There aren’t many flowers that bloom in the woods in the summer, but you might find this one.

Thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana) stands 2-3 feet tall in the sun-splashed forest.  The flower has an elongated central disk surrounded by large white petals and is noticeable because it’s alone on a long stalk above the leaves.

When the flower is fertilized, the petals fall off and the central disk becomes a seed pod.  It looks like a thimble, hence the name.

I found this one blooming at the Roaring Run Watershed in Armstrong County last weekend.

(photo by Kate St. John)

I’ve seen yellow and orange touch-me-not but here’s a rare jewelweed in pink.

Thanks to Marcy Cunkelman for sending this along.  It blooms in her garden.

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Two months before it blooms we can identify this plant even though it has no flowers.  Look at its stem!

Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) is already five feet tall and on its way to eight.  It will look like this in August.  Meanwhile the stem gives away its name.

The “wings” are petiole extensions that run the length of the stem.  The newest wings at the top of the plant are straight with a dark margin. The older part of the stem has long white hairs in the margins. Sometimes the wings are wavy.

To me the wings look like flanges.  “Flange-stem?”

Say that three times quickly and you’ll know why it’s called wingstem!

(photos by Kate St. John)

This Pennsylvania threatened plant is in the Portulacaceae family, related to our garden variety Portulaca.  Look closely at its thin, round, succulent leaves and you’ll see the family resemblance.

Round-leaved fameflower  (Talinum teretifolium), also called Quill fameflower and (Phemeranthus teretifolius), is found in rocky or sandy soil from Pennsylvania southward to Georgia and Alabama.

Dianne Machesney found this one last week at serpentine barrens in Chester County.

It was a Life Flower(*) for her. It would be one for me, too.

(photos by Dianne Machesney)

(*) Life Flower: Borrowing a term from birding, this means the first time one has ever seen this species.

Facebook has Throw Back Thursdays (TBT *) and now, so do I.

I’ve been writing Outside My Window since November 2007 and accumulated more than 2,320 articles.  Many of them are great information that I’ve almost forgotten, so today I’m starting my own Throw Back Thursdays to reprise some really cool stuff.

Let’s re-explore the inside of a nasturtium.  Did you know it has a special structure just for hummingbirds?

Click on the photo to go back in time to 2011 and read “From the Hummingbird’s Point of View.”

(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to read more about it)

(*) If you aren’t on Facebook… Throw Back Thursday (TBT) is the day each week when Facebook users post an old photo from their past.

On June 14 Karen Lang and I looked for fledglings at two peregrine nest sites along the Ohio River.  When we got to Monaca Karen pulled into an open area between a house and an old industrial site on the upriver side of the Monaca-East Rochester Bridge.  All around us the edges were blooming with bright blue flowers.

Ohio spiderwort, Tradescantia ohiensis or bluejacket, is a native perennial that’s often cultivated.  It’s tall and showy but each flower lasts only a day.  According to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, “When touched in the heat of the day, the flowers shrivel to a fluid jelly.”  (Click here for another view.)

The flowers were also blooming in the homeowner’s garden so my hunch is they spread on their own to the river’s edge.

It’s fitting that Ohio spiderwort grows next to The Ohio.

(photo by Kate St. John)

On the day we saw the upland sandpipers Carole Winslow showed me a “Life Flower”(*) growing by the road.

The delicate flowers of Bowman’s Root (Gillenia trifoliata) have five petals, but they’re arranged irregularly as you can see in Tom Potterfield’s photo above. When the flower fades each petal falls alone leaving three and four-petaled flowers to confuse us amateur botanists.

I took a (poor) photo of the profuse flowers and drooping stems.  They look as if the rain beat them down but this perennial just won’t stand upright.

Gillenia trifoliata has two scientific names because there was a big disagreement about its first one.  Conrad Moench named it Gillenia in honor of German botanist Arnoldus Gillenius, but another of Gillenius’ fans later named a completely different plant Gillena in his honor. Professor Britton decided that the single letter “i” was not enough to distinguish the two names so he renamed Bowman’s Root Porteranthus trifoliatus in honor of his friend, Thomas C. Porter.

Which name is right?  In scientific naming there’s a rule that the first name takes precedence unless, of course, the organism is reclassed.  As we have seen with warblers, the Dendroica genus name completely disappeared when American Redstarts, Setophaga ruticilla, were reclassed into the Dendroica genus.  Because Setophaga is an older name the American Ornithologists’ Union declared that Setophaga replaced Dendroica. (Don’t get me going on how much I hate this!)  Apparently botanists made no such pronouncement on Gillenia so both names continue.

Bowman’s Root has another common name, Indian Physic, because Native Americans used the powdered root for an emetic (bleah!) and other medicinal uses.

Four names are a heavy load for these ethereal flowers.  I like to call them Bowman’s Root.

(Top photo taken at Longwood Gardens by Tom Potterfield. Click on the image to see the original.  Bottom photo by Kate St.John)

(*) Life Flower: I’m borrowing a term from birding to describe the first time I’ve ever seen this species.