Late last month a group of us found corn salad at Enlow Fork (SGL 302) in Greene County, Pennsylvania.  Which one did we see?  The plant on the left, not the food on the right.

Ah, but the plant is food.

Corn salad (Valerianella locusta) is an edible annual, native to Europe, with a mild nutty flavor.  Its smooth-edged leaves form a basal rosette, then opposite pairs on the stem topped by tiny, white, tubular flowers.

Centuries ago corn salad graduated from a forage plant to cultivation, perhaps in France where it is grown primarily near Nantes today.

According to Wikipedia, it spread through the rest of Europe — and eventually here — after King Louis XIV’s gardener promoted it.  Along the way it acquired a lot of other names including mâche and rapunzel.  Corn salad wasn’t named for the maiden with long hair. The fairy tale Rapunzel was named for the plant.

Missouri Botanical Garden describes how to harvest it:  Before it flowers, pick the rosette. After it flowers harvest the entire plant.

We didn’t eat it, though.  It’s too pretty.

(Side by side photos from Wikimedia Commons: Valerianella locusta and corn+black bean salad. Flower closeup by Kate St.John)

Purple dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) has been blooming in southwestern Pennsylvania since early spring.

This Eurasian member of the Mint family attracts attention because it often grows in dense colonies where the plants stand together in reddish purple stacks of leaves and flowers. Some patches stand eight inches tall.

All the Mints have bilaterally symmetrical(*) flowers but the shape of this one makes the plant easy to identify — a pinkish purple hood with a unique two-lipped landing pad for bees.

Until I snapped a closeup in good light I had never seen the hairs that give it the nettle name.  Reminiscent of stinging nettle the hairs don’t sting; they’re “dead.”  Notice that the flowers have tiny hairs, too.

Purple dead nettle has a long blooming period so we’ll see it flowering until next winter.  Look for the plants now, though, because their best display occurs this month.

(photos by Kate St. John)

(*) “Bilaterally symmetrical” means it matches side-to-side, like our faces. A harder word for the same concept among flowers is zygomorphic.

On this date in 1813 the pineapple was introduced to Hawaii.  No, it’s not a native plant.

Pineapples (Ananas comosus) are bromeliads indigenous to South America from southern Brazil to Paraguay.  Because we like their fruit they’re now cultivated across the world in such far flung places as Costa Rica, the Philippines, Thailand and India.

We also grow pineapples for their beauty.  Here’s a plant with variegated leaves in Parque Nacional del Café in Quindio, Colombia.  It’s in the National Coffee Park.

Ironically, this pineapple is growing on its native continent in a park dedicated to an imported crop.  Coffee is originally from Ethiopia.

(*) The Hawaiian introduction date may have been 1/21 instead of 1/11.  Perhaps poor handwriting in the historical record makes it hard to determine whether it’s “11” or “21.”

(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)

Here’s something I’ve never seen before because I live too far north.

Frostweed (Verbesina virginica) is a plant in the Aster family native to the southeastern U.S., the lower Mississippi valley, and Texas.  It’s closely related to our familiar wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) but it doesn’t grow here.  Alas.

I say “Alas” because, when conditions are right, its stems exude water and create stunning frost flowers when the temperature drops below freezing.

Meredith O’Reilly of Austin, Texas displays photos of these beautiful ice sculptures, here at her Great Stems blog.  And see more of them here at The Frost Below.

Thank you to Allen Janis for alerting me to these delicate winter structures.

(photo for frost flower from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original. Range map of frostweed liked from Biota of North America Program ( BONAP) map of Verbesina virginica)

While you eat ginger treats this month you probably won’t think of the plant that flavors them, but it has an interesting story.

Ginger root (Zingiber officinale) is used all over the world to flavor meat, seafood, vegetables and sweets.  The plant is extinct in the wild yet millions of tons are cultivated each year.

Ginger is a flowering perennial that grows new stems from its rhizomes each spring. According to Wikipedia it probably originated in the tropical rainforest of the Indian subcontinent.

The plant is two to three feet tall with a pretty orchid-like flower.  Though most of us have never seen the plant it can be grown in the garden.  It takes 8-10 months for the rhizomes to mature.

The spice trade introduced ginger to the western world where it’s been popular since Roman times.  Eventually cultivation put it out of business in the wild but made ginger more successful than its cohorts in the rainforest.

Today most ginger is grown in India, China and Nigeria, 2.1 million tons per year.

Wildly successful ginger is extinct in the wild.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)