Summer is the time for itchy things, especially poison ivy.  Here’s a timely lesson about leaves.

Do you know how to recognize poison ivy?  Here’s what makes it different:

• Only 3 leaflets on the leaf stem. Never extra leaflets.
• Lower leaves are lopsided; outer edge is longer than inner edge.
• Leaves have notched edges, not saw-toothed.
• Center leaf has a long stem. Side leaves have no stems.
• No thorns at all.
• Grows either on the ground or as a climbing hairy vine (the “hairs” are rootlets).
• Its compound leaves are alternate on the main stem; noticeable on the vine. (The 3 leaflets make up a compound leaf.)

The slideshow below illustrates most of these characteristics.

On Throw Back Thursday: Learn more at this vintage article from 2009:  Look But Don’t Touch.

p.s. Most animals are immune to poison ivy.  Birds eat its berries. Deer eat the stems and leaves. Ladybugs and flies walk on it without any reaction!

(photos by Kate St. John)

The air smells sweet this weekend. Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is in bloom.

Although it’s invasive, I always enjoy the smell and taste of honeysuckle nectar.  So do bees and moths who are naturally attracted to white flowers.

So why do honeysuckle flowers come in two colors, gold and white?

I decided to watch a bumblebee visit the flowers and see what happened. Though she had plenty of golden flowers to choose from she only sipped at the white ones (above).

Then I looked at the flowers.  Are the gold ones the old ones?

• The flowers at the tips of the branches (i.e. new growth) are white. The gold flowers are on the older parts of the vine.
• The buds are white just before they open.
• The faded flowers are always gold.
• I found a set of flowers (blooms in sets of 4, two on each side of the stem) where two of the four had been covered by leaves and were inaccessible to pollinators.  The visible flowers were gold, the inaccessible flowers where white.

So the white flowers are new and unfertilized, asking the bees to visit them. The gold flowers are old, already fertilized and beginning to fade.

Honeysuckle is color coded for bees.

p.s. Taste?   As a kid I learned to lick a drop of nectar by pulling off a single flower, pinching the stem-end and pulling the pistil out of the bottom.  The nectar beads up as the pistil emerges. Yum!  … I tested a golden flower: Did it still have nectar? yes.

(photos by Kate St. John)

UPDATE, June 8. 2018:  Further bolstering my pollinated-color theory, I found a flower turning yellow on the same stem with one white and one gold flower.

In late May and early June you may see a whorl of heart-shaped leaves in the woods and wonder what they are.

Look closely at my photo and you’ll see two whorls — 5 big leaves below and 4 smaller out-of-focus leaves further up the stem — then the stem arcs out of view.  What you can’t see are the tiny flowers. They’re visible on little stems in Dianne Machesney’s photo below.

The plant used to mystify me until I learned its identity.

Wild yam (Dioscorea villosa) is a relative of the sweet potato.  We don’t eat its roots anymore but they came in handy during desperate times in the colonial period. I’ll bet they taste bad.

I like the plant because it’s pretty. I remember it as a mystery.

(photos by Kate St. John and Dianne Machesney)

On Throw Back Thursday:

Last Sunday I saw Carolina spring beauties blooming at the Core Arboretum in Morgantown, West Virginia.  They reminded me of this 2011 article, Two Kinds of Spring Beauty, though I didn’t see the second kind.  (Click the link to read about both flowers.)

Flowers bloom earlier in Morgantown because it’s 60 miles south of us.  Spring moves north 13 miles a day so we should expect our spring beauties to bloom today or tomorrow. And they will because of our temporarily hot weather.

If you’re near Morgantown, the Core Arboretum offers wildflower walks on three Sundays in April every year.  The first walk was last Sunday but you still have time to join naturalists from West Virginia University at 2pm on April 15 and April 22 to see what’s blooming.  Click here for directions.

(photo by Kate St. John)