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April Showers Bring-Birds?

Posted in Birds, Buds, Flowers, Insects, Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged Bloodroot Blossoms, Brunerra, Canon SX70 HS, Common Grackle, Early Red Tulips, Eastern Phoebe, False Hellebore, Forsythia, Helebores, Hyacinth, Lupine, Magnolia Blossoms, Mayflies, Myrtle, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Non Biting Midges, Olympus TG-7, Ornamental Cherry Blossoms, Palm Warbler, Pond Life, Pond Life in Spring, Ramps, Red Wing Blackbird, Siberian Bugloss, Spring Birds, Spring Greens, Spring Plants Nature Study, Spring Waterfowl, Swallows, Swanzey New Hampshire, The Wetlands, Wood Ducks on April 20, 2024| 22 Comments »

Last week (4/9 – 4/14) we had several wet days. Since what we saw were showers rather than steady rain, I thought I might have a chance to get some photos of what happens here on showery days.

The hellebore are still going strong. I think they’re doing better this year than I’ve ever seen.

I wasn’t sure what the freezing temperatures we had in March would do to the Forsythia buds but as we see here, they didn’t seem to bother them at all. Their bright cheery color can be seen in large numbers on every street in town right now and I am always reminded how very different spring would be without them.

Siberian bugloss is also known as Brunnera macrophylla. It’s a pretty little plant that is blooming now. I first saw it in a local park and I’ve watched it spread over the years, but not to the point of being invasive. Plant breeders have come up with several different colors in the leaves, and all are quite pretty. Soon these plants will be loaded with flowers.

I love the deeply pleated leaves of false hellebore plants, which have just come up. They don’t look like any other plant in the spring forest at this time of year and that’s a good thing, because they are also the most toxic plant found in the spring forest, and people have died from eating them.

The white parts of these wild leeks look somewhat like scallions and taste somewhere between onion and garlic. They are considered a delicacy and are called ramps. They’re a favorite spring vegetable from Quebec to Tennessee, and ramp festivals are held in almost all states on the U.S. east coast and many other countries in the world. I found them just a couple of yards away from the false hellebores. Since both plants come up at the same time I like to show them in the same post when I can because people claim that they confuse the two, even though they look nothing alike. If you scroll up and down between this shot and the previous one I’m sure you’ll wonder as I do, how anyone could possibly confuse these two plants. If you’re a forager you should know false hellebores well.

Bloodroot blossoms will not open in the rain or on very cloudy days but this day was overcast and bright, so they were open or opening when I got there. “There” was an unexpected place; right along the rail trail I used to walk as a boy. Trains were running then though, and I can’t ever remember seeing a bloodroot along the tracks. I’m pretty sure the railroad used herbicides to keep the weeds (and flowers) down. Anyhow, I was lucky to have an overcast sky because the fine veins in bloodroot petals just disappear in sunshine. These are one of our most beautiful spring ephemeral flowers, here for just a short time. Their common name comes from the blood red sap found in their roots, which Native Americans once used to paint both themselves and their horses.

Every now and then the sun would break through the clouds, but not often. I was glad to see it lighting up these myrtle flowers one day. This is one of the old “shared” plants that passed from neighbor to neighbor in the early 1800s. Along with lilacs, peonies, iris, and orange daylilies it’s a plant that you find out in the middle of nowhere growing beside old cellar holes. After 200 years of growing on their own the plants still bloom as if the house was still standing and they were still being tended.

There is a big difference between looking and actually seeing, and if we just stop for a moment beautiful things like raindrops on lupine leaves can show us that difference. As Henry David Thoreau once said: It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

I like the dark, loose flowers on this hyacinth. I used to know its name but that doesn’t matter. It’s a beautiful thing and so different from other hyacinths.

Tulips are up and blooming. These small red ones are the first I’ve seen but there are lots more coming.

Ornamental cherry trees just started blossoming. These are the first I’ve seen. We have mostly white and pink.

The magnolias are blooming beautifully this year but you can find frost burns here and there on them if you look closely.

Petals had fallen from another pure white magnolia blossom so I could see into its heart. It was as beautiful without its petals as it was with them.

One day I decided to go to the wetlands because nature seems to be really humming there lately. I sometimes stop at this picnic table to see if I can get a feel for what’s going on. There is a road to the immediate right out of view and on the day this photo was taken my car was parked on the other side of it so I wouldn’t have to go far if it rained.

I met a common grackle on the picnic table one showery day. “Mind if I sit with you?” I asked. It didn’t answer but apparently it did mind because it flew up and landed on a branch. Last time I saw it, it was high up in the top of a pine tree.

After I had sat on the picnic table for a while a cute little yellow bird landed in a bush beside it. “Look at my full belly,” it said. “Yes I see,” I replied. “It looks like you’ve had plenty to eat. You look almost like a pear with wings.”

The little bird had to smile at the thought of itself as a flying pear. Though it didn’t introduce itself I think it might have been a palm warbler, but I can never be 100% certain with birds. I don’t know why anything with the word “palm” in its name would be in New Hampshire in April but that’s what Google lens says. If it’s wrong I hope someone will let me know.

An eastern phoebe (I think) landed on a cattail in front of me, looking thin and forlorn. “I wish I had a full belly,” it said. “Maybe you just need to try a little harder” I suggested. “Watch your cousin over there and see what happens. There seems to be plenty of food for everyone right now.”

There had been a week long insect hatching taking place in the pond and though I didn’t know for sure at this point, I thought the insects might be mayflies. Mayflies can hatch in the billions and sometimes the swarms are so large they can even be seen on radar.

The phoebe’s cousin looked fit and trim and as we watched it would hop off the cattail stem and just fall like dead weight straight down to the surface of the water, where it would spread its wings at the last minute and scoop up an insect. “Try doing that,” I suggested to the thin phoebe. The palm warblers were doing the same thing but I noticed that they would also fly up into the air occasionally. They were all busy little birds, constantly moving.

Overhead was a flock of hundreds of swallows, swooping and diving and barrel rolling through the sky over the pond, eating any hapless insects that flew from the pond surface. They were also making other birds quite agitated. Many of last year’s cattail stems were armed with male red winged blackbirds, all looking up. If a swallow got too close to a nesting site, off the blackbird would go at top speed like a missile, chasing the swallow and matching its flight pattern move for move, plucking at its tail feathers all the way.

I’ve accidentally stumbled into red winged blackbird nesting sites so I didn’t envy the swallows; these blackbirds are fierce defenders of their territory. They have turned me around in a hurry by hovering right in front of my face and beating on my head and face with wildly flapping wings. They have no fear.

This not very good shot shows just a very few of the hundreds of swallows that swarmed together over the pond in a feeding frenzy.

On the pond surface were Canada geese, mallards, hooded mergansers, wood ducks like the pair in this photo, and I don’t know what else. As I sat on the picnic table I had to wonder how word of these hatchings traveled so quickly through nature. It seemed like a messaging system had let everyone know, because all these birds would show up in no time at all when the insects appeared. It was an amazing thing to watch, and I learned quite a lot by just sitting and watching. Male wood ducks are usually very shy and hide away in coves and backwaters where they can’t be seen, yet here they were out in plain sight with people nearby. That’s how strong the pull of easy food pickings was.

It was hard to get a good shot of the wood ducks because they never stopped moving. They and all the other waterfowl swam quickly back and forth, vacuuming up as many insects as they could, just as this one was doing. They must have been eating them by the thousands, and if you figure in all the swallows overhead and the smaller birds in the bushes, along with all the fish, frogs, turtles, and other life in the pond, you begin to see that it’s a miracle that any of the insects survive. But they do survive, and they have for hundreds of millions of years. Mayflies, it is said, are among the most ancient of insects still living. And it’s a good thing they’re still with us; just look at all the life they help support. Though called “mayflies” I’ve read that they can appear at any time from April to October.

It started to rain again and as I got back to the car and reached for the door handle I saw an insect that had been resting on the car fly away. I still can’t say for certain because I only got a quick glimpse, but it looked to me like a mayfly. Other possibilities are stoneflies and caddisflies but what I saw didn’t look like either of those. They’re bigger than mayflies.

Non biting midges are another good possibility. Midge fly pupae swim to the surface and emerge as adults, which look a lot like mosquitoes. They mate in a swarm shortly after becoming adults, so they sound like a good possibility as well. Adults live for 3-5 days.

After all this talk of mayflies I knew I’d better show you one. A year or two ago I got this shot of one hiding on a fern stalk. According to what I read about them online the dull opaque color of the wings means this mayfly was at the “subimago stage,” which is halfway between the nymph and adult stages. This is when they are most vulnerable, so they will often hide in the undergrowth at pond edges. At the adult stage they have no mouth parts and cannot eat. They mate and the female lays her eggs in water, and both she and the male will die after living for just a day or two.

I found this photo of non-biting midges, also called lake flies, on Wikipedia. It was taken by Alexsuchy near Lake Winnebago in Neenah, Wisconsin. These insects like a surface water temperature of 60 degrees F. to hatch, while Damselflies prefer 70 degrees F. If I’d had a way to measure the water temperature I would have had my answer. Mayflies require very clean water but midge larvae are somewhat tolerant of pollution.

When a fly fisherman ties a fly he tries to make that fly look like whatever insect will be hatching when he uses it. If it’s good enough it will fool the fish into thinking it’s the real thing.

I suppose the moral of this story is, don’t let wet weather stop you. You can often see amazing things on rainy days that you might only rarely see when the sun shines. The beauty and splendor never stops, rain or shine.

Looking at the pond all I could think was that it is an incredible thing how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all. ~Sarah Dressen

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Summer Flowers Come A Little Early

Posted in Flowers, Insects, Lichens, Nature, Orchids, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged Bird's Eye Speedwell, Bunch Berries, Canon SX40 HS, Colombine, Dogwood, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly, Germander Speedwell, Golden Ragwort, Hancock New Hampshire, Keene, Late Spring Plants, Lesser Stitchwort, Lupine, Morrow's Honeysuckle, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, New Oak Leaves, NH, NH State Wiildflower, Olympus TG-6, Pine Pollen Cones, Pink Lady's Slipper, Poets Daffodil, Possible Lancet Clubtail Dragonfly, Purple Tradescantia, Rag Lichen, Rhodora, Rhodora Blossoms, Robin's Plantain, Spring Follwers, Spring Plants, Swanzey New Hampshire, Tatarian Honeysuckle, Tradescantia, White Tradescantia on June 3, 2023| 20 Comments »

Pink lady’s slipper orchids, our state wildflower, are blooming a little early this year. They usually bloom when ox-eye daisies and lupines bloom but this year they were a bit earlier than both. And there are fewer of them. Where I often find a dozen in bloom this year I’m finding only two or three. This photo shows five or six plants with only one blooming, and that seems to be the way it has been going in this area. I have a feeling the lack is connected to the past two summers of drought; so dry there was hardly a mushroom to be seen. That’s important, because these orchids depend on a soil borne Rhizoctonia fungus. This year so far we’ve seen what I would call average rainfall, so maybe that will mean more blooms next summer.

When plants are weakened by drought they are less likely to bloom prolifically but life is a circle and the woods will surely be full of them again in the future. The blossoms on pink lady’s slippers are especially beautiful with their darker, vein like insect guide lines that will guide the insect, hopefully a bumblebee, right to the slit seen here at the top of the pouch. Once inside the bee finds there is only one way out, which is through the top of the blossom. While squeezing through the hole in the top it has to brush against the sticky stigma and it leaves behind any pollen it might have collected from other flowers. It will also have picked up pollen from this flower, ready for transport to another. It all seems complicated but orchids are the most highly evolved of all plants and their method works; I see quite a few seed pods in late summer.

Shy little bunchberries seem to be blooming well this year. They are associated with wood and grow on stumps, logs, and even live trees. Even when they appear to be growing on the ground there is usually an old log or something made of wood beaneath them. Why this is isn’t known but it is thought that they must receive nutrients from the wood they grow on. Bunchberry is in the dogwood family and is also called creeping dogwood or bunchberry dogwood. White bracts surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. If all goes well the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries.

When you see dogwoods flowering you know it’s time to look for bunchberries, because being in the same family, they almost always bloom at the same time. Once again on this tree there are large white bracts surrounding the much smaller flowers in the center, just as we saw on the bunchberry.

Some dogwoods were hit hard by the freeze we had on May 18th, as these blossoms show. The leaves don’t seem to have been bothered though, so the trees should do okay. In certain areas many trees like catalpla and black locust had all their leaves and flower buds killed or damaged by the freeze so we’ll have to wait and see how they recover. I should be seeing catalpa trees blossoming all over right now and I haven’t seen even one.

Golden ragwort is in the aster family and is considered our earliest blooming aster. It doesn’t mind growing in wet soil and tolerates shade so it always seems like a beacon with its bright yellow flowers shining in the dappled shade I find it in. It isn’t a common plant so I’m usually surprised by it as I was this time when I found it in a place I’ve walked by hudreds of times. It seems to be a plant that “gets around.” You’ll see it in a spot for a year or even three and then it will disappear, only to be found in a different spot.

Tatarian honeysuckle is one of the prettiest of the invasive honeysuckles, in my opinion. It is originally from Siberia and other parts of eastern Asia and in the fall its pretty pink flowers become bright red berries. Of course, birds eat the berries and the plant spreads quickly.

Morrow’s Honeysuckle is another invasive honeysuckle. It has sweetly fragrant, pretty white flowers that turn yellow with age. Unfortunately, it spreads by its berries like Tatarian honeysuckle and it can form dense thickets and outcompete native shrubs. It seems more aggressive than Tatarian honeysuckle and I see it far more often.

It’s a shame to have so many invasive plants and I would never make light of it, but the truth is once the genie is out of the bottle from what I’ve seen, it is nearly impossible to put it back in. Invasive honeysuckles have been around since I was just a small boy and I know that the only way to truly be rid of them is to dig them up and pull all the seedlings. But I can attest to the fact that digging up a honeysuckle is very hard work, and who will do it?

Does that mean we shouldn’t fight invasives? No, what I’m saying is, maybe Instead of setting out to “rid the world of the scourge” we should just be at peace with whatever we can accomplish. A lot of littles can add up to a lot. People seem ready to get together and “do the big thing” and then when they see more invasives growing where they’ve done so much hard work they get discouraged and give up. This is not the way to win. Everyone doing what they can when they can is the way to win.

An eastern swallowtail butterfly appeared to prefer the white Morrow’s honeysuckle but there were no tatarian honeysuckles in the area, so that probably isn’t a fair assesment. I doubt it has any real preference.

I hadn’t seen any dragonflies yet this spring so I went to Hancock one day, back to the nature camp I once worked for, just to take a walk and see what I could see. There is a pond there and there used to be so many dragonflies I had them land on me and even fly alongside the tractor when I mowed the meadow. They did that because they knew the tractor was going to scare up insects for them to eat. That’s when I discovered that dragonflies are not only smart but they must have at least a hint of a memory.

I spent some time at the pond hoping to see dragonflies, but didn’t see any. That’s because they were all here on this dirt road, apparently. Google lens says this one is a lancet clubtail, which likes to rest on gravel roads, so that fit. Two things bother me about that identification though; eye color, and the photo isn’t good enough to see the “tail.” If I understand what I’ve read this dragonfly’s eyes should be blue or gray, not brown. The color might just be caused by the harsh lighting though, because I’ve had trouble finding dragonflies of any kind with brown eyes online.

There were lots of fringed polygala at the camp when I worked there but I didn’t see many this time so I went to another spot and found these. These plants are in the milkwort family and aren’t really common but if they like a spot they can grow into a good size colony. I could explain how they’re pollinated but it’s quite a convoluted process so I’ll just ask that you trust me; they are pollinated. And it all starts when a heavy enough insect lands on that little fringe.

When I was looking for winged polygayla flowers I found a rag lichen. Despite a recent rain it was quite dry and, as is often the case with lichens, most of its color had changed as it dried. It wasn’t its color that I was interested in though; it was its amazing net like texture. This is the first time I had seen this lichen so I spent quite a lot of time getting photos of it. If you click on the photo you’ll be better able to see what I mean about its texture.

I thought I’d show one more shot of new spring oak leaves. They’re probably the last I’ll see this year. This shot shows how they finally turn green while still wearing their velvet coats. Once green and photosynthesizing they’ll lose their velvet and shine.

The male flowers of pine trees are called pollen cones because that’s what they produce. Pine trees are wind pollinated and great clouds of pollen can make it look like the trees are burning and releasing yellow green smoke each spring. Pine pollen is a strong antioxidant and it has been used medicinally around the world for thousands of years. Its health benefits were first written of in China nearly 5000 years ago and they were said to be numerous. You can still buy it today.

I love to see Robin’s plantain, which is one of the fleabanes, bloom in spring because it reveals all the flower lovers among us who, rather than mow it down, leave it to bloom. It is a common “weed” that comes up in lawns everywhere but it’s beautiful, so you’ll see large islands of unmowed grass with pink flowers poking up out of them on otherwise manicured lawns. For a week or so the weeds win and it always makes me smile. If only people could understand that it is these “weeds” that are normal, not their lawns. There was a time when grass was the weed, and it was dug up so the weeds, mostly used for food or medicine, would have more room to grow. The world must have been even more beautiful then.

Germander speedwell is another beautiful weed that is one of the larger flowered “lawn” speedwells. It is also called bird’s eye or cat’s eye speedwell and is considered invasive but I always find it growing in the unmown grass at the edge of the woods, so I don’t know why it would be a bother. It can make rather large colonies so maybe if it got into the garden it could be a pest, but after a lifetiime in gardens I’ve never seen it in one, so I say just enjoy its quiet beauty and let it be. I would welcome it in my own yard.

Lesser stitchwort is blooming among the tall grasses. This plant is originally from Europe and is also called common or grass leaved stitchwort. It likes disturbed soil and does well on roadsides, old fields, and meadows. The common name stitchwort refers to the plant being used in herbal remedies to cure the pain in the side that we call a stitch. The stellaria part of its scientific name means star, and these beautiful little stars twinkle all summer long, just about everywhere I go. They and so many other weeds call me out of the shade of the forests and into the sunny meadows. There is great beauty found in both places but I learned as a boy that a meadow was much easier to walk through. When I wanted sweet and soft rather than rough and tumble I chose a sunny summer meadow.

Tradescantia, also called spiderwort, has come into bloom. I took this photo because I thought I had found a pale blue one which I’d never seen, but my color finding software tells me it’s purple and I’ve seen plenty of those. I keep forgetting that I have a color blind helper app on my phone. It works well in the field but only if you remember to use it. The same could be said for the color blind glasses I have; they’re great, but you have to remember them.

I was a little disappointed when I saw this white tradescantia blossom because last year it had blue streaks in its petals along with the blue in the center. It was a beautiful thing and it still is, but I do miss the blue in its petals. I looked at several different plants and all the flowers looked just like this one. If you’d like to see what I saw last year just Google “Tradescantia Osprey.” Apparently they can revert back to the solid white.

If you could somehow look back into the past to Ancient Greece at about 371 BC, you’d probably see this beautiful daffodil there. It’s called the poet’s daffodil and is such an ancient plant that many believe it is the flower that the legend of Narcissus is based on. It is one of the first cultivated daffodils and is hard to mistake for any other, with its red edged, yellow corona and pure white petals. It has naturalized throughout this area and can sometimes be found in unmown fields. Its fragrance can be compared to that of the paper white narcissus; so intoxicating that being in a room with 2 or 3 flowers in a vase can give some people headaches or make them sick. It blooms a bit later, just as most other daffodils are giving in. is also called the pheasant eye daffodil, for obvious reasons.

Lupines have just started blooming. I found this one at the local college. Anyone who has spent any time in a garden knows that lupines are in the pea / bean family. It’s a huge family of plants and you see its representatives just about everywhere.

Five swans came together on the back of a columbine blossom.

One of my favorite spring shrubs is the rhodora. It is a small, native rhododendron that loves swampy places. It’s native to the northeastern U.S. and Canada and its flowers appear before the leaves for a short time in late spring. By mid-June they will have all vanished. On May 17, 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote “The splendid Rhodora now sets the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color,” and that is exactly what this beautiful little plant does.

There’s nothing else quite like this flower blooming on pond shorelines in spring, so it’s close to impossible to confuse it with any other shrub. It often grows so close to the water that the best way to see it is by boat or kayak.

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden. ~Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Late June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Black Eyed Susan, Canada Thistle, Canon SX40 HS, Creeping Thistle, Crown Vetch, Ditch Lily, Feverfew, Foxglove, Gray Dogwood, Hedge Bindweed, Keene New Hampshire, Knapweed, Lupine, Mock Orange, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus TG-6, Orange Daylily, Pink Campion, Purple Flowering Raspberry, Scabiosa, Smooth Rose, St. John's Wort, Summer Flowers, Summer Hiking, Summer Plants, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Tall Meadow Rue, Tall Thimbleweed, Viola, Whorled Loosestrife on June 29, 2022| 10 Comments »

It wouldn’t be summer without black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia) and here they are, right on schedule. I’ve noticed over the past few years though, that they have seemed to bloom earlier each year and what was once July has now become June. Since I’ve always thought of them as a fall flower, their early arrival always comes with mixed feelings. Cheery yes, but let’s not rush into fall, has been my main gripe. At least this year they waited a bit.

This plant was always believed to have been given its common name by English colonists, but that caused a real conundrum among botanists who all agreed that it was a prairie native. Though everyone still agrees that it is a prairie native, recent research has shown that it was growing in Maryland in the 1600s. In other words it was most likely growing in all parts of the country then, just as it does today.

One day probably 40 years ago a kind man who was the director of the MacDowell artist’s colony in Peterborough at the time told me if I could name the plants that made up his hedge, he’d hire me as his gardener. I got the job, and I think of him and that day we stood on his lawn every time I see a purple flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus.) It is in the rose family and at a glance you might think you were seeing a rose, until you saw the big maple shaped, light gathering leaves that allow it to grow in shade. The 2 inch diameter flowers always look like they need ironing, so that’s another hint that what you’re seeing isn’t a rose

Our native dogwoods are starting to bloom and I think this one is a gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa). Gray dogwoods are large shrubs that can get 12-15 feet tall and at least as wide. Its flowers become white, single seeded berries (drupes) on red stems (pedicels) that are much loved by many different birds. Most of our native dogwoods like soil that is constantly moist and can be found along the edges of ponds, rivers, and streams.

Shrub dogwoods can be difficult to identify at times but gray dogwood flowers clusters tend to mound up in the center enough to appear triangular, and other dogwoods have flower clusters that are much flatter. Both gray and red osier dogwoods (Cornus sericea) have white berries. Silky Dogwood (Cornus amomum) has berries that start white, have a period of blue and white, and then finally ripen to blue.

One of my favorite “weeds” is crown vetch (Securigera varia). It is in the pea family and was imported from Europe and Asia for soil erosion control. The long, wiry vines can be found along roadsides and in fields, and I’ve even found it in forest clearings. This plant is toxic and has killed horses, so you might want to watch along roadsides before you let your horse stop for a snack.

Crown vetch is very beautiful, in my opinion. Each flower head looks like a bouquet of orchids. All flowers make me glad I’ve found them but some go beyond that and absorb all that I am for a time, and this is one of those. It’s such a beautiful place to get lost in.

I found knapweed growing near the crown vetch, which seems right considering it was also imported to stop soil erosion on roadsides. That’s where it grew in great numbers, but the plants had just started blooming. I think this is brown knapweed (Centaurea jacea) but I could be wrong. The plant is very invasive in some states but this particular colony of plants has been here for years and really hasn’t grown any larger.

Since they grew in a small weed patch in back of our house hedge bindweeds (Calystegia sepium) have been with me my entire life, but not this one. The ones I grew up with were pure white, but now most of those I see are pink and white like this one. It doesn’t really matter what color it is though because these blooms are in my genes. They played a large part in my lifelong love of flowers. I’d watch them open, watch which insects visited them and how they twined around the other plants, and for a while it seemed that I knew them better than I knew myself. That’s why I often call a flower or plant an old friend; because they really are.

St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) on the other hand, is a plant that I can’t call an old friend because I never saw it until I became a gardener and started working over in Peterborough. Just 20 miles away they had it, but we here in Keene didn’t, or at least I never saw it. It seems to be one of those plants which, like pokeweed, just kind of snuck in unnoticed but are now everywhere you go. I’m sure if they had been here when I was a boy I would have seen such a pretty flower. I got around, always in a ditch or pond or meadow somewhere, and I was always watching for new plants.

Tall thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana) gets its common name from the way its seed head grows into a shape and size that resembles a thimble. It’s a pretty flower that isn’t real common here, but I do see it now and then. They are about and inch across and are easy to miss once the white sepals have fallen off. Eventually they’ll release white cottony seeds to the wind. I’ve read that Native Americans burned the seed heads to revive the unconscious, but I don’t know how true it is. Like all plants in the anemone family it is toxic and can burn the mouth and throat if eaten.

I saw more lupines blooming beautifully on a roadside, along with many other flowers.

A smooth rose (Rosa blanda) grew by a road that ran through a cemetery. It is a native rose with almost thornless stems. It’s very pretty and has a nice fragrance, and I would have liked it in my yard.

Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) is a plant I haven’t seen for probably 40 years or more but I found this one in a public garden recently. It’s a very pretty flower that reminds me of an ox-eye daisy but it is much smaller. According to Mount Sanai hospital “This member of the daisy family has been used for centuries to treat headaches, arthritis, and problems with labor and childbirth. Ancient Greek physicians used it to reduce inflammation and treat menstrual cramps. Although it was once used to treat fevers, as its name suggests, it was not very effective. It is now used to prevent migraine headaches, and several scientific studies suggest that it works well for that purpose.” I’m always fascinated by the uses plants have but I’m even more fascinated by how the use was discovered. How do you reach the point where you say well, this plant has a nasty odor and tastes bitter and might kill me, but I have the worst headache I’ve ever had so I’m going to make tea out of it? There are very many plants (and fungi) which could make that cup of tea the last one a person ever had. Did they draw straws? Short straw gets to drink?

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) is another plant that can cure or kill. Or at least, the compounds in it can. I’ve had the plant in my gardens forever and it has never hurt a fly. It’s all in how you use them, and if you happen to have cardiac arrhythmia, the digoxin made from the plant could save your life. Digitalis means finger-like and speaks of the shape of the flowers. I’ve read that herbalists used to, back in the 1700s, pick and dry the leaves and then rub them down into a fine green powder, which could then be used in an infusion to treat many ailments. But I wouldn’t play around with doing that, because it is a very toxic plant that has been known to kill. I just watch the colony that I have in the back yard grow each year and enjoy seeing them. Sometