Did you know that young sunflowers follow the sun? They face east at sunrise, track the sun across the sky, and face west at sunset. The next morning they’re all facing east again!
This trait is called heliotropism but only young sunflowers do it.
Adult sunflowers always face east. That’s why this field is not facing the sun in the late afternoon — the flowers are (probably) adults.
Close-up of the top of wood nettle, which also stings (photo by Kate St. John)
Right now it’s too hot to wear long pants while hiking, but I wear them anyway to protect my legs from poison ivy and stinging nettle.
Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) and our native wood nettle (Laportea canadensis) are hard to avoid in early September. Three to seven feet tall, they lean into the trail completely coated with hollow stinging hairs that contain histamines and painful chemicals. The wood nettle plant is shown below with the closeup circled in red.
Wood nettle with crown circled in red (photo by Kate St. John)
A gentle brush against the plant causes the hollow hairs to detach and become needles in your skin. The sting is memorable. For those desperate to hold the plant a firm grasp flattens the hairs so that fewer penetrate. This is counter-intuitive and not for the faint of heart.
That’s the bad news, here’s the good. Nettles are the host plants for quite a few butterflies and moths. Here are two North American butterflies whose caterpillars rely on them.
Question mark butterfly dorsal view (photo by Kate St. John) Question mark butterfly showing its punctuation (photo by Kate St. John)
As with many things, a closer look reveals both pros and cons.
UPDATE: Another good thing (sort of). Several readers have pointed out that stinging nettle is edible. Yes, it is. My 1975 edition of The Joy of Cooking has a recipe for nettle soup. The first step is: “Using rubber gloves to protect you from the stinging nettles, remove the central stem from 1 quart of young nettle tops.” You’d have to gather a quart of young nettle tops. No thank you!
(photo credits: wood nettle and question mark photos by Kate St. John; closeup of stinging nettle stingers from Wikimedia Commons, red admiral butterfly by Dianne Machesney)
Ruby-throated hummingbird at cardinal flower (photo by Lauri Shaffer)
Ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) are on migration now, heading for their wintering grounds in Central America. On the way they look for red flowers to sip.
This native perennial — cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) — is one of their favorites.
Look for cardinal flower along creeks and marshes. You’ll find it blooming where it’s wet.
By August each fertilized flower has turned into a fruit, a mayapple.
The entire mayapple plant is poisonous but there’s a brief window in August when the fruit is ripe and safe to eat. Chipmunks and deer know this, too, so if you want to risk tasting a ripe fruit, you’ll have to beat them to it.
On Throw Back Thursday, read about the right conditions for Eating Mayapples.
p.s. Be cautious. I have never eaten a mayapple and I don’t intend to start now.
(photo credits: mayapple fruit by Dianne Machesney, blooming mayapple plant from Wikimedia Commons, click on the caption to see the original)
Elderberries at Jennings, 4 Aug 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
Ripe elderberries (Sambucus genus) are hard to find this month. They’re so popular with birds that the ripe ones disappear immediately.
The cluster, above, was the only purple one I found last week. The rest were carefully picked over, leaving green berries and bare stems.
Elderberry stem, leaves, unripe fruit, Aug 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
Other fruits await birds, too: black raspberries (Rubus genus) in the thickets, hackberries (Celtis genus) in the trees, and porcelain berries (Ampelopsis glandulosa) on the vine. Unfortunately, the porcelain berries are invasive.
Ripening black raspberries, June 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)Ripening hackberries, July 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)Ripening porcelain berries (photo by Kate St. John)
It won’t be long before the poke berries turn purple.
Green pokeberries, not ripe yet in early August (photo by Kate St. John)
It’s a colorful conspiracy to tempt birds to eat the fruit and disperse the seeds, perhaps far away on migration.
Scaly blazing star, July 2018 (photo by Dianne Machesney)
Yellow flowers are abundant in the summer while some of the rarest flowers are purple. Here are four rare plants I’ve never seen.
Dianne Machesney visited Lynx Prairie in Adams County, Ohio in late July to see scaly blazing star (Liatris squarrosa), above. It doesn’t occur in Pennsylvania though we have it’s cousin dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) at Jennings Prairie. The two plants differ in this way: “Scaly” flowers are clustered at the tip, “dense” flowers coat the long spike.
On a recent trip past Exit 163 on Interstate 70, I was intrigued by the name Amaranth. Two towns in Canada, one in Portugal, and one in Fulton County, Pennsylvania have that name. What does it mean?
“Amaranth” is a flower that never fades, a reddish dye, or — primarily — a grain-like food native to the tropical Americas. It was a staple of the Central American diet until the Spanish Conquistadors outlawed it when they conquered the Aztecs in 1521.
Back then the grain played a supporting role in religious human sacrifice. Eerily similar to the Eucharist in which Jesus told his disciplines to consume bread and wine symbolizing his body and blood, the Aztecs performed human sacrifices and ate cakes of amaranth mixed with real human blood.
The Spanish abolished all of that. The penalty for growing amaranth was death. But the plant survived. It became a weed.
One of the weediest in the Amaranthus genus is red-rooted pigweed or green amaranth (Amaranthus retroflexus), a 1-6 foot annual whose flowers bloom in bristly spikes in August (photo at top). This patch is in a German asparagus field.
You can eat the leaves, too, but they contain a small amount of oxalic acid so they must be boiled and drained. In India, the leaves are the main ingredient in Kerala-style thoran.
Today many people plant amaranth varieties for their red flowers, the color of amaranth dye.
Sarracenia purpurea is a carnivorous wetland plant whose leaves collect rainwater because they’re shaped like pitchers. The plant gets its nutrients from digested insects and spiders that drown in the water, unable to escape the leaves’ downward-facing hairs. Only about 1% of the insects that visit the pitchers become victims but it’s enough to sustain the plant.
Pitchers of a pitcher plant at the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario (photo by Dianne Machesney)
The prey is not digested by the plant but by larvae of two specialist insects that live in the pitchers’ rainwater: the pitcher plant mosquito (Wyeomyia smithii), which doesn’t bite us(*), and the pitcher plant midge (Metriocnemus knabi). The nutrients the larvae leave in the water nourish the plant.
Purple pitcher plants tend to grow clumps. When in bloom they stand 8-20 inches tall.
Pitcher plants at the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario (photo by Dianne Machesney)
You’ll find them in bogs across Canada and as far south as Florida. Dianne Machesney photographed these in Pennsylvania and Ontario.
Range map of Sarracenia purpurea (image from Wikimedia Commons)
p.s. (*) About the pitcher plant mosquito: According to Wikipedia, Wyeomyia smithii neither bites nor approaches humans or livestock. However there are some populations in the Apalachicola National Forest (Florida) that have been observed taking blood meals after laying an initial egg batch. It is the only known mosquito to have both obligatory biting and non-biting populations in the same species.
(photos by Dianne Machesney, range map from Wikimedia Commons; click on the map image to see the original)
End of my birding trip to Newfoundland: Day 7, July 14, fly home
Two towns in Canada, one in Portugal, and one in Fulton County, Pennsylvania have that name. What does it mean?
