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)

Lichens are interesting shapes if you look closely enough.

Two weeks ago I found these tiny green trumpets in the pine woods at Moraine State Park in Butler County, PA.  I don’t know much about lichens but a Google search placed them in the Cladonia genus.  The best photo match was the trumpet lichen (Cladonia fimbriata).

Here’s a closer view.

What are the cups for?  New Hampshire Garden Solutions explains them for  the Cladonia chlorophaea species:

Mealy Pixie Cup (Cladonia chlorophaea) lichen look like little trumpets from the side but from the top they look like tiny cups. The cups are where the spores form and this lichen relies on raindrops falling in them to disperse its spores. This lichen is called “mealy” because of the grainy reproductive structures (soredia) covering its outside surface.

Do you know the name of this lichen?

(photos by Kate St.John)

An early jump on Throw Back Thursday:

Tomorrow will be a big day for cranberries, but how did they they end up in this form?

Learn more in this 2013 article: Unnatural Shape

22 October 2016

What’s the name of this vine?  I ask because I don’t know the answer.

The vine was relatively small when I took its picture in June in Schenley Park.  Now it’s draped over two small trees and climbing a third.  It’s probably an alien invasive.

If you know its name please leave a comment with your answer.

Thanks!

UPDATE at 9:20am:  Thank you, everyone.  Many have commented that this is Canada moonseed (Memispermum canadense).  I’ll go check the vine and its fruit today to see if the rest of it matches up.  I expect to find purple-black berries.

UPDATE at 7:00pm: The vine at Schenley Park has no berries but everything else matches up.

(photo by Kate St.John)

Last weekend Bob Machesney and Mike Fialkovich were hiking near Slippery Rock Creek in Lawrence County when Bob found some unusual flowers growing on a gravel heap.

Mike knows a lot about plants but these flowers were new to him so he took some pictures — the first two photos shown here — while Bob collected an identification sample for his wife, Dianne.

Dianne identified the plant as wild mignonette (Reseda lutea) and Bonnie Isaac, Botany Collection Manager at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, confirmed that this is indeed a rare find in western Pennsylvania.  It’s a County Record for Lawrence County.

Resada lutea is a biennial or short-lived perennial native to Eurasia that grows in well-drained chalk or limestone soils.  It can spread by root cuttings or seed but it won’t start to grow until the soil is disturbed.  At full height the plant is one to two feet tall.

Blooming from June through September, the flowers have unusual shapes as you can see in this Wikimedia close-up.

Wild mignonette is rare in western Pennsylvania because we don’t have well-drained limestone soil.

It found a home on a gravel heap in Lawrence County, the only well-drained limestone for miles.

(photos by Mike Fialkovich. Closeup from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)