On The Level

This post was going to be about the beeches and oaks at Willard Pond in Antrim. For years now I’ve finished the foliage season by visiting this beautiful hardwood forest but this year the light just wasn’t with me on my first visit. This photo has been lightened somewhat so it doesn’t show how dark it really was, especially under the trees. Shooting photos in such conditions would have been a waste of time so I turned and left.

A week later on Halloween I returned to Willard Pond on a cold, blustery morning to find that most of the leaves had fallen. I thought this was a bit odd since Halloween has always been my time to visit but the weather has been strange and unpredictable for all of this year. To be truthful I wasn’t upset that there would be no Willard Pond post this year because the Tudor trail that I usually follow is one of the roughest I know, with a lot of boulders and other things to step over and around. Each time I went I followed the trail for a short while and found that it bothered the knee that I damaged in my recent fall on Pitcher Mountain, so skipping it this year will probably turn out to be the right decision. If you want to see what Willard Pond Forest is like just go up to the search box at the top of the page and type “Willard Pond.” You’ll find several years of posts.

On the road into Willard Pond I saw some beautiful maple leaved viburnums on the side of the road. The color range of these plants is really amazing.

I also saw some bright red winterberries at Willard Pond. The fruits of this native holly hold their color for quite a while so they are sought after by people wanting to use them for holiday decorations. I often find bushes that have had almost all the berry bearing branches cut off.

I think for a while due to leg pain and maybe some balance issues that I should stay on flat, level surfaces like this rail trail in Keene. Other than an occasional woodchuck hole there is little to trip over as long as you stay on the trail. This will not be a hardship because I grew up on this trail way back when it was a working railroad route and I know it as well as I know myself. On this day I went to see the tree colors, which were a bit muted.

The muted colors come naturally because I think there are mostly silver maples in this area. Silver maples turn different shades of yellow in the fall unlike red maples, which have a much wider color range including red and orange.

Though there are still a few isolated red maples showing color most now look like this one.

All the yellow seen in this view comes from beeches, silver maples, birches, and Japanese honeysuckles.

Even the deer tongue grasses turned yellow this year. Quite often I see a lot of purple on these plants.

The silvery, fluffy seedheads of virgin’s bower vines line the rail trail. When in flower they’re known as traveler’s joy but at this stage they’re called Devil’s darning needles. Both names are just meaningless labels we’ve put on a pretty plant. The truth is, in nature there is no good or bad, no right or wrong, no past or future; there is just the perfection of this moment called now. We would do well to learn from this.

In a college botany class I once had I did my final exam paper on poisonous plants. The plant seen here was one of the deadliest, but also one of the most interesting. It is monk’s hood or monkshood; Queen of poisons, and it has been used to kill for countless centuries. If you were found growing it in ancient Rome there was a good chance that you’d be put to death, because as far as the Romans were concerned the only use for the extremely toxic plant was to add its toxic sap to the water of one’s enemies to eliminate them.

A side view of the flowers shows where the name monk’s hood comes from. The plant is in the aconite family and its sap can be absorbed through the skin. In 2015 an experienced gardener in the U.K. died of multiple organ failure after weeding and hoeing near aconite plants. I will often hold a plant steady with one hand while taking a photo with the other hand on windy days but not this plant.

Monkshood plants can stand a lot of cold so it is often one of the last to bloom in this area. The flowers are quite unusual and very pretty but it should only be grown where there are no children present, in my opinion. Knowledge of its dangers and always working around it with gloves on means anyone can grow it. If you do it will certainly be a conversation starter. Just think, you could tell friends how the Roman Agrippina hired Locusta to poison the emperor Claudius I in 54 AD. It is said that Locusta chose aconite to do the deed.

I saw some oak leaves with odd patterns on them. Whether made by insects or caused by nutrient deficiency, I don’t know. There is an insect, a leaf miner I think, which eats all the soft tissue of an oak leaf, leaving just the ribs and a net like skeleton leaf behind.

Some of these photos weren’t used in other posts for whatever reason. One of them is this misty morning visit to the wetlands when the maples were still colorful.

I saw more dewy spider webs on that visit. It’s hard to believe how many large webs are in these trees. This one was about the size of a basketball and I’d say on average that would be the size of most of them.

The colors have been beautiful this year but they’ve also been drawn out because of the warm weather. Everyone I meet seems to have an opinion about what a strange year it has been weather-wise.

The staghorn sumac colors have been amazing this year. The reds especially have been intense. Red is often a tough color for cameras to reproduce accurately but I think this is a fair representation.

Except for the deep purples of ash and oak I can’t think of a single fall leaf color that isn’t represented here in this scene from the wetlands. They’re all there and how beautiful they are when they’re all together in this way. It can take your breath away sometimes.

This is another scene from the wetlands that I like very much. All summer long I thought it would be beautiful in the fall because of the maples, and it was.

In the past the photos I’ve taken of poplars (Aspens) in the fall have almost always been soft and impressionistic as if they had been drawn with pastels, but these trees in the foreground seemed a bit loud to me. In shape and in leaf color poplars look a lot like birches from a distance. Only the gray bark tells the story. Most birches in this area growing in large colonies like that seen here are gray birches, which have white bark.

This is why I call this place the wetlands. The road I walk on was built through a swamp and there is water all along the roadsides. There is abundant life in a swamp and this is an excellent way to stay dry while seeing it.

I’m not sure where else I’d see autumn meadowhawks still flying in November. They were everywhere yesterday, resting in the sunshine. This one landed on a stump right in front of me and I had to wonder if they could read minds. I also saw lots of bluebirds on this day but I couldn’t get any of them to pose.

I was surprised to see a few pickerel weed flowers blooming in the wetlands after all others in various places had gone to seed. I have to say that this spot is a real jewel, with an abundance of birds, animals, insects, and interesting plants and wildflowers. There’s really no telling what you’ll see on any given day and I’m very happy to have finally discovered it, right there alongside the Keene Airport of all places. The level, paved road is easy to walk but there are plenty of places where you can leave it and explore the forest.

It was there in the wetlands that I saw the fall colors of tall meadow rue for the first time. This plant always blooms just at or before July 4th with flowers that look like bursts of fireworks. The “tall” part of its common name is very true; I’ve seen it reach over seven feet.

Since we had snow flurries as I was writing parts of this post I’ll end it with a white aster. We’ve also had our first freeze, almost a month late and coming before the first frost that should have happened in mid-September. Oh well, since a friend in Michigan reported 10 inches of snow on Halloween I don’t think we have anything to complain about.

An autumn forest is such a place that once entered you never look for the exit. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for coming by.

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Just Weeds

In the last post I said that the plants I showed there weren’t the kind you would find just kicking around on the side of the road, but in this post these plants are exactly what you will find on the side of the road. They’re called weeds, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t beautiful. Just look at the crown vetch seen above. I’ve said here before that if I (as an engineer) were to design a flower, I couldn’t come up with one as simple, pure, and beautiful as this. It’s considered invasive now but it was originally imported to be used to stabilize embankments, and I see it still being used in that way today.

The crown vetch in the previous photo is a legume, in the same family as a pea or a bean, and you can tell that by the shape of the flower. I could bury us in botanical speak but the only thing to really know to identify a legume is that their flowers have a standard and a keel. The standard in this case is the half round part with the dark lines on it and the keel pokes out at us from the lower middle part of the standard. That’s really all you need to know to identify a legume when it is flowering. The reproductive parts are inside the boat shaped keel, and that’s why you see insects trying to pry it open. Sometimes “wings” can appear on either side of the keel, but not always. Just scroll back and forth between the crown vetch and bird’s foot trefoil and you’ll see that the flowers closely resemble each other.

Or, you can just ignore all of the above and simply enjoy them. My knowing what their names are and how they function doesn’t mean I can love them any more deeply than someone who knows nothing about them. In fact, carrying around a sack full of botanical baggage can at times get in the way of seeing a flower for what it truly is, which is simply one of the many ways that nature expresses itself.

Now come the lupines, which are also legumes. I’m not sure what has gotten into our lupines this year. I’ve never seen them stand so straight and tall. In the past this group, which grows on a roadside embankment, has been much shorter and almost deformed. It must be the rain. It’s easy to see what a year of below average rainfall is like when you have a year of average rainfall to compare it with. After two summers of drought this month we’ve had at least some rain for 22 out of 30 days, and though that’s above average we’re seeing plants respond well, without any symptoms of over watering. Historically, we average about an inch per week.

I like the crepe paper appearance of mallow petals but I don’t see them very often. I know of only two places where they grow beside the road. I know nothing about how they can grow wild in such a limited way, but I have a feeling the plants I know must be garden escapees. Other well-known plants in this family include hibiscus, hollyhocks, and rose of Sharon; all plants with large flowers like this plant has.

But this plant, a dwarf mallow, has flowers that are only about an inch across. I found a few plants growing near the foundation of an old mill building last year and though the maintenance man weed whacks the place regularly he can’t keep them down.

Though spreading dogbane doesn’t look like a milkweed it is in the same family and if you cut its stem you’ll see the same white, sticky sap come oozing out. Milkweeds are notorious for trapping unwary insects and I’ve seen plenty trapped by dogbane. The pretty little fragrant, pink striped flowers might be the diameter of an aspirin at their opening. Native Americans pounded the stems and made a strong thread from the tough fibers which they used to make nets for hunting rabbits, among other things. I find the plants growing in clearings and the shaded edges of forests. It prefers partial shade.

I like to see flowering grasses and I’ve admired them for many years but I didn’t recognize this one so I had to look it up. It’s called wheat grass and though I’m sure I must have seen it hundreds of times, it seems new to me. Its bright yellow flowers mean it stands out from any surrounding vegetation.

The name “Jack go to bed at noon” taught me to watch for goat’s beard flowers in the morning, because all you’ll find is closed buds in the afternoon. I can think of a few flowers that have similar quirks; marsh St. Johnswort won’t open unless it is in full sunshine, which is often about 3:00 pm. Goat’s beard isn’t really common here and I only know of one place to find it. The flowers are followed by huge, spherical seed heads that look like giant dandelion seed heads. They always seem cartoonish like a child’s drawing, and they make me smile.

Golden hop clover is another legume. It’s a small plant that might reach ankle high on a good day and, since bird’s foot trefoil blossoms at the same time, it’s an easy plant to miss. But the flowers make it worth taking a closer look; this one’s inner light was so bright it actually lit up the underside of the leaf beside it. This is another invasive plant that was imported on purpose in 1800 to be used as a pasture crop. It now appears in most states on the east and west coasts, and much of Canada, but it is not generally considered aggressively invasive. Each pretty yellow flower head is packed with golden yellow pea-like flowers. I see it growing close enough to roadsides to be run over, and in sandy waste areas as well.

Though some plants in the nightshade family are edible, others are highly poisonous. The bittersweet nightshade in the above photo falls somewhere in between. Even toxic plants can have medicinal value if used in a certain way and this one has been used since ancient times. These days it is used to treat ringworm, skin diseases and even asthma. If its flowers are pollinated the plant will have small, shiny, bright red berries that look like tiny Roma tomatoes in late summer, and they are why the plant can be dangerous. The berries at first taste bitter and are usually immediately spit out but if kept in the mouth before long their taste becomes sweet, and that’s where the name bittersweet comes from. I remember as a boy I could never get past the strange foul odor the plant has, so I was never tempted by its berries. Bruising it in any way releases this odor and it’s a real stinker, with an odor that can be detected from a few feet away.

As this arrowwood shows, viburnums are still blooming. But their time is almost done, just in time for the native dogwoods to start blooming. The simplest way to know which is which is to look closely at the flowers. Viburnum flowers have five petals and dogwoods have four petals. One thing distinctive about arrowwood that separates it from other viburnums is its leaf’s shape and shine. 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 as food.

I was just reading that insects prefer a single, rather than a double flower because they don’t have to work as hard to get at what they want, and after looking at a single rose I can believe it. A single flowered rose is defined as having four to eight petals per flower. A double flowered rose has seventeen to twenty five petals, according to the American Rose Society. This flower says “here I am” and there is hardly any work involved in getting at its reproductive parts. We have three native roses and a few others which are garden escapees, so roses are one of those flowers that are easy to stumble upon.

This particular bush had so many bumblebees on it they were bumping into my arms as I tried to get a shot of a flower and I remembered how my son as a boy of probably five or six, was convinced that bumblebees couldn’t sting. One day he caught one and closed his hand around it and found that they could indeed sting. Luckily on this day they were too busy to bother with me.

Multiflora rose is a common small flowered rose from China that is seen just about everywhere, and that’s because it is very invasive. Birds eat the small, bright red hips and plant it everywhere. I’ve seen it climb 30 feet up into trees but it doesn’t climb with tendrils like a grape, or by twining itself around trees like oriental bittersweet. It just winds its way through the branches of surrounding shrubs and trees and uses them to prop itself up. It’s all about getting the most sunlight, and this one is an expert at it.

Though multiflora rose is one of the most invasive plants we have in this part of the country it’s also highly fragrant and I’ve always loved smelling it as I walked along rail trails. You wouldn’t think that a flower only an inch across could pack so much scent but they do, and walking by a bush full of them in June is something you don’t forget right away. The trouble in controlling this rose comes by way of its very numerous, sharp thorns and extremely long branches. Cutting just one full grown plant and pulling all of its branches out of the surrounding vegetation can take the better part of a day, and then you still have to dig the stump. By the time you’re done you’ve almost filled a pickup truck. That’s just one plant, and there are many thousands of them. That’s a good reason to pull them when they’re just getting started. Late November after the leaves have fallen is the best time to do it. But not without gloves!

Partridgeberries are ground huggers; they couldn’t grow any closer to the ground than they do, so you’re always looking down at the flowers. Looking down you don’t see how hairy they are, so to see their hairiness as you see it in the photo you have to become a ground hugger too. The tiny flowers blossom in pairs and share a single ovary, so any time you find a pea size red berry on a ground hugging plant you can check to see if it’s a partridge berry by looking for two dimples. The dimples show where the flowers grew. If the berry has no dimples it is probably an American wintergreen berry, also called a teaberry, and its strong wintergreen scent should give it away. My favorite part of a partridge berry plant is its leaves, which look like hammered metal.

Heal all is recorded in the histories of several countries before travel was recorded, so nobody seems to agree on where it originated. The name heal all comes from the way that it has been used medicinally for centuries on nearly every continent to cure virtually any ailment one can name. It is also known as self-heal and is still used today for healing wounds, throat ailments, and inflammation. Several major universities are researching its possible use in the treatment of breast and liver cancer, diabetes, and other serious illnesses. Native Americans used the plant as a food and also medicinally, treating bruises, cuts, sore throats, and other ailments. I often find it in mowed lawns or along roadsides and I call them nature’s cheerleaders, because the small purple flowers always seem to be shouting Yay! Just look how happy they are; always smiling.

St. John’s wort gets its common name from the way that it flowers near June 24th, which is St. Johns day, and that’s just what it did this year. Originally from Europe, the two foot tall plants with bright yellow flower clusters can be found in meadows, waste places, and along roadsides, growing in full sun. Man has had a close relationship with the plant for thousands of years; 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. It is still used today to treat depression, sleeping disorders, anxiety, and other issues.

Sulfur cinquefoil is a rough looking, knee high plant that grows in waste places and on the edges of corn fields where few people ever go, but its heart shaped, butter yellow petals are quite beautiful, in my opinion. They have that deeper yellow center that always makes them seem to shine like the summer sun.

Flowers can come with some very powerful memories and one of the most powerful for me comes with black eyed Susans. My first thought as soon as I see it is “fall” no matter when it blooms, and that thought always seems to come with a touch of melancholy, especially when it comes in June. This year thanks to this plant I was thinking of fall even before summer had officially arrived. None of this means I don’t like the plant; I think its flowers are very pretty, especially those with a splash of maroon on the petals. I suppose if life wasn’t occasionally tinged with a little sadness then joy wouldn’t seem so precious, but someday I’m going to have to sit with this one and ask “why do you do this to me?’

Shy little wood sorrel barely reaches your boot tops and its pretty flowers often hide behind its leaves so you have to do a bit of hunting if you want to see them. Heavy rain had dirtied the face of this one a bit but we can still see its beautiful stripes and the yellow spot on each petal. I always have to smile when I see the spots because they look as if they were painted on as an afterthought, there only to attract insects. The plant likes shady, moist places. I’ve only found it in only two places so I couldn’t say it was common, but it’s out there.

Yarrow is a common roadside weed now considered by many to be the lowest of the low, but it was once so valuable it was traded throughout the world, and today it is found on almost every continent on earth. It is mentioned in the Chinese I Ching, which is said to pre date recorded history, and has been found in excavations of neanderthal graves. It was a valuable healing herb; one of the nine “holy herbs,” and was known as the soldier’s woundwort and herbe militaris for centuries; used even during the American civil war to stop the flow of blood. Native Americans knew it well and used it for everything from snake bites to deodorant. Once so highly prized throughout the known world by emperors, healers, and sages, today people don’t even pretend to try to not run it over when they park their cars on the roadside.

Roadside weeds aren’t special things or magic things, but they are things that can put just a little magic into everyday life and help make it a little more special. They ask for nothing but bring pleasure, and help us slow down so we can get our share of life’s beauty in full measure. There is more than enough to go around, so we might as well see all we can. Just walk along a roadside and see if they don’t put a smile on your face.

I almost forgot to include fireworks in honor of Independence Day. Nature’s fireworks that is, in the form of tall meadow rue. I’ve always thought that the orange tipped male flowers, which always appear on or near the 4th, looked just like exploding fireworks. I hope everyone who wants to, gets to see the real thing this year. It’s looking like a chance of showers here this year but as I remember it there was almost always a chance of showers when firework displays were involved.

Take the time to observe the simple and ponder upon the seemingly insignificant. You’ll find a wealth of depth and beauty. ~Melanie Charlene

Thanks for stopping in. I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th!

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From a Wildflower Walk in July

Toward the end of July I took a walk along the Ashuelot River in Keene, looking for wildflowers. Since I didn’t have writing a blog post in mind at that time, I never took a shot of the river or the trail I followed. My thoughts were on the wildflowers that grow here, and there are many. It’s a good place to find flowers that like to be constantly moist, like the American water horehound (Lycopus americanus) in the above photo. These common plants often have deep maroon foliage like that seen here, which is quite pretty. The tiny bell-shaped flowers form a ring around the square stem in the leaf axils.

