Enchanter’s nightshade, Schenley Park, 2013 (photo by Kate St. John)
13 July 2013
This plant has a conspicuous name and inconspicuous flowers.
Enchanters’ Nightshade (Circaea lutetiana, ssp. canadensis) blooms in shady woodlands in June and July. Subspecies are native to Europe, north Africa, western Asia and eastern North America.
The plant’s common and scientific names both refer to magic though it’s hard to find out why. Some sources say Circe used this plant to turn Odysseus’ men into swine, thus the genus name Circaea. The species name lutetiana is the Latin name for Paris. Is this Paris the city? Or is it Paris of Troy who started the Trojan War that spawned Odysseus’ epic journey home? The sources don’t agree.
I like this plant’s open airy structure but that makes it hard to photograph. I spent a lot of time on my knees in Schenley Park and threw away a lot of bad pictures. Above is the best I could do.
To see the flowers, here’s a closeup from Wikimedia Commons taken by Randy Nonenmacher in Skaneateles, New York.
Daisy fleabane, Schenley Park, 2016 (photo by Kate St. John)
9 July 2013
Here’s a native flower so common in fields and waste places that you’d think it’s a weed.
Daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus) has white or pink-tinged flowers, 0.5 to 0.75 inches wide, 50-100 ray petals, and alternate leaves that do not clasp the stem. Philadelphia fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus) has slightly larger, pinker flowers, 100-150 ray petals, and leaves that *do* clasp the stem.
Fleabane flowers respond to light. The white rays open and close at sunrise and sunset. Before they bloom they bow their heads. In the morning fleabane pulls up its flower heads and opens its white rays. This seems like a lot of exercise for a small flower but I imagine it’s meant to prevent nighttime pollination.
Fleabane got its name from the belief that the dried plant kills fleas. Bane comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning murderer or destroyer and is often used in plant names. For instance, “baneberry” means death-berry; it’s poisonous.
If wanted to kill fleas I could dry some fleabane. I wonder if it works …
Large-flowered marshallia (Marshallia grandiflora) grows in bogs and along river banks in Appalachia where it earned the common name Monongahela Barbara’s-buttons. It’s so rare that it’s endangered or threatened throughout its range and no longer grows in Maryland.
In southwestern Pennsylvania it’s found on the flood-scoured rocky banks of the Youghiogeny River where it relies on the floods to remove other species that would crowd it out. In fact, the biggest threat to Barbara’s-buttons is flood control. When the river quits flooding this plant can’t survive.
As you can see it has beautiful flowers. What you can’t tell from the photos is that the plant is 10 to 36 inches tall. From a distance the flower stands on a stalk above the leaves.
Up close the flower is intricate.
Botanists and plant lovers seek out Large-flowered Marshallia when it blooms in June.
At Jennings Prairie the best flowers bloom from mid July through August but I was there on the last day of June and found a few summer flowers to brighten the foggy morning.
Above, the bristly hairs on the black-eyed susan’s (Rudbeckia hirta) stem are the second clue to its identity.
Below, a very early whorled rosinweed (Silphium trifoliatum) attracted my attention, showing off its whorled leaves and purple stems.
Sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa) are one of my favorites. They resemble evening primroses but open during the day instead of at twilight.
I’ll return in early August for dense blazing-star, Culver’s root and goldenrod.
I missed the opportunity to show you this flower in late May while it was still blooming, but it’s worth a look.
This is a Wild Hyacyinth (Camassia scilliodes) also called Atlantic camas, an uncommon flower in western Pennsylvania.
From afar its long thin leaves are a tangle at the base of the plant, its light blue flowers stand up on a 1.5 to 2 foot stalk. The stalk blooms bottom to top. Up close you can see the flower’s yellow central disk and stamens.
These inch-long flowers are blooming now in Schenley Park. They stand out because the plant is three feet tall.
Though penstemons are common in the western U.S. Penstemon digitalis is one of the few species native to Pennsylvania. I found several blooming in a new location in the park, probably because their seeds were in a native plant mix applied to an erosion project.
Their scientific name is easy to remember. The common name is a mouthful: Foxglove beardtongue. Try saying that three times fast.
(photo by Kate St. John)
p.s. The pistil in this flower looks like a tongue and it has hairs, thus “beardtongue.”
Kate with cow parsnip, Mingo Creek County Park, 1 June 2013 (photo by Dianne Machesney)
2 June 2013
Long ago I learned, “Look but don’t touch.” This is a good rule of thumb when you’re not sure of what you’re looking at outdoors.
Yesterday I attended the Wissahickon Nature Club’s annual picnic at Mingo Creek County Park. At Wissahickon we’re all curious about nature. Some know birds best, some know plants, others know insects, so our outings are really informative. We examine everything, we teach each other, we look up the mysteries, and we all learn something.
Yesterday I learned about cow parsnip, a large plant that I had largely ignored. Here I am standing next to it. Notice that I’m not touching it. That’s a good thing if you’re not sure what it is!
Cow Parsnip (Heracleum maximum) is a native member of the parsley family. Though it’s a good plant and was used medicinally by Native Americans, it looks a lot like giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), an invasive plant from Eurasia that’s so toxic it causes nasty skin rashes if you merely brush against it. With so many botanists in the group I knew this plant was safe.
The umbels of cow parsnip and giant hogweed look similar to the untrained eye. The flower is large and pretty.
Cow parsnip flowers (photo by Dianne Machesney)
The real difference between the good plant and the bad one is that the stems and sheaths of cow parsnip are green.
Cow parsnip stem and sheath (photo by Dianne Machesney)
This green sheath is good (cow parsnip). The bad one, giant hogweed, has purple splotches on its stem and sheaths and thick hairs at the leaf joint (but who wants to get that close!). Interestingly, poison hemlock, another bad member of the parsley family, also has purple splotches on its stem.
Rule of thumb in this case: green is good, purple is bad.
But the real rule of thumb is Look But Don’t Touch.
…which explains why I’m overdressed on a hot day. I always wear long pants, long sleeves, a hat, and sunscreen outdoors. You can’t see my ankles but my socks are pulled over my pant legs to keep out ticks. This outfit saves me a lot of itchy aggravation later.
We may look odd, but ask us about cow parsnip and we’ll tell you, “This one is OK.”
Last weekend at the Wissahickon-Botanical Society outing I learned something new about celandine.
Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) is a perennial in the poppy family native to Europe and western Asia. It’s quite common in Schenley Park in May where I misidentified it years ago as the native Celandine-poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) when I was new to wildflower identification. The leaves are similar and the flowers are the same color, but that’s where the similarity ends … or so I thought.
It turns out that both plants have orange-yellow sap. Dick Nugent broke off a leaf of greater celandine to show us. (Chelidonium is non-native and sometimes invasive so it’s OK to do this.)
Here’s a broken leaf of greater celandine from Schenley Park yesterday.
