In North America we’re urged to plant milkweed to provide food for monarch butterflies but in Europe it’s so out of control that people struggle to get rid of it.
What is missing in Europe that keeps common milkweed in balance with other plants here in North America?
Heal all in bloom (photo from Flora Pittsburghensis, Creative Commons license)
Mid to late June is not a good time for wildflowers. The woodland flowers have gone to seed and most field flowers haven’t opened yet so it’s hard to find anything blooming. Heal-all (Prunella vulgaris) obliges. It blooms from June to September.
Heal-all or Self-heal is a member of the mint (Lamiaceae) family native to Europe, Asia and North America. It’s not picky about sun and soil and it survives mowing so you’ll find it in waste places, lawns and along woodland edges. This photo from the Netherlands shows a typical setting.
Heal-all plants in bloom, Netherlands (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Though it’s mixed in with other plants heal-all’s flower head stands up like a knob studded with small tubular flowers that range in color from deep purple to pale lavender-white.
For another look at the flower and some musing about its presence in North America, see this vintage article from 2010: Heal All
(photo credits, Creative Commons licenses: top photo from Flora Pittsburghensis, second photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)
Poison hemlock flowers (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Speaking of poisons as I did yesterday, here’s a poisonous plant that’s probably growing in your neighborhood. In late June it’s five to eight feet tall.
Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) is an invasive weed made famous for killing Socrates. Arrested and condemned to death, Socrates had to drink hemlock infusion as the capital punishment of ancient Greece. If you’re curious about what happened next, click here.
How do you know if it’s in your neighborhood? Look for a member of the carrot/parsley family that has purple splotches on its stems, as shown below.
Poison hemlock stem (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Take a walk and you’ll find motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) blooming now in western Pennsylvania. Originally from Eurasia, this member of the Mint family is now at home on many continents because it’s useful as an herbal remedy for heart disease and childbirth.
Its flowers are furry dragon mouths arranged in whorls around the stem, similar in shape to purple deadnettle, a near relative. Its square stem gives us the hint that it’s a mint.
In full sun motherwort is knee high or even taller so you won’t miss it. Its opposite, toothed leaves look like paws but are sometimes confused with mugwort leaves.
Motherwort plant in Schenley Park, 30 May 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
I prefer to identify motherwort when it’s in bloom. 😉
Cottonwood fluff on the ground (photo by Chris Evans, University of Illinois, Bugwood.org)
23 May 2017
In late May, you’ll see white fluff in the air as you search the sky for birds. It’s not dandelion fluff. This is cottonwood season.
The eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) grows in open and riparian habitats from the Rockies to the southeastern coast. Western Pennsylvania is on the eastern edge of their range.
Cottonwoods are one of the fastest growing and largest trees in North America. Reaching up to 130 feet tall the trunk can be more than five feet across. The trees require bare soil and full sun to germinate so you usually see them out in the open, sometimes alone.
Eastern cottonwood (photo by Steven Katovich, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org)
Their species name, deltoides, describes the leaf shape that looks a lot like aspens. Both trees are in the willow family.
Cottonwood leaves (photo by T. Davis Sydnor, The Ohio State University, Bugwood.org)
In early spring cottonwoods sprout male and female catkins. The females are fertilized by wind-blown pollen and become drooping strings of seed capsules. In May the capsules burst open to release thousands of tiny seeds, each one attached to a bit of “cotton” that carries it on the wind. (The brown spots in this photo are seed capsule covers, not the seeds.)
Eastern cottonwood seeds, still on the branch (photo by Troy Evans, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Bugwood.org)
The fluff breaks off and blows away but each tree is so prolific that in windless conditions, when the fluff falls straight to the ground, it looks like snow.
Do you want to see a lot of cottonwood fluff? Drive north on Route 528 from the bridge over Moraine State Park‘s Lake Arthur. Eventually cottonwoods are on both sides of the road.
There’s fluff in the air there!
(photo credits: fluff on the ground by Chris Evans, University of Illinois, Bugwood.org range map from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original clump of cottonwood trees by Steven Katovich, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org cottonwood leaves by T. Davis Sydnor, The Ohio State University, Bugwood.org cottonwood seeds on the branch by Troy Evans, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Bugwood.org)
Jack in the pulpit, Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
Jack in the Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) has been blooming for about two weeks in western Pennsylvania. As the forest floor greens up you might not notice this unusual flower.
Click below for a whimsical look at Jack’s odd characteristics. Sometimes he is “Jill.”
Mayapple flower turning into an apple in May (photo by Kate St. John)
I’m taking a break from peregrines today. Here’s a plant. 🙂
In Schenley Park, mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) bloom in April and fruit in May. The plants must have two leaves to produce a flower because the flower stalk grows from the Y between the leaves.
Here’s what they look like when they bloom.
Mayapple in flower with twin leaves (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
The fertilized flower transitions from flower to apple in May, as shown in the photo at top.
You can eat a mayapple when it’s ripe but Be Careful! The entire plant is poisonous and the apple is only edible when ripe! Find out more and see a mayapple sliced open in this vintage article from 2011: Eating Mayapples
(top photo by Kate St. John. Blooming photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)
Horsetail stems, Equisetum hyemale, Enlow Fork, 28 Apr 2017 (photo by Kate St.John)
If you search Google using this image it returns photos of bamboo, but that’s not what it is. This Pennsylvania native is one of the oldest species on earth.
Scouringrush horsetail (Equisetum hyemale) is one of 20 species of Equisetum, the only remaining genus in an ancient class of plants. According to Wikipedia, the plants of Equisetopsida were much more diverse during the Paleozoic era when they dominated the understory ranging from small plants to large trees. Most went extinct during the Permian–Triassic extinction event that occurred long before the dinosaurs. Through it all, Equisetum survived.
Equisetum hyemale‘s hollow evergreen stems grow three feet tall with longitudinal ridges that are high in silica. This makes them useful for scouring and polishing pots and pans, giving the plant additional names such as rough horsetail, scouring rush, and pewterwort.
Horsetail, Equisetum hyemale, Enlow Fork, 28 April 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
Believe it or not, the plant has tiny leaves at the joints (between the green sections) and reproduces from spores, not flowers. It also spreads aggressively in dense stands via underground runners. Above, you can see a stobilus that creates the spores.
Native to the northern hemisphere this useful plant was transported to South Africa and Australia to scour pots and pans. Instead it became invasive.
