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.”
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.
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)
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.
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.
(photos by Kate St. John)
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.
The weather was beautiful on Wednesday when my friends and I found hopeful signs of spring at Cedar Creek Park in Westmoreland County. There were two Best Birds (yellow-throated warbler, Louisiana waterthrush) and many April flowers including hepatica, Virginia bluebells, twinleaf, bloodroot, harbinger of spring, and …
Yellow corydalis (Corydalis flavula) is a native annual in the Poppy family. Its small flower, 1/4″ long, has an unusual puckered shape.
The most common spring beauty in our area, Claytonia virginica, has thin grass-like leaves. Carolina spring beauty (Claytonia caroliniana) has oval leaves and deeper pink flowers.
Wild blue phlox (Phlox divaricata) was on the verge of blooming last Wednesday. Here’s one stunning flower.
But this morning all is changed. It rained all day yesterday and now we have gusty winds and snow flurries. 🙁
Thursday’s April showers closed the flowers.
(photos by Kate St. John)
Last Sunday, 26 March 2017, I visited Raccoon Creek State Park’s Wildflower Reserve to see the newest flowers.
The woods were brown and the sky was gray so I had to look closely to find small signs of spring.
(Winter floods scraped the creekside vegetation. Click on the creek photo above to see.)
Harbinger of spring (Erigenia bulbosa) was opening its tiny salt-and-pepper flowers, shown at top and below.
It was fun to find blue flowers in the grass: corn speedwell (Veronica arvensis), a non-native. Our earliest spring natives aren’t this bright.
Snow trillium (Trillium nivale) was past its prime.
Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) was blooming everywhere. This one is surrounded by garlic mustard. 🙁
Round-lobed hepatica (Hepatica nobilis) bloomed among old oak leaves.
And cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) was in bud on the south facing Jennings Trail near Shafers Rock. I’m sure it will bloom this week.
(photos by Kate St. John)
In another landmark of spring I found coltsfoot blooming in Schenley Park last Wednesday, March 8.
Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) is an early-blooming Eurasian plant whose flower resembles a dandelion except that it blooms when it has no leaves. The leaves, which are shaped like a colt’s footprint, come out after the flower is gone.
This morning it’s 14oF so the flowers are closed tight against the cold. Coltsfoot will survive but I’m not so sure about my daffodils.
Looking back, I’m wistful. It was only three days ago that the temperature was 60oF and these hazelnut catkins blew in the wind along Schenley Park’s Lower Trail.
(The logs in the photo are an old ash, killed by emerald ash borer.)
(photos by Kate St. John)
Last week I found these large, dull gray seed pods beneath a tree in Schenley Park with “coffee” beans inside.
The Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus) is a rare tree with a wide distribution from Oklahoma to Ohio. It was planted in Schenley Park as an ornamental more than 100 years ago.
The tree earned its name because Native Americans used to grind the roasted beans to make a beverage like coffee. When coffee and chicory weren’t available the settlers drank this beverage, too, but they didn’t like it as well.
The pods are very tough and hard to open. I quickly learned that the flattest ones have no beans so I chose a broken one and pried it open with a knife.
The beans are dark brown, round, and hard to photograph. I moved the biggest one so you can see it better.
Did a squirrel eat the other beans? If so, I hope he’s immune to the cytisine alkaloid inside them. When not fully roasted, these beans are poisonous to humans.
Want to try some Kentucky “coffee?” No thanks. I’m sticking with Starbucks.
(photo by Kate St. John)
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)