American water horehound is very similar to northern water horehound, but that plant’s flowers have five lobes instead of four. The pretty little flowers are some of the most challenging to get a good photo of and it often takes me several attempts. The plant grows in roadside ditches and along the shores of ponds and rivers, where it can keep its feet wet. The hard brown seeds are eaten by waterfowl and Native Americans used the small tuberous roots for food.

The round, inch diameter flower clusters of button bush shrubs (Cephalanthus occidentalis) dotted the shoreline. The fragrant, long white, tubular flowers each have an even longer style that makes the whole flower head look like a spiky pincushion. Flowers are often tinged by a bit of brown when I see them but these were in fine, fresh condition. Once pollinated the flower heads become hard brown/ reddish seed heads made up of small, two seeded nutlets that are a favorite of ducks and shore birds. According to the USDA, Native Americans used concoctions made from the bark of buttonbush to relieve headaches, rheumatism, and other ailments, and chewed it to relieve toothaches. I wonder if it has the same aspirin like compounds in it that willow bark has.

Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) always says midsummer to me, though it has a fairly long blooming season. It loves shaded, damp places and under the right conditions can form huge colonies.

This jewelweed blossom had a bee inside, and it didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get out. A pollen eater, maybe?

Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) is hard to miss with its clear white, swept back petals. Each plant reaches about two feet and usually grows right at the edge of taller vegetation. Flowers have 5 petals and 10 stamens. Its unusual name comes from the way its leaves contain natural soaps called saponins. When the leaves are crushed and scrubbed together in water a soapy lather will appear. In the past this plant was used for washing clothes and making soap. It is originally from Europe and is considered toxic. It grows along the riverbank only in the sunniest places.

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) gets its name from being very sensitive to frost but there is no frost in July so I’m not sure what triggered the change in this one. Maybe it was just tired of trying to flourish in a drought.

Tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) also called an early end to summer. Sometimes this plant will fool people into thinking they’ve found wild columbine. Also, on occasion its leaves will change to a beautiful deep purple in fall. Though this one was a ground hugger I’ve seen them that towered over my head.

Tall white rattlesnake root (Prenanthes trifoliate) grows all along the side of the trail that follows the river. They bloomed early this year; I usually think of them as a fall or very late summer flower. Plants have a waxy, reddish stem which helps in identification when it isn’t in bloom. Leaf size and shape can vary greatly from plant to plant, so it can be a tough one to figure out unless it is blooming.

Once tall white rattlesnake blooms it is unmistakable. There is no other plant that I know of that has small, drooping white, lily like blossoms in late summer. The half inch flowers appear in clusters at the end of branched stems that can reach 5 or 6 feet in some cases, and have forked stamens that are longer than the petals. The flowers move at just a hint of a breeze, so they can be difficult to get a good photo of. This plant is also called gall of the earth because of how bitter the root tastes. These roots were once made into a very bitter tonic that was used to (allegedly) cure snake bites, and that’s where its other common name comes from.

I had to stop and admire the beautiful deep pink buds of Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum.) This plant doesn’t have a strong presence along this part of the river but I see them here and there. I’ve always thought its buds were as beautiful as its flowers.

Slender fragrant goldenrod (Solidago tenuifolia) grows just about anywhere and is very common. It is similar to lance leaved goldenrod but the two can be told apart by leaf veining; slender fragrant goldenrod has only one vein running down the center of each leaf and lance leaved goldenrod has several veins. Other common names are sweet goldenrod, wound weed, Blue Mountain tea, sweet-scented goldenrod, anise-scented goldenrod, and true goldenrod. Goldenrods like dry, sunny places and don’t mind sandy soil so the drought didn’t really bother them. This native grows much shorter than most goldenrods; usually about knee high.

There are 2 or 3 small lobelias with small blue / purple flowers that grow here, but though the flowers look alike the plants themselves have very different growth habits, and that makes them easy to identify. This lobelia is called Indian tobacco (Lobelia inflata) and the small flowers are about 1/3 of an inch long. It is the only lobelia with calyxes that inflate after the flowers have fallen and to identify it, I just look for the inflated seedpods.

These pretty, tiny flowers have to be pollinated by small insects, and bees such as sweat bees are perfect for the job. Once pollinated tiny, dust like seeds will form in the inflated seed pods in the fall. Eventually they will blow on the wind.

Allegheny monkey flowers (Mimulus ringens) grew here sparingly this year. Though there are 150 species of monkey flower worldwide, this is not a plant that I would expect to see large colonies of. I’ve learned to expect just a few.  I’ve never seen a monkey in one, but someone did. According to the University of Connecticut “The so-called Monkey Flowers in the genus Mimulus got their name because their flowers have a mouth-like shape, and to some they resemble the face of a monkey.” Oh well, I don’t see turtles when I look at turtlehead flowers either.

A blue damsel fly perched on a leaf just long enough for a couple of quick shots.

I was happy to find the small white blossoms of marsh bellflowers (Campanula aparinoides) here and there among the taller plants. This plant is a wetland indicator species and, in this spot, it grows right at the very edge of the river bank, so you have to be careful if you don’t want a dunking. Though perennial they, along with all with all the other plants in this photo, come and go according to conditions. Last year all of this was completely underwater and there wasn’t a flower to be seen, so this was only the second time I’ve ever seen them. They are rare in my experience and I don’t know a lot about them.

I do know that each bell-shaped flower is about the diameter of an aspirin, and a single flower dangles at the end of a wire like stem that can be up to three feet long. They don’t climb or cling but instead just tangle their way through other plant stems. They aren’t easy to get a photo of. As any painter knows, you can’t paint white snow on a white canvas; you need darkness before you can show light. This also applies to photography, and I had to twist myself in knots to get just the right amount of darkness behind this tiny flower. Background reflections of white clouds on the river made it almost disappear, so I was very happy when I got home and saw that I had the only useable photos I’ve ever taken of this rare flower. It is its simplicity that makes it beautiful, I think. I’ve read that they also come in very pale blue and I’d love to see those as well.

I’ll never believe that beauty can only be found in special places, where we must stand in line to see it. Great beauty can be found anywhere at any time, often in simple, uncomplicated places where there is nothing to do or to think about, like here along the river. Many landscape artists and photographers whose paintings and photos hang in galleries and museums come to places like this to find the beauty they want to capture. If you can’t afford to fly off to a museum or gallery to see a reproduction or representation of the beauty of life, why not walk through the real thing instead?

Beauty is not hidden. It is right there in plain sight for all to see, and all we have to do is notice it. The more we pay attention to it, the more we’ll see. It’s in the curl of a leaf, or the colorful gravel in a stream bed, or the carved hieroglyphics of bark beetles. It’s always there no matter where you look, and giving it our attention helps us realize what a great gift we’ve been given. This leads to gratitude and gratitude brings empathy and compassion, and they in turn fill our hearts with a love for all life.

Just as, when you look into the eyes of another human being you get a glimpse of their soul…
So also when you look deeply into the heart of a flower you get a glimpse into the soul of the earth. ~Rudolf Steiner

Thanks for stopping in.

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Late June Flowers

It wouldn’t be summer without black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia) and here they are, right on schedule. I’ve noticed over the past few years though, that they have seemed to bloom earlier each year and what was once July has now become June. Since I’ve always thought of them as a fall flower, their early arrival always comes with mixed feelings. Cheery yes, but let’s not rush into fall, has been my main gripe. At least this year they waited a bit.

This plant was always believed to have been given its common name by English colonists, but that caused a real conundrum among botanists who all agreed that it was a prairie native. Though everyone still agrees that it is a prairie native, recent research has shown that it was growing in Maryland in the 1600s. In other words it was most likely growing in all parts of the country then, just as it does today.

One day probably 40 years ago a kind man who was the director of the MacDowell artist’s colony in Peterborough at the time told me if I could name the plants that made up his hedge, he’d hire me as his gardener. I got the job, and I think of him and that day we stood on his lawn every time I see a purple flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus.) It is in the rose family and at a glance you might think you were seeing a rose, until you saw the big maple shaped, light gathering leaves that allow it to grow in shade. The 2 inch diameter flowers always look like they need ironing, so that’s another hint that what you’re seeing isn’t a rose

Our native dogwoods are starting to bloom and I think this one is a gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa). Gray dogwoods are large shrubs that can get 12-15 feet tall and at least as wide. Its flowers become white, single seeded berries (drupes) on red stems (pedicels) that are much loved by many different birds. Most of our native dogwoods like soil that is constantly moist and can be found along the edges of ponds, rivers, and streams.

Shrub dogwoods can be difficult to identify at times but gray dogwood flowers clusters tend to mound up in the center enough to appear triangular, and other dogwoods have flower clusters that are much flatter. Both gray and red osier dogwoods (Cornus sericea) have white berries. Silky Dogwood (Cornus amomum) has berries that start white, have a period of blue and white, and then finally ripen to blue.

One of my favorite “weeds” is crown vetch (Securigera varia). It is in the pea family and was imported from Europe and Asia for soil erosion control. The long, wiry vines can be found along roadsides and in fields, and I’ve even found it in forest clearings. This plant is toxic and has killed horses, so you might want to watch along roadsides before you let your horse stop for a snack.

Crown vetch is very beautiful, in my opinion. Each flower head looks like a bouquet of orchids. All flowers make me glad I’ve found them but some go beyond that and absorb all that I am for a time, and this is one of those. It’s such a beautiful place to get lost in.

I found knapweed growing near the crown vetch, which seems right considering it was also imported to stop soil erosion on roadsides. That’s where it grew in great numbers, but the plants had just started blooming. I think this is brown knapweed (Centaurea jacea) but I could be wrong. The plant is very invasive in some states but this particular colony of plants has been here for years and really hasn’t grown any larger.

Since they grew in a small weed patch in back of our house hedge bindweeds (Calystegia sepium) have been with me my entire life, but not this one. The ones I grew up with were pure white, but now most of those I see are pink and white like this one. It doesn’t really matter what color it is though because these blooms are in my genes. They played a large part in my lifelong love of flowers. I’d watch them open, watch which insects visited them and how they twined around the other plants, and for a while it seemed that I knew them better than I knew myself. That’s why I often call a flower or plant an old friend; because they really are.

St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) on the other hand, is a plant that I can’t call an old friend because I never saw it until I became a gardener and started working over in Peterborough. Just 20 miles away they had it, but we here in Keene didn’t, or at least I never saw it. It seems to be one of those plants which, like pokeweed,  just kind of snuck in unnoticed but are now everywhere you go. I’m sure if they had been here when I was a boy I would have seen such a pretty flower. I got around, always in a ditch or pond or meadow somewhere, and I was always watching for new plants.

Tall thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana) gets its common name from the way its seed head grows into a shape and size that resembles a thimble. It’s a pretty flower that isn’t real common here, but I do see it now and then. They are about and inch across and are easy to miss once the white sepals have fallen off. Eventually they’ll release white cottony seeds to the wind. I’ve read that Native Americans burned the seed heads to revive the unconscious, but I don’t know how true it is. Like all plants in the anemone family it is toxic and can burn the mouth and throat if eaten.

I saw more lupines blooming beautifully on a roadside, along with many other flowers.

A smooth rose (Rosa blanda) grew by a road that ran through a cemetery. It is a native rose with almost thornless stems. It’s very pretty and has a nice fragrance, and I would have liked it in my yard.

Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) is a plant I haven’t seen for probably 40 years or more but I found this one in a public garden recently. It’s a very pretty flower that reminds me of an ox-eye daisy but it is much smaller. According to Mount Sanai hospital “This member of the daisy family has been used for centuries to treat headaches, arthritis, and problems with labor and childbirth. Ancient Greek physicians used it to reduce inflammation and treat menstrual cramps. Although it was once used to treat fevers, as its name suggests, it was not very effective. It is now used to prevent migraine headaches, and several scientific studies suggest that it works well for that purpose.” I’m always fascinated by the uses plants have but I’m even more fascinated by how the use was discovered. How do you reach the point where you say well, this plant has a nasty odor and tastes bitter and might kill me, but I have the worst headache I’ve ever had so I’m going to make tea out of it? There are very many plants (and fungi) which could make that cup of tea the last one a person ever had. Did they draw straws? Short straw gets to drink?

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) is another plant that can cure or kill. Or at least, the compounds in it can. I’ve had the plant in my gardens forever and it has never hurt a fly. It’s all in how you use them, and if you happen to have cardiac arrhythmia, the digoxin made from the plant could save your life. Digitalis  means finger-like and speaks of the shape of the flowers. I’ve read that herbalists used to, back in the 1700s, pick and dry the leaves and then rub them down into a fine green powder, which could then be used in an infusion to treat many ailments. But I wouldn’t play around with doing that, because it is a very toxic plant that has been known to kill. I just watch the colony that I have in the back yard grow each year and enjoy seeing them. Sometimes I even stick my finger in one, just to see if it fits.

Whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia) is our second native yellow loosestrife to bloom, coming right on the heels of swamp candles. At about a foot tall it isn’t much taller than swamp candles but it is bushier. This plant doesn’t have as much of a need for water as swamp candles but I’ve seen it near water occasionally. Its common name comes from the way its leaves are whorled about the stem, meaning each group of four leaves all radiate about the stem in the same plane. If you picture looking at the edge of a plate while holding it parallel to the floor, that is what you see with whorled leaves. Four small yellow flowers grow out of the four leaf axils. It’s a pretty plant, especially when massed as they often are.

The old orange “ditch lilies” (Hemerocallis fulva) have come into bloom. This daylily is so common I see it everywhere I go, including in roadside ditches, and that’s where the common name comes from. It is one of those plants that were passed from neighbor to neighbor and spread quickly because of it. Today it is one of those plants that new homeowners go out and dig up when they can’t afford to buy plants for their gardens. It was introduced into the United States from Asia in the late 1800s for use as an ornamental and plant breeders have now registered over 40,000 cultivars, all of which have “ditch lily” genes.

Just after I said that I never saw mock orange (Philadelphus) anymore I saw one on the roadside. This is a very old-fashioned shrub that gets its common name from its wonderful fragrance, which smells like citrus. No yard should be without one in my opinion, but it seems to have fallen out of favor. I have a huge old example that bloomed beautifully but I had to move it and all it has done since is sulked. Normally they are a care free, plant it and forget it kind of shrub that can give many years of pleasure without asking for anything in return.

I’ve wondered for years now whether this campion is a true rose campion or if it is a white campion (Silene latifolia) with a pink blush. I’m fairly certain it is a blushing white campion but I’ve never really known for sure. In either case it’s a pretty flower.

I saw a scabiosa blooming in a local garden, trying to entice insects. It’s a busy but beautiful thing.

Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) is also called creeping thistle, but it is also called cursed thistle, mainly because of its deep and extensive creeping root system. The plant is nearly impossible to eradicate once it gains a foothold and for that reason it is considered a noxious weed in many states. It isn’t considered invasive here in New Hampshire but it is on the watch list. Wherever I’ve found them growing, they haven’t spread at all. I think the flowers are pretty, but I’m not the one trying to dig them out of my pasture.

I saw one of the smallest violas I’ve ever seen. It couldn’t have been any bigger than an aspirin, and it had just a blush of blue on it.

These are some roadside flowers that caught my eye. They are all lowly weeds and none is native but if you can put all that aside and just love them for what they are you’ll enjoy the outdoors a lot more.

Finally, because I won’t get another flower post in before the 4th of July, I thought I’d show you some of nature’s fireworks in the form of flowers. The male blossoms of tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) always remind me of “bombs bursting in air.” I hope everyone will have a safe and happy 4th.

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness. ~Michelangelo

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Searching for Bellflowers

Last Saturday I walked along the Ashuelot River in Keene, hoping to find some marsh bellflowers. As this photo shows, I sure found plenty of pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata.) Beautiful ribbons of it lined the banks. They are probably why I see so many ducks and geese here. Ducks eat the seeds and geese eat the leaves.

The water was about as high as it gets thanks to some very heavy rain throughout the month of July. Another foot or so higher and in places it would have been over the trail.

Luckily most of the trail stays high and dry but I found the side trail I needed to use to see the marsh bellflowers was under about 6 inches of water, so I couldn’t get to them or the mad dog skullcap plants that live there. With my lungs I can’t be falling into rivers. I doubt I could swim ten strokes.

I did see a buttonbush shrub (Cephalanthus occidentalis) up to its neck in water but it was blooming. I know another plant along the river in Swanzey that is sometimes under water when the river is high, but it doesn’t seem to bother it.

The small flowers of tall blue lettuce (Lactuca biennis) are more white than blue this year from what I’ve seen so far. This plant has an odd look, sometimes reaching ten feet tall with flowers hardly bigger than a pencil eraser at the very top. Luckily this flower was just about at eye level, because the stalks of this plant don’t take kindly to being bent. They’ll often snap right in two.

I’ve seen thousands of Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum) buds this year but not a single flower yet. That’s okay with me though, because I’ve always thought the buds were as pretty as the flowers. They seem to have a deeper color.

There is a bumper crop of blueberries this year. The bushes are loaded with berries anywhere I go so all the critters will be happy. I’ve noticed that the birds aren’t paying much attention to them yet though.

Fringed loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) grew here and there but it doesn’t seem to be doing well along this trail this year. The plants looked a bit weak and kind of ragged.

I saw quite a lot of Indian cucumber root (Medeola virginiana) plants along the trail but this was the only one I saw with fruit. After a time these green berries will become deep, purple-black. And then they’ll disappear. I think turkeys get them before anyone else. A good healthy plant can stand just about as tall as a turkey’s eye is from the ground.

As I say every year; spring and fall begin on the forest floor. This Indian cucumber root illustrates what I mean.

“But it’s only August,” you say. “Surely the Indian cucumber root was a fluke?” Unfortunately, that argument can’t stand; this tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) also whispered hints of fall.

And so did this sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis.) Soon all of the squirrels and chipmunks will be gathering their nuts and seeds. Who needs a calendar?

I couldn’t decide which was prettier, this royal fern or its shadow, so I took a photo of both.

A depression in the woods was filled with water but the water had a strange cloudy film on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before and I can’t imagine what caused it, way off in the woods like it was. It wasn’t oily and it didn’t look like dust. I thought of mushroom spores but it would have taken a lot of mushrooms to do this.

