My neighbors will tell you I am not a gardener.  When the growing season arrives I spend all my time birding.  Around Memorial Day I glance at the garden and think, “Something must be done!”  I go out there with my Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide and identify what’s growing, pull out the noxious weeds, and leave everything else in place.

That’s how I got King Devil.

Also called Field Hawkweed (Hieracium pratense), it’s a perennial creeping plant whose yellow flowers cluster at the top of a tall, hairy stem.  The leaves are basal, thin, hairy, untoothed and hardly noticeable compared to the flowers.

I find the flowers interesting in all their phases.

I left the King Devil where it sprouted.

Wikipedia says, “This species finds its habitat where the soil has been neglected.”  That’s a pretty good description of my gardening efforts.  The birds are luring me away from home.

(photos by Kate St. John)

June 8, 2014:

Yesterday morning I helped count birds at the Emerald View BioBlitz with David and Colleen Yeany and Eva Simms.   Eva showed us the new trails in Olympia and Mt. Washington Parks.  What a lot of work to build them — but well worth it!  Check out the trail map.

Above Route 51 in Mt. Washington Park we found unusual flowers three feet tall with daisy-like heads, thin leaves, and long puckered buds.  I used my photos to identify them when I got home.

Yellow Goat’s Beard (Tragopogon dubius) is an introduced annual (or biennial) from Eurasia so I’m not surprised we found it growing in a sunny area reseeded by PennDOT several years ago.  It’s distinguished by the green bracts that show around the edge of the flower.  Fortunately we were there in the morning.  This flower closes in late afternoon.

None of the flowers had gone to seed so we didn’t see the reason this plant is called Goat’s Beard — its huge fluffy seed head.

This is not the only “Goat’s Beard” and for a moment I was excited by the thought of another one, Aruncus dioicus, which hosts the rare Dusky Azure butterfly (Celastrina nigra).  Though similarly named they are unrelated and don’t even resemble each other.  Aruncus dioicus is a native in the Rose family and grows in shady and moist deciduous woods.

One of many goats’ beards, this one is yellow.

(photo of seed head from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original. All other photos by Kate St. John)

If you have Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, I can tell you this flower is not in the 1977 edition.

Back in the late 1990’s I bought a Newcomb’s Guide and learned how to key out wildflowers in Esther Allen’s class at the Rachel Carson Institute.  Pretty soon I thought I could key out almost anything.

Hah!  I found this flower blooming at Raccoon Creek State Park Wildflower Reserve in early June of 1997.  I couldn’t figure it out.  Is it keyed as an irregular flower with opposite, divided leaves?   Or a 5-petaled flower?  No matter where I looked it wasn’t there.

Eventually at a Wisshickon Nature Club meeting I asked Esther about this mystery.  She immediately knew what I was describing.  “That isn’t in the book,” she said. “It’s Few-flowered Valerian, Valeriana pauciflora.”

I learned its common name from Esther’s translation of its scientific name — pauciflora means “few-flowered” — but on most plant databases it’s called Large-flowered Valerian.

Whatever the “flowered,” I drew it on page 286 of Newcomb’s in the section for 5-petaled flowers with opposite, divided leaves.

Look for it at Raccoon Wildflower Reserve in early June.

(photo by Dianme Machesney)

Here’s a flower that’s amazingly difficult to photograph.

Last weekend at Cape Cod I found many starflowers blooming in the woods.  They ought to be easy to photograph, right?  Wrong!  The flower’s whiteness engulfs its depth.  My photos made them look like two-dimensional blobs.  Thanks to Dianne Machesney we can see the details.

Starflower (Trientalis borealis) is a northeastern plant that ranges from Labrador to North Carolina. It prefers cooler climates so you’ll find it at higher elevations the further south you go.

It blooms at the end of May along the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail in Pennsylvania … and at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

This plant is hard to look up if you say it the way I do:  sass-pa-rilla.   My pronunciation eliminates two critical letters at the beginning of the word.  Fortunately Google anticipated my mistake and offered sar-sa-pa-rilla when I spelled it without the additional “R” and “A.”

Wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) is common in rich woods in northeastern North America. Even when it’s blooming you’ll notice its leaves first. They’re more than a foot tall and grow on a long stem that splits into three compound leaves.  (Click here to see.)

The flowers are arranged as an echo of the leaves but because the flower and leaf stems grow directly from the ground they appear to be unrelated plants.  Follow the stems and you’ll see.

In a typical year wild sarsaparilla would be blooming today but in this cold spring it’s probably delayed.  Look for it in the Laurel Highlands.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

Foam Flower (Tiarella cordifolia) blooms in early May in Pennsylvania’s woods.

Happy Mothers’ Day with wildflowers.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

This spiny 2-inch-long seed pod is all that’s left of a Wild Cucumber (Echinocystis lobata) fruit.

Click here to see what it looked like last summer.

(photo by Kate St. John)

Dianne Machesney found this Halberd-leaved Violet blooming at the Cucumber Falls Trail in Ohiopyle State Park last week.

A halberd is a long pole with a battle ax; the ax always has a hook on the back end.  It was a popular weapon in the 14th and 15th centuries.

What do you think?  Is this a “halberd” leaf?

(photo by Dianne Machesney)