This week there’s a lot of fluff in the air from flowers gone to seed.  In my neighborhood it’s from a plant called American burnweed or pilewort that grows on burned sites and waste places.  It loves the urban setting.

Though it’s a native plant in the Aster family, pilewort (Erechtites hieraciifolius) is far from beautiful. Two to eight feet tall it looks very weedy, even ugly.  Each branch tip ends in a long green capsule that looks like a seed pod.

Are they seeds? No. I learned more when a bee paused to nectar on top of one.

A very close look revealed that the tip is a cluster of tiny flowers.

I opened the capsule and fanned its contents. Under magnification you can see the tiny white, almost translucent flowers with five petals, a protruding split pistil, and lavender centers.

They’re hard to photograph but here are two of my best attempts.

Most of the capsules have yellow tips.  Probably stamens, but even harder to see.

After the flowers are pollinated the green capsules split open and the long white filaments carry the seeds through the air.

Ugly from afar, pilewort’s beauty is microscopic.

(photos by Kate St.John)

From a distance the flower head on wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) looks like a pin cushion or a sea urchin dog-ball.

Close up you can see that each “spike” is a small flower with a pistil that splits in two curls at the top.

How fancy!

(photos by Kate St. John)

Here’s an orchid that’s blooming now in western Pennsylvania.

Slender ladies’ tresses (Spiranthes lacera) grow in open habitats in eastern North America.  They’re found in both natural and disturbed areas.

Marcy Cunkelman was mowing when she saw two of these flowers growing among the grass.  Wow!  She stopped the mower and protected them with stakes and bright pink ribbon.

Dianne Machesney’s photo below shows that the entire plant isn’t very large and could easily be overlooked in the grass.

Without the pink ribbon it really blends in.

(photos by Kate St.John and Dianne Machesney)

The color and shape of orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) are specially designed for hummingbird pollination.

“Hello, hummingbird,” says the flower. “Come on in!”

p.s. Curious about the design?  Click here to read more.

(photo by Kate St. John)

“What is this?”

That’s what I said to myself when I saw this plant at Moraine State Park in early August.  The leaves resemble tomato or green pepper leaves but the lantern seed pods were new to me.

It looks festive, doesn’t it?

It reminds me of Chinese lanterns.

Newcomb’s Wildlfower Guide keys this out to Ground Cherry (Physalis) with a choice of three species.   The leaf shape is wrong for clammy ground cherry and the stems and leaves aren’t downy so it must be smooth ground cherry (P. subglabrata, now P. longifolia).

Well, maybe. There are a lot of native ground cherries in the Americas — 46 species in Mexico alone. The extent of maroon inside the flower may give a hint. Physalis longifolia var. subglabrata is as close as I can get.

What I do know is that when the paper lantern dries the fruit is edible, though everything else about the plant is poisonous including the paper husk.

The fruit looks like a tiny tomato.  (click here to see.)  Its close relative, P. philadelphica, is cultivated for tomatillos.

Perhaps I’ll go back this fall to see the tomatoes inside the lanterns.

(photos by Kate St. John)

These mauve-brown flowers aren’t big and showy but they have a place in American history.

American groundnut (Apios americana) is a perennial vine in eastern North America with tuberous roots that are good to eat.  Many Native American tribes cultivated the plant, dug the roots and ate them like potatoes. The Lenape people called them “hobbenis” or hopniss.

When Europeans arrived in North America they knew nothing of the plant but learned quickly from the natives to avoid starvation.  The Wampanoag taught the Pilgrims where to find it and how to cook it.  It was probably on the menu at the first Thanksgiving.

Here’s what a freshly dug harvest looks like:

Europeans took hopniss back to the Old World and tried raising it as a crop, but the projects were soon abandoned because Apios americana doesn’t grow well in monocultures and it isn’t large enough to harvest until it’s two to three years old.

More recently the wild foods community has rediscovered hopniss but its desire to grow with other plants — and engulf them — is frustrating to tidy gardeners.

This month is a good time to see American groundnut in the wild.

It’s blooming now in western Pennsylvania.

Note:  If you decide to forage for this plant get permission from the landowner before you begin.  This goes for public lands too. For instance, it is illegal to take flowers, plants and animals from Pittsburgh City parks and Allegheny County parks.

(flower photo by Kate St. John. Remaining photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals.)

Don’t pick this flower unless you wear gloves.

Arrowleaf tearthumb (Polygonum sagittatum) is a sprawling annual vine in the Buckwheat family that grows in moist areas.  Individual plants are three to six feet long but you’d have to untangle them to prove it.  I don’t recommend doing that.

The stems are lined with tiny hooks that bend toward the root of the plant.  If you pull the plant with your bare hands … Owww!  It tears your thumb.

We found arrowleaf tearthumb at Jennings Prairie yesterday.  The flowers are quite small so it’s easy to overlook.  Here’s my thumb near the stem to give you some perspective.

Remember to wear gloves.

(photos by Kate St. John)