs on burdock plants are probably the best known examples of epizoochory.

Here is a tiny enchanter’s nightshade blossom on a penny. They’re among the smallest flowers that I try to photograph for this blog.

Last year when I showed what I thought was bog laurel (Kalmia polifolia) a helper wrote in and asked if it could be sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) instead. Since I found the plant growing in standing water and since the flower clusters were terminal, appearing at the ends of the branches, I didn’t think so. But now I’m not so sure because sheep laurel also has terminal flower clusters and the new leaves come out below the flower clusters and grow up around them, and that’s exactly what this plant does. But names of things are becoming less and less important to me as I get older and I can live with knowing it’s one or the other. I hope you can too.

One thing I know for sure is that it is a laurel and you can tell that by the ten pockets in each flower, where the anthers reside under tension. When a heavy enough insect lands on the flower the spring loaded anthers release from their pockets and dust it with pollen.

St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) gets its common name from the way that it flowers near June 24th, which is St. Johns day, but it has been well known since ancient times. The Roman military doctor Proscurides used it to treat patients as early as the 1st century AD, and it was used by the ancient Greeks before that. The black dots on its yellow petals make this flower very easy to identify. Originally from Europe, it can be found in meadows and along roadside growing in full sun.

Dwarf St. John’s wort (Hypericum mutilum) is a small, bushy plant that gets about ankle high and has flowers that resemble those found on its larger cousin, St. John’s wort. A noticeable difference, apart from their small size, is how the flowers lack the brown spots often found on the petals of the larger version. These flowers are about the same diameter as a pencil eraser and, since the plants often grow right at the water’s edge, you usually have to get wet knees to get a good photo of them.

Beautiful ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) started blooming about a week ago. This is a plant that I’ve searched for many years for and could never find until I finally found some growing in an unmown lawn, and now I know of two places it grows in. It is said to prefer disturbed habitats like meadows and fields and I guess the fact that it grew in a lawn proves it. Though there are native plants called ragged robin in the U.S. this particular plant was introduced from Europe into New England.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) flowers are notorious for catching onto the legs of insects and not letting go so I thought that’s what had happened to this fly, especially since it let me take shot after shot without flying off, but I finally poked it with my finger and away it went. Apparently it was simply too involved with what it was doing to pay me any mind.

Cranberries are one of the native fruits that grow abundantly here in the northeast. I usually find them in wet, boggy areas but they will grow in drier areas near water. We have two kinds here, the common cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos) and the small cranberry (Vaccinium microcarpum.) I think the plants pictured are the common cranberry.

Early European settlers thought cranberry flowers resembled the neck, head, and bill of a crane so they called them crane berries and that has evolved into what we call them today. The flower petals do have an unusual habit of curving backwards, but I’m not seeing cranes when I look at them. Cranberries were an important ingredient of Native American pemmican, which was made of dried meat, berries, and fat. Pemmican saved the life of many an early settler.

Sometimes if you’re lucky you can catch a cranberry blossom before its petals have recurved, but on this day I only saw one or two out of many hundreds.

Our native whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia) has just started blooming in the tall grass along roadsides. This plant’s leaves and flowers grow in a whorl around the stem. A whorl, in botanical terms for those who don’t know, is made up of at least three elements of a plant (leaves, flowers, etc.) that radiate from a single point and surround the stem. In this case both the leaves and flowers grow in a whorl, because where each leaf meets the stem a five petaled, star shaped yellow flower appears at the end of a long stalk. The leaves in each whorl can number from 3 to 7. According to Pliny the young leaves of whorled loosestrife will stop bleeding when they are tied to a wound.

Each yellow petal of the 1/2 inch flowers are red at the base and form a ring around the central red tipped yellow stamens. The petals also often have red streaks as those in the photo do. Whorled loosestrife is the only yellow loosestrife that has pitted leaves and long-stalked flowers in the leaf axils. It grows in dry soil at the edge of forests.

It’s hard to believe that something as tiny as a river grape blossom (Vitis riparia) could be fragrant but in places right now you can follow your nose right to the vines, so strong is the fragrance. And this isn’t the end of the joy they bring; in the fall the fermented fruit on a warm day will make the woods smell just like grape jelly.

I don’t see tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) in meadows unless the meadow is wet. I usually find it at the edge of streams or in ditches as the example in the above photo was. Meadow rue can grow 7-8 feet tall so getting above it can be next to impossible. Native Americans are said to have given lethargic horses ground meadow rue leaves and flowers to increase their vigor and to renew their spirit and endurance.

It wouldn’t be the fourth of July without fireworks and every year, right on time, tall meadow rue blossoms with fireworks of its own.  At least the male flowers do, with starbursts of petal-less dark yellow tipped stamens. Knowing when flowers bloom is a fun thing; they give you something beautiful to look forward to all summer long.

None can have a healthy love for flowers unless he loves the wild ones. ~Forbes Watson

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