14 August 2011

Yesterday I found this plant blooming next to the Youghiogheny River at Ohiopyle State Park.

This is groundnut (Apios americana), a perennial vine with irregularly shaped reddish-brown flowers.  The vine lacks tendrils so the entire plant wraps itself around nearby vegetation.  I found it climbing Joe Pye-weed.

You might know groundnut by one of its other names — hopniss, pig potato, potato bean or Indian potato — most of which refer to its edible tuberous roots that are high in protein and look like small potatoes growing in a chain.  Each one is about the size of your thumb.

Native Americans taught European settlers that they could eat groundnut but neither of them bothered to domesticate it the way the potato was domesticated in Peru.  If they had, we’d probably be eating groundnuts today.

p.s. An attempt has been made to domesticate it.  Maybe we’ll eat it in the future.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

Here’s a beautiful picture of an unusual butterfly from Marcy Cunkelman.

It’s a giant swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes), the largest butterfly in the U.S. and Canada with a wingspan of 3.9 to 6.3 inches.  Not only is it large but it’s a fast flier with a hopping flight pattern.

In the photo you see its light-colored underside but it looks completely different from the top: dark brown with yellow stripes.

I’ve never seen a giant swallowtail and I’m sure I’ve overlooked its caterpillar because the larva looks like bird poop (click here to see).

Marcy was lucky.  She glanced out the window, saw the butterfly, and ran outdoors with her new camera.  The butterfly obliged by pausing on ironweed while she took its picture.

Nice!

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Here’s an orchid with a very strange name: Downy rattlesnake plantain (Goodyera pubescens).

“Plantain” probably describes its leaves which are rounded and basal like the common plantain weed.  “Rattlesnake” comes from the rumor that it cures snakebite, though it doesn’t as far as anyone can tell.  “Downy” is the one word that really applies.  It has fine down on its leaves and stem which you can see in photograph above.

This orchid is easy to identify at any time of year.  It doesn’t lose its leaves in winter and they have bright white stripes down their centers and white patterns along the veins.  In my experience we have no other plant with leaves like this.  (Someone correct me if I’m wrong!)

When in bloom, downy rattlesnake plantain’s ghostly white flowers cluster on a spike 6″ to 20″ tall.  The plant’s silhouette resembles common plantain, though the flowers are much larger.  From a distance the flowers look like beads with lips because the petals curve around the opening.

Though uncommon you’ll find this orchid in coniferous woods.  In southwestern Pennsylvania I usually find it on a hill above a creek because that’s where our most common conifer grows, the eastern hemlock.

Watch for this downy orchid, now blooming in our area.

(photos by Dianne Machesney)

On Sunday I went to Jennings to see the prairie in bloom.  The colors are at their peak right now with flowering Ironweed, Culvers root, Goldenrod, Blazing star and this enormous plant, Tall or Giant sunflower (Helianthus giganteus).

There are many yellow composite flowers at Jennings and I find them hard to identify.  Dianne Machesney helped me with this one by pointing out that some of its leaves are opposite but most are alternate.  The big clue for me is that the stem is red-purple and the plant is very tall.

Tall is an understatement.   Because it’s growing right next to the trail I could easily compare it to my height.  It’s probably 9 feet tall.

And the wonder of it is this:  It grew from ground level to 9 feet in only four months.

(photo by Kate St. John)

The Lesser or Small flowered purple fringed orchid (Platanthera psycodes) is blooming now in western Pennsylvania.  Its flowers are small — only 1/2″ across — but they make up for their size by clustering 30 to 50 on the stem.

You’ll find this orchid in wet spots in the woods, in damp meadows, and along streams and seeps.

Dianne Machesney photographed this one during a Wissahickon Nature Club outing last Tuesday.   The outing honored Esther Allen who certainly would have enjoyed seeing this plant.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

This spiny flower is blooming now.  If you look closely you’ll see that its tiny pinkish-purple flowers are quite pretty.

But it’s hard to get close.  Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum or Dipsacus sylvestris) looks like a warning.  Its prickly stem, spiny flower head, and slender thorny spikes seem to shout “Stay away!”

Interestingly, the only reason this plant is here in North America is that its spiny heads were used by the textile industry.  After the flowers fade and the plant dries out the heads can be used to raise or “tease” the nap on woven wool.

Factories substituted metal brushes for teasel long ago but the plant persists in our landscape.  It’s now invasive in thirteen states, though not in Pennsylvania.

Look for it by roadsides and in waste places.  Each plant can produce 2,000 seeds so where there’s one teasel there will soon be more!

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

That’s the description in my Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide.

Various species of cranberries grow in northern climates around the world but the berries are so tart that they weren’t popular as food until European settlers learned about them from Native Americans.

This plant, Large Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon), is the one that’s cultivated.

The shape of the flower gave cranberries their name.  The petals curl backward and the long stamens touch in front like a shooting star but if you look at the stem, flower and stamens as a whole, they resemble the neck, head and beak of a crane.   Crane-berry.  Cranberry.  

These evergreen plants bloom in acidic bogs in summer and show off their bright red berries in fall. 

Dianne Machesney photographed this one near Ricketts Glen in early July.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

We think of milkweeds as sun-loving plants so it was surprising to find this species deep in the woods in the Laurel Highlands.

Poke Milkweed (Asclepias exaltata) would not have caught my attention that day if it hadn’t been in bloom.  The flowers are a pale version of Common Milkweed with fewer flowers per cluster on long drooping stems.  In deep shade they look like lazy, ghostly starbursts. 

The species name exaltata means the plant is tall.  My specimen was over three feet high though they can grow as tall as six feet.

You’ll find this sweet-smelling flower in woods and at woodland edges from Ontario to Mississippi. 

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

In western Pennsylvania wildflower season comes in waves.

The first crest is in April when the woodland flowers bloom.  There’s a pause in May then the next wave, the field flowers, begins in late June and lasts through September.  I’ll be blogging more about flowers during this long, beautiful wave. 

Last Sunday I encountered beauty that stopped me in my tracks.  While hiking in the Laurel Highlands I came upon a sunny meadow filled with daisies and bright yellow flowers on tall stems.  Sundrops!

Sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa) flowers are 1″ to 2″ across, clustered at the top of their stems.  Each has a prominent cross-shaped stigma which the drone fly (who resembles a honeybee) is covering above, but he gives you a sense of scale.  These flowers are pretty big.

The stems are 1′ to 3′ tall and reddish, as shown below in two photos of a smaller look-alike, Oenothera perennis.

Sundrops open and close every day. They’re the daytime cousin of the common evening primrose whose flowers are very similar but the two are easy to tell apart.  Sundrops open in bright sunlight and close at night.  Evening primroses open at twilight.

It would be cool to do time lapse photography on a field containing both plants.  The flowers of the two species would wink open and shut like fireflies.

(sundrop with drone fly by Marcy Cunkelman, sundrops on stems by Dianne Machesney)