Clubmosses also release spores that float on water but not this one. It looked like it was finished. An interesting thing about clubmoss spores is how, if you fill a glass with water and cover the surface of the water with spores, when you stick your finger in the water and pull it out again it will be covered in spores but will be perfectly dry. Clubmoss spores are waxy and hydrophobic, which means resistant to water. They are also extremely flammable, and once made up the flash powder used to create the flash photographers used to take a photo.

The oak tree that the beavers girdled is done. I don’t know why beavers do this to trees and then leave them standing. After all, the succulent buds and branches are a big reason why they cut trees.

There won’t be any buds on this tree, and the branches will be dry. There wasn’t a leaf on them. Soon the dead branches will begin to fall, and they’re right above the trail.

It’s really too bad that beavers don’t eat Canada mayflowers, because there are many thousands of them on the floor of any forest I visit. They’re a native plant but they act like an invasive plant by creating monocultures that keep other plants from growing. I’ve seen huge stands of nothing but Canada mayflower. And may heaven help you if they get into your garden. Those speckled berries will be bright red and ripe soon, and they’ll disappear quickly.

The closed or bottle gentians (Gentiana linearis) that grow in one spot along the trail looked to be in good shape. Narrow leaf and closed gentian flowers look identical, so you have to look at the leaves carefully to tell the difference. Closed gentian leaves are wider and have a different overall shape than those of narrow leaf gentian. This plant is relatively rare in this area.

And there was the bridge. It crosses what is usually a small stream but on this day the water was licking at its sides. The water level in the river hasn’t dropped much and we’ve had more rain since that day, so I hope it hasn’t washed away.

This photo from last year shows the marsh bellflower (Campanula aparinoides) I came to see. I hoped to get some better shots of the flowers but that probably won’t happen this year without a boat, because it just keeps on raining. Luckily this plant is a perennial so unless the entire riverbank where it grows washes away, I should be able to find it next year. I can’t say how rare it is but I’ve never seen it anywhere but here in this one spot, and I’ve been walking these riverbanks for over 50 years.

Pleasure is spread through the earth in stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find them. ~William Wordsworth

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A Favorite Rail Trail

On a recent hot, humid day I thought a rail trail might be a rather effortless walk so I chose one I knew well. When I started walking here some 50+ years ago trains ran through what now looks like a jungle. The railroad would never have put up with so much growth on the sides of the railbed of course, but I kind of like it this way. I was to find out that a little bit of everything grows here now, and the time spent here was full of discovery. This trail has become popular with bicyclists and I was passed by quite a few.

I saw lots of hazelnuts (Corylus americana.) Hazelnuts are a common sight along our rail trails but they have good years and bad years and more often than not there are no nuts on the bushes. On this day though, they were everywhere.

If you turn the nut cluster and look at the back you can see and feel the unripe nuts inside. There were four in this cluster.

Fringed loosestrife grew in shaded places along the trail. Note how virtually every flower nods toward the ground. As far as I know this is the only one of our yellow loosestrifes with this habit. Whorled loosestrife looks identical at a glance, but its flowers face outward.

A vine I never saw when I was a boy and saw only in one spot just a few years ago is spreading enough so now I’m seeing it almost everywhere I go. It is the smooth carrion flower vine (Smilax herbacea.) This native, non woody vine gets its common name from the strong odor of its flowers. There are both male and female plants, and they usually grow near each other.

The flowers of the smooth carrion flower vine become dark blue berries that birds love and I would guess that accounts for it quickly spreading from place to place as it has. The berries on this vine were still green but I would guess that they’ll be ripe by the end of July.   

Common mullein surprised me by growing along the trail. I’ve always wondered if the railroad didn’t spray some type of herbicide along the tracks because you never would have found plants like mullein growing here back when the trains ran. There were an awful lot of raspberries and blackberries back then though, but now all I see are canes with no berries. Raspberries and blackberries bear fruit only on second year canes so I’m guessing the young canes I’ve seen here are being cut. Possibly by a snowmobile trail improvement crew.

Smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) grew all along the trail and had large flower heads all ready to bloom. You can see how smooth and hairless its stems are in this photo. They are also a bluish color when young. This is another plant I don’t remember ever seeing here when I was a boy.

Here is a smooth sumac flower, just opened. They are so small I really doubted that I’d be able to get a useable photo of them. They look quite complicated for such a small thing.

While smooth sumac was just starting to bloom staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) had already formed fruit. I didn’t know that sumac berries went from green to pink before they became red.

Some of the things I remember most about this place when I was a boy are the cornfields, most of which are still here. More or less; last years drought killed off the young corn plants and for the first time that I can remember there was no corn growing here. This year in spring I came out here and found wheat growing in this field, as far as the eye could see. Wheat? I didn’t know what that was all about but they’ve cut all the wheat and are leaving this part of the field fallow, apparently. Off in the distance you can just make out corn growing, about a third of the way up in this photo. Why they didn’t plant the whole field I don’t know but the corn that is there was knee high by the fourth of July, and that’s perfect.

Here is the wheat I found a couple of months ago. It is actually triticale according to Google lens, which is a hybrid of wheat (Triticum) and rye (​Secale) first developed in laboratories during the late 19th century in Scotland and Germany. If the word triticale (trit-ih-KAY-lee) rings a bell you might have seen an original Star Trek episode called “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Everyone knew what triticale was except captain Kirk, and the tribbles ate all the poisoned triticale and saved the day.

I kept taking photos of the trail because I couldn’t believe how jungle like it has become. I dreamed of being a plant hunter in the world’s jungles when I was young, so I would have loved this. Back then though, this corridor was at least twice as wide.

There are things to watch out for in any jungle and on this day it was stinging nettle (Urtica dioica.) The Urtica part of the scientific name comes from the Latin uro, which means “I burn.” The hollow stinging hairs on the leaves and stems are called trichomes and act like hypodermic needles, injecting histamine and other chemicals that cause the stinging.

Buttery little sulfur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta) likes waste places and disturbed ground so I wasn’t really too surprised to see it here. I was surprised that it got enough sunlight to bloom though.

Tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) bloomed weakly. Since it starts blooming in June I was surprised to see any flowers at all. I took this shot this way specifically so you could see the plant’s leaves. In early spring a lot of people confuse this plant with wild columbine, though the leaves are quite different.

What surprised me more than anything else I saw was a Canada lily (Lilium canadense) blooming beside the trail. This is something I would have remembered had I seen them here years ago. These plants are one of our biggest wildflowers. They can reach 7 feet tall and have as many as 10 flowers dangling chandelier like from long petioles. This plant only had 2 blossoms and I think it was because it didn’t get enough sun and grew in dry, sandy soil. I’ve seen woodchucks burrow into this ground and all they’ve brought up from under the railbed is pure sand.

Canada lily flowers are big, and can be yellow, orange or red, or a combination. They have purple spotted throats that aren’t always seen because the flowers almost always face downwards. If you’re very gentle though, you can bend a stem back enough to see into a blossom without breaking it. This plant is unusual because it prefers wet places. Most lilies, and in fact most plants that grow from bulbs, do not like soil that stays wet. They prefer sandy, well-drained soil. I almost always find Canada lilies growing along rivers and streams, and that’s why I was so surprised to see it here in this dry soil.

A tiny golden metallic bee landed on a leaf beside me.

The green berries of false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) are now speckled with red. Eventually they’ll become all red and will disappear quickly.

I was surprised to see tall lettuce (Lactuca canadensis) blooming out here. Though it can reach 10 feet tall its flowers are very small; no more than a 1/4 inch across, and appear in loose clusters at the top of wiry stalks. Native Americans used the plant for pain relief, as a stimulant, and for calming the nerves. The milky white sap contains a compound called lactucarium, which has narcotic and sedative properties. It is still used in medicines today but should be used with caution because overdoses can cause death.

There was the trestle over ash brook, where the brook meets the Ashuelot River after it snakes its way through Keene. I usually like to go under it and see what flowers are blooming along the banks of the brook but we’ve had several inches of rain and the water was far too high.

Of course the river was high as well. Not too far from this spot there used to be a small island in the river just off shore, and an oak tree had fallen from the river bank to the island and made a bridge. I used to spend many happy hours on that island but high water like that which we see here first washed away the oak tree bridge and then over the years the island disappeared as well. Water is a powerful thing.

This is a magical place for me. It’s a place where I can see, better than anywhere else, how the world has changed. Or at least this small part of it. The land in this view for instance was a cornfield when I was a boy. Now it’s just silver and red maples and a lot of sensitive ferns; all plants that don’t mind wet feet. If you walk through here you find that the surface soil is pure silt, as fine as sifted flour, and that makes me think they probably stopped farming this piece of land because of flooding. Both the brook and the river still flood in this area and since as I write this on July 11 there are rain or showers predicted every day for the coming week, it’s liable to flood again.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ~John Lubbock

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Late June Flowers

It’s peony time here in New Hampshire and this one caught my eye. It grows in a local park and I thought it was beautiful.

Tall thimbleweed’s (Anemone virginiana) white flower petals aren’t petals at all; they’re sepals and they don’t last very long. Almost every time I see them they have either turned green or are in the process of doing so, so seeing them in white is always a treat. There are usually plenty of yellowish stamens surrounding a center head full of pistils though. The seed head continues growing after the sepals have fallen off and it becomes thimble shaped, which is where the common name comes from. These flowers are close to the diameter of a quarter; about an inch. There is another plant called thimble berry but that is the purple flowering raspberry, like the one we’ll see a little later in this post.

Privet (Ligustrum vulgare) is in the same family (Oleaceae) as lilacs and that should come as no surprise when you look closely at the small flower heads. Privet is a quick growing shrub commonly planted in rows and used as hedging because they respond so well to shearing. Originally from Europe and Asia it is considered invasive in some areas. It has been used by mankind as a privacy screen for a very long time; Pliny the Elder knew it well. Its flexible twigs were once used for binding and the name Ligustrum comes from the Latin ligare, which means “to tie.”

Pretty little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) is one of our longest blooming wildflowers, starting in May and often going right up until a heavy frost. Since blue is my favorite color I’m always happy to see it. Its common name comes from its leaves, which look like flax leaves, and when a heavy enough insect lands on the protruding lip of the flower a (toad’s) “mouth” will open so the insect can get at the nectar which is found in the long, curved nectar spur at the rear of each blossom.

Motherwort’s (Leonurus cardiaca) tiny flowers grow in a whorl around the stem in the leaf axils. This plant, originally from Asia, is considered an invasive weed but I don’t see it that often and I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than 2 or 3 plants growing together. At a glance it might resemble one of the nettle family but the square stems show it to be in the mint family.It was brought to this country because of its long history of medicinal use in Europe and Asia. The ancient Greeks and Romans used motherwort medicinally and it is still used today to decrease nervous irritability and quiet the nervous system. There is supposed to be no better herb for strengthening and gladdening the heart, and it is sold in powdered and liquid form. Note the second part of its scientific name: cardiaca.

The tiny flowers of motherwort are very hairy and look like a microscopic orchid. They’re also very hard to get a good shot of because of both their size and color. It usually takes me many tries to get a shot like this and it did this year.

I’ve shown partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) here many times over the years but this time I was quick enough to catch its pretty pink buds. Partridgeberry flowers always appear in pairs because they share a single ovary. If they’re pollinated they’ll produce a single red berry which will have two dimples on it, showing where each flower was. Partridgeberry is one of the lowest growing evergreen plants on the forest floor, hardly growing more than 3 or 4 inches high. Plants have a vining habit but do not climb. Instead they form dense mats by spreading their trailing stems out to about a foot from the crown.

The 4 petaled, pinkish, fringed, fragrant, half inch long partridgeberry flowers appear in June and July. The berries remain on the plant for long periods unless eaten, and can often still be found the following spring. Other names for this plant include twinberry and two-eyed berry. I like the leaves as well, which always look as if they were hammered out of a sheet of metal.

Purple flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus) is in the rose family and the 2 inch wide flowers might look like a rose at a glance. It has no thorns like roses or raspberries, however. The fruit looks like a large raspberry but is on the tart, dry side and it gives the plant the name of thimble berry. It has large, light gathering, maple shaped leaves and is quite shade tolerant. Flowering raspberry landed me a job once when an elderly gentleman said “If you can tell me what the plants in this hedge are, I’ll hire you.” I said “Flowering raspberry,” and he said “You’re hired.” He was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known and I worked for him for many years after that hedge side meeting.

I was shocked when I stopped along a road to see lupines and found sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) growing with them, presumably seeded there by the highway department along with the lupines. Sweet William is an old fashioned garden favorite which I’ve always loved, especially for its spicy sweet fragrance. It is a biennial plant native to southern Europe and parts of Asia, and though it is said to be naturalized in this country I’ve never seen it outside of a garden until now. Nobody seems to know how it got its common name but with flowers that pretty I doubt anyone really cares.

Black elderberries (Sambucus nigra) have just started blooming along streams and on the edges of swamps. The bushes can get quite big with large white, flat flowerheads.

Each flower in a black elderberry will become a small purple berry (drupe) so dark it is almost black. A drupe is a fleshy fruit with a single seed like a peach or cherry. Native Americans dried the fruit for winter use and soaked the berry stems in water to make a black dye for basketry.

If you take the time to stop and really look at an elderberry you find that the large, flat flower heads are made up of hundreds of tiny, beautiful flowers. Each flower is only 1/4 inch across, and has 5 white petals or lobes, 5 yellow tipped stamens and 3 very small styles that fall off early after blooming.

The best thing about humble little pineapple weed (Matricaria discoidea) is how it will immediately put a huge grin on a child’s face when it is crushed and put under their nose. They just can’t believe what they’re smelling. Some think this flower looks and smells like chamomile with all the petals missing, and I’ve heard it makes a good tea. It is a native plant that was used extensively by Native Americans. Next time you see one why not give it a sniff? It’s like taking the fast train right back to childhood.

Knapweeds can be tricky to identify but I think this is brown knapweed (Centaurea jacea,) which is considered highly invasive in parts of the country. Even so it is used by the highway department to stabilize embankments as this plant was doing. I’ve always liked its unusual flowers.

The irises have been truly remarkable this year. On and on they went, blooming like I’ve never seen, but I’m afraid it’s time to say goodbye for this year. It was a pleasure.

We have at least two types of dewberry growing here, northern or common dewberry (Rubus flagellaris) and swamp or bristly dewberry (Rubus hispidus) Each grow a black berry which is similar to a small black raspberry. I see bristly dewberry like that in the photo almost everywhere I go, along trails and in forest clearings. Both plants are woody vines that can grow to 15 feet under optimum conditions, and both are prickly. Swamp dewberry as its name implies, likes slightly wetter places.

White avens (Geum canadense) has started blooming a little early this year. Each flowers is about a half inch across with 5 white petals and many anthers. The anthers start out white and then turn brown and you usually find both on each flower. Each flower becomes a seed head with hooked seeds that will stick to hair or clothing. It’s a pretty little thing that is easy to miss, mostly because it resembles other flowers.

Moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia ) is a low growing, vining plant. It is also called wandering Jenny, creeping Jenny, running Jenny, wandering sailor, wandering tailor, creeping Charlie, creeping Joan, herb two pence, and two penny grass. This plant was imported from Europe for use as a groundcover in gardens but has escaped and is now often found in wet areas. The common name moneywort comes from the round leaves resembling coins. (?) Moneywort is quite noticeable because its yellow flowers are quite large for such a ground hugging plant. One story about moneywort says that when snakes get bruised or wounded they turn to moneywort for healing. This gave the plant yet another common name: Serpentaria.

Snowberry flowers (Symphoricarpos albus) ended up in my too hard basket a couple of years ago after I had tried hundreds of times to get a decent photo of them. I admitted defeat and told myself I’d probably never try again, but then the other day I saw a fine shot of one on Mr. Tootlepedal’s blog and I knew it could be done, so I had to try again. Finally, after several years and many blown photos, here it is.

Here’s a closer look. This flower is so very small I’m really not sure how to describe it but it could easily hide behind a new spring pea. I was very surprised to see how hairy they were. Native snowberry is a rather old fashioned shrub in the honeysuckle family which has been grown in gardens for a very long time, probably for its shade tolerance. Each flower, if pollinated, will become a half inch diameter white berry which usually appear in clusters. The toxic berries persist through winter, as the common name implies. By the way, if you aren’t reading Mr. Tootlepedal’s blog you’re missing a real treat. He can be found over in the “Favorite Links” section on the right.

This is the first time treacle mustard (Erysimum cheiranthoides) has appeared on this blog because I’ve never seen it before now. It is a winter annual plant that was about a foot tall in this example but I’ve read that it can reach 2 feet. The pretty, bright yellow flowers are small at only 1/4 inch across, and their 4 petals point directly toward the mustard family. The long, slender seedpods also speak of the mustards.

Treacle mustard’s leaves are long and narrow, with widely spaced teeth along their margins. According to Wikipedia the plant is also called “wormseed mustard” from the way the seeds of the plant were once added to treacle to treat intestinal worms in children. Treacle is a syrup made from the liquid that remains after sugar is refined, or from molasses. It sounds like a spoonful of sugar helped the medicine go down.

Since it’s so close to the fourth of July I thought I’d end with some floral fireworks called tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens.) The plant always blooms for the 4th and the orange tipped flowers always remind me of “bombs bursting in air.” Flowers on both male and female plants lack petals and have only anthers (male) or pistils (female). These are male flowers in this photo. Every year when independence day comes around I know it’s time to watch for these beautiful little things.

The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind. ~Rumi

Thanks for coming by.

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Looking Back

When I thought about the title of this post I wondered if anyone would really want to look back at the last year, but then I thought that these “looking back” posts are as much about looking forward as they are looking back, because in nature it’s a pretty fair bet that what happened last year will happen this year. To a point anyway; I hope the drought will ease this year so I can see mushrooms and slime molds again. The above shot is from last January, when I was stunned by the beauty of fresh snow.

I was also stunned by pussy willows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in January before.

In February the first skunk cabbages appeared from under the snow. A welcome sign of spring in February, which can sometimes be the coldest and snowiest month of all.

It was in February that I also saw the vernal witch hazels (Hamamelis vernalis) blossoming. Very small but beautiful, and with a fragrance that you can smell from two blocks away.

In March I saw the first of the American hazelnut blossoms; truly the first wildflowers of the year.

Things start happening in gardens in March as well. That’s usually when reticulated iris (Iris reticulata) appear. They are one of the earliest bulbs to show growth. They’re very cheery after a long winter without flowers.

April is when our spring ephemerals start to appear, and one of the largest and showiest is the purple trillium (Trillium erectum).These flowers are often an inch and a half or more across and very visible because of their color. Trilliums are all about the number three, with three red petals and three green sepals. In fact the name trillium comes from the Latin tres, which means three. The three leaves are actually bracts which the flowers nod under for a short time before finally facing outward. Inside the flowers are six stamens and three stigmas, and if pollinated they will become a red, three chambered berry. 

With so many flowers appearing in spring it’s very hard to choose the ones to put into these posts but one I felt I had to choose for April is bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) and I chose it because most people never see it. They aren’t with us long but luckily colonies in different places bloom at different times, and in that way their bloom time can be extended. They will for the most part bloom only when the sun shines on them but you can occasionally find them on a cloudy day. Their common name comes from the bright red or orange sap in their roots.

One of my personal favorites among the spring ephemerals is the spring beauty (Claytonia carolinana.) Though they sometimes appear in April, May seems to be the month I can really count on seeing them. I know where a colony of many thousands of plants grow and I have happily knelt in last year’s leaf litter taking photos of them for years now. I love their aspirin size, pink striped blossoms.  

Around the end of May is when I start seeing the beautiful little fringed polygalas (Polygala paucifolia). Their color and the fact that they sometimes grow beside violets make them easy to miss so you have to pay attention. The small 3 inch tall by inch and a half wide plants usually bloom in quite large colonies but not always. They are in the milkwort family and are also sometimes called flowering wintergreen and / or gaywings. Once you’ve found some you can go back to see them year after year. They seem quite long lived.

June is when our most well known orchid, the pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule) blooms. Once collected into near oblivion by people who thought they could just dig them up and plant them in their gardens, they have made a strong comeback and I see quite a few now. They’re beautiful and unusual, and should be left alone so we can all admire them. If transplanted they will not live long.

June was also when I found some larch flowers (Larix laricina). These tiny but beautiful things are so small all I can see is their color. I have to point the camera at the color and “shoot blind” until I get a shot. They can appear in mid May but I usually expect them in late May to early June. If you know a larch tree you might want to have a look. These tiny things will become the cones that hold the tree’s seeds, so if you look for the cones first that will give you an idea of which branches the flowers are most likely to appear on.  

Around the end of June and the first week of July I start looking for one of the most beautiful wildflowers I’ve seen; the purple fringed orchid (Platanthera grandiflora). The big, two foot tall plant looks like a bush full of purple butterflies. They are quite rare in this area and that’s most likely because they grow in swamps. I can usually expect to have wet ankles after taking photos of this one.

Tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) blossoms right at the same time every year; just in time for the 4th of July, and its flowerheads just happen to look like fireworks. Flowers on both male and female plants lack petals and have only anthers (male) or pistils (female). These are male flowers in this photo.

One of our prettiest and smallest wildflowers bloom in early August. Forked blue curls (Trichostema dichotomum) get barely ankle tall and like to grow in sandy soil in full sun. One unusual thing about the flower, other than its unique beauty, is its four long, arching stamens that dust bees with pollen when they land on its lower lip. You can see the tiny white pollen grains at the end of the anthers on this example.

In my last post I described how colorblindness prevented my ever seeing a cardinal. It works the same way for cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis) unfortunately, so I was elated last August when a coworker and I stumbled upon a group of them. I knew what they looked like, and once I was right on top of them I could see their color, which was beautiful. Note how this much larger flower with its arching stamens uses the same strategy as the tiny forked blue curl we saw previously. The chief difference is, these stamens dust hummingbirds with pollen instead of bees.

It wouldn’t be September without New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) and this one just happens to be my favorite color aster. Unfortunately it’s also the hardest color to find so each year I have to go hunting for them. I can’t complain though; hunting for flowers is a pleasure, not a chore.

I could have shown a fragrant white waterlily (Nymphaea odorata) in any month following May but this is the only photo from last year that showed the center of the flower, where a golden flame burns. I remember standing on the shore of a pond full of hundreds of these beautiful flowers last summer and being able to smell their glorious scent on the breeze. It was one the most amazing things, and I suspect that it wall last in my memory until I no longer have one.

I did see things other than flowers last year; things like this beautiful cedar waxwing I saw eating the berries of silky dogwoods at the river one September evening.

In October I went to see if the old stone staircase was still standing; all that’s left of Madame Sherri’s “castle” in Chesterfield. The castle was actually more of a chalet but it had quite a lot of elaborate stonework. It also had trees growing through the roof. How they kept the rain out is a mystery. Though I didn’t mention it in the original post I walked to the spot I had chosen and promptly tripped over a tree root and fell flat on my face in front of about 15 people who were all jostling to get a shot of the stairway. The camera was unscathed and I got my shot. The fall foliage was beautiful that day and the weather was perfect but the stairway was in need of some immediate help from a mason.

I also went to Willard Pond in October and walked through one of the most beautiful hardwood forests I’ve ever seen.

In November witch hazels bloomed. Also in December, but I doubt I’ll see any in January.

Also in November I was looking at lichens, including the smoky eye boulder lichen seen here. It’s one of the most beautiful in my opinion and I’ve put it here as an answer to the question “What is there to see in winter?” There is as much beauty to be seen in winter as there is at any other time of year. You just have to look a little closer, that’s all.

What could be more beautiful that this mossy hillside? It was like a green carpet covering the earth. What I like most about the colder months is how you can see the bones of the forest. There is no foliage to block your view in December.

One thing I’ll remember about the past year is how it was too dry for fungi. I saw very few until December, when I saw these mock oyster mushrooms (Phyllotopsis nidulans). They were big and beautiful, and looked as if they had been covered in orange velvet. They were well worth the wait but I hope to see more in 2021.

I hope this look back at 2020 wasn’t as bad as what you might have imagined. I’d rather have this blog be an island of calm in a sea of chaos than a running commentary on current events. Current events come and go like the tides and have no permanence, so about all you’re ever going to find here is nature, which is timeless. I do hope that’s why you come.

You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward. ~Soren Kierkegaard

Thanks for stopping in. I hope you’ll all have a happy, heathy new year.

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The Hottest Day?

Last Sunday was supposed to be the hottest day of the year according to the weather people, with highs nearing 100 degrees. In the 1800s before air conditioning our ancestors used to climb hills for the breeze or find water to sit by or swim in to stay cool. It was too humid to climb so I went to the Ashuelot River, one of the most beautiful and natural bodies of water in the area.

Not only are the trails shaded along the river but there are no hills there, so there is little exertion required to hike them. Still, it was hot.

Ferns often make it seem cooler but on this day they burned like flames.

A turtle contemplated the beautiful blue of a pickerel weed blossom.

Fragrant white water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) blossomed all along the river banks on both sides of the river. Each blossom lasts only 3 days before the stems coil and pull them underwater to set seeds but there are so many of them they never seem to disappear.

Blue vervain, Allegheny monkey flower and fringed loosestrife grew all in a tangle, all competing for the same place in the sun.

Allegheny monkey flowers (Mimulus ringens) have square stems and are also called square stemmed monkey flowers. The throat is partially closed and bumblebees are one of the few insects strong enough to pry it open to get at the nectar. Native Americans and early settlers sometimes used the leaves as an edible green. This plant usually gets about knee high and likes to grow in wet, sunny places, and it isn’t all that common. No matter how many times I see it I never see a monkey.

Beautiful blue vervain (Verbena hastata) also likes to grow in damp sunny places so it does well along the river. The plants here must have been six feet tall. Its bitter roots were used by Native Americans to treat gastric irritation and some tribes roasted them and ground them into flour. Others dried the flowers and used them as snuff to stop nosebleeds. This is one of the plants they introduced to the Europeans and they used it in much the same way.

Great colonies of fringed loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) can be found along roadsides and wood edges, and along waterways. They are the last of the native yellow loosestrifes to bloom in this area but they seem to be having an extended bloom period this year. The flowers on fringed loosestrife are about the size of a quarter and nod to face the ground so I have to bend the stems up gently to get a face on photo like this one. It’s always worth the effort.

This bat box was new since I was here last. I’m seeing more and more of these in my travels. Bats are natural insect controllers so I’m all for seeing more of them.

I love the leaves of the royal fern (Osmunda regalis.) They look like no other fern I’ve ever met.

White rattlesnake root (Prenanthes alba) can be tough to identify because even plants growing side by side can have differently shaped leaves, but once they bloom identification becomes much easier. I can’t think of another plant that has small, drooping white, lily like blossoms at this time of year. The half inch flowers appear in clusters at the end of branched stems that can reach 5 or 6 feet in some cases, and have forked stamens that are longer than the petals. The plant gets its common name from the Native American belief that it could cure rattlesnake bites.

Though I’ve been coming here for over 50 years I always find something new when I return, and today’s new thing was a colony of marsh bellflowers (Campanula aparinoides.) Since I’ve never seen them anywhere before I had to spend a while trying to identify them but they were obviously in the campanula family so it only took a little while.

The small white flowers are maybe a half inch long and about the same diameter as an aspirin. The 5 petals flare outward and are pointed at the tip, with a single thin gray or blue line down the center. White stamens and a long curly style make up the reproductive parts. They’re quite small but very pretty.

The plants have weak stems and tend to sprawl and tangle.

I thought I heard a tall meadow rue say “Pssst; hey, come over here and look at this.” I didn’t need to see its leaves yellowing already, but I looked. Like spring fall begins on the forest floor with just a whisper, but before you know it the whisper becomes a shout and the trees are ablaze. The forest here is made up of mostly red maples and in the fall this trail is as beautiful as a place can be.

Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) had just started blooming here. Its flowers look like white Joe Pye weed and that’s because the two plants are closely related. In fact they can often be found growing side by side I find it on river, pond and stream banks; almost always near water.

Mad dog skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) plants grow in great bunches along the shoreline. These small blue-violet flowers get their common name from the way that the calyx at the base of the flowers look a bit like a medieval helmet, called a skull cap, and how the plant was once thought to cure rabies because of its anti-spasmodic properties. Though it doesn’t cure rabies there is powerful medicine in this little plant so it should never be eaten. When Native Americans wanted to go on a spirit walk or vision quest this was one of the plants they chose.

Mad-Dog Skullcap flowers grow in pairs in the leaf axils. Another skullcap, marsh skullcap (Scutellaria galericulata,) looks very similar and the two are difficult to tell apart. Both grow in full sun on grassy hummocks at the water’s edge, but the blossoms of mad dog skullcap are slightly smaller than those of marsh skullcap.

One of my favorite shades of blue is found on bottle gentians (Gentiana andrewsii) but I don’t see many because they are quite rare here. This is the only place I can find them so you can imagine my delight when I found that they hadn’t been cut down this year like they had been two years ago. That was the time I found that the Keene Parks and Recreation Department had sent someone out here with a weed wacker, and that person had cut down countless beautiful wildflowers all along the trail, including the gentians. When they start to go by theses flowers become even more beautiful by turning very dark blue and then a kind of purple. They closely resemble narrow leaved gentian (Gentiana linearis) but that plant has much narrower leaves. Why anyone would cut down such a rare and beautiful thing is beyond me.

By the time I reached the little red bridge I was drenched and ready to turn around and go back.

I saw a lot of blue here on this day and since it’s my favorite color I was happy to see it. Blue is supposed to be a cool color but I didn’t feel very cool. When I started the temperature was 66 degrees F. and when I finished it was 86 degrees F. A rise of 20 degrees in an hour and a half, but was it worth it? Absolutely. In the words of the Chinese poet Lu Tung (790 – 835), “all the wrongs of life passed out through my pores.”

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ~Edgar Allan Poe

Thanks for stopping in.

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More Late June Flowers

It’s foxglove time here in New Hampshire and I love seeing the tall spikes full of tubular flowers. At one time the plant was called folksglove according to a list of plants from the time of Edward III (1312-1377,) because the flowers were “thought to be the gloves of the ‘good folk’ or fairies, who lived in the deep hollows and woody dells where the plants grew.”

Bees, especially honey bees, love the foxglove flower and after landing on the projecting lower lip of the blossom follow the nectar guide spots up into the blossom. These spots were said to be fairy fingerprints in King Edward’s time but really they just tell the bees where to go. Once at the top of the blossom the bee finds a ring of nectar but while crawling up to it, it has brushed against the little dangly bits you can see in this photo. Those are the pollen carrying anthers of the male stamens, which lie flat against the top of the tube, and the bee carries pollen from one blossom to another as it brushes against them. Once pollinated a single plant can produce up to two million dust like seeds.

A fallen blossom shows that the nectar guide spots don’t just lie on the inside surface of the flower.

I saw this fine display of coreopsis last week, but even thought the plant is known for its drought tolerance all the flowers were gone in days. There are about 80 species of coreopsis and many are native to the prairies of the U.S.

I thought the maiden pinks blooming at the feet of the coreopsis made for a beautiful scene.

Imagine a tree 100 feet high and 50 wide full of orchids and you’ll have a good idea what the northern catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) looks like in full bloom. This, one of our most beautiful trees, are loaded with big, orchid like blossoms right now. Each flower tube is big enough to easily put your finger in and I’d say the flowers must be at least 3 inches across. Soon long, thin seed pods will dangle from the branches. When I was a boy we always called catalpas string bean trees because that’s what the seed pods look like.

I think of Johnny jump ups as spring flowers because they like cool weather but I’m seeing quite a few of them in this hot, dry summer, including this pale example. Since the name Viola tricolor means three colors, I was surprised to see only white and yellow petals, but then I looked closely at the photo and saw just a hint of blue in those two upper petals.

Golden clover (Trifolium campestre) is an imported clover originally from Europe and Asia. It is also known as large trefoil and large hop clover. The plant was imported through Philadelphia in 1800 to be used as a pasture crop and now appears in most states on the east and west coasts and much of Canada, but it is not generally considered aggressively invasive. Each pretty yellow flower head is packed with golden yellow pea-like flowers. I see the plant growing along roadsides and in sandy waste areas.

St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) gets its common name from the way that it flowers near June 24th, which is St. John’s day, and it was right on that day this year that I saw the first blooms. The plant’s healing properties have 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. Originally from Europe, it can be found in meadows and along roadsides growing in full sun.

The black dots on its yellow petals make St. John’s wort very easy to identify. They are tiny sacs that hold the plant’s essential oils and when they are crushed, a dark red oil will come from them. These essential oils are used in homeopathic remedies to treat everything from healing wounds to treating depression.

An important native food found here in New Hampshire is the cranberry. They grow in wet, boggy areas and despite the drought  I got my knees quite wet getting photos of them. 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. 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.

Heal all (Prunella lanceolata,) has tiny hooded flowers that always look like they’re cheering and laughing. They also remind me of orchids. The plant is also called self-heal and has been used since ancient times. It is said to cure everything from sore throats to heart disease, and that’s how it got its common name. Some botanists believe that there are two varieties of the species; Prunella vulgaris from Europe, and Prunella lanceolata from North America. Native Americans drank a tea made from the plant before a hunt because they believed that it helped their eyesight.

I think of black eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) as a fall flower so they always remind me that summer will end all too soon. They have such a long blooming period and are seen everywhere in the fall, and I suppose that’s why I think of them as I do. I’m always happy to see them but at the same time not so happy that another summer is flying by. They’re native to the U.S. anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains, and introduced west of them. I found these examples growing along the river bank and as I was taking their photo a rabbit ran out from behind them.

I do love all flowers but some seem to have a little extra spark of life that makes me want to kneel before them and get to know them a little better. One of those is the lowly crown vetch (Securigera varia.) I know it’s an invasive species that people seem to either despise or ignore but it’s also beautiful. In fact I’ve often thought that, if I had to design a beautiful flower I don’t think I could do better than this.

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. The flowers are fragrant and have a sort of almond-like scent. I almost always find it near water, as this plant was. It is another plant which for me marks summer’s passing.

Elderberries (Sambucus nigra) have just started blooming and are commonly found along streams or on the edges of swamps.

Elderberry bushes are very common in this part of New Hampshire; common enough to be largely ignored, in fact. But, if you take the time to stop and really look at them you find that the large, flat flower heads are made up of hundreds of tiny, uncommonly beautiful flowers. Later in August each flower will have become a small purple berry so dark it is almost black.

Native spreading dogbane has small, light pink, bell shaped flowers that have deeper pink stripes on their insides. They are fragrant but their scent is hard to describe. Spicy maybe. This plant is pollinated by butterflies and the flowers have barbs inside that trap short tongued insects. That’s how it gets another of its common names: flytrap dogbane. Each flower is just big enough to hold a pea.

Spreading dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium) is a perennial wildflower that looks like a shrub. It spreads by both seeds and underground stems and is considered a weed in some places. I find large colonies of it growing in sandy soil along sunny forest edges. The plant in related to milkweed and many species of butterflies rely on it.

The unusual twin flowers of partridge berry (Mitchella repens) fuse at the base and share one ovary. They will become a single small red berry that has two dimples that show where the flowers used to be. Partridgeberry is one of the lowest growing evergreen plants on the forest floor, hardly growing more than 3 or 4 inches high. Plants have a vining habit but don’t climb. Instead they form dense mats by spreading their trailing stems out to about a foot from the crown. Roots will often form at leaf nodes along the stems and start new plants. Something I’ve just discovered after many years of seeing these plants is the wonderful spicy fragrance of the flowers. When a lot of them are in bloom at the same time the fragrance is amazing. Ruffed grouse, quail, turkeys, skunks, and white-footed mice eat the berries.

Just in time for the 4th of July, tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) puts on its own fireworks display. Flowers on both male and female plants lack petals and have only anthers (male) or pistils (female). These are male flowers in this photo. Every time Independence day comes around I know it’s time to watch for these and all of the other flowers in this post. Knowing when flowers bloom is a fun thing; they give you something beautiful to look forward to all summer long. There is an orchid with very beautiful flowers growing in a swamp that I am impatiently waiting to see. It should appear next week if all goes well.

Maybe, beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming it goes straight to our hearts. Maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside. ~James Patterson

Thanks for coming by.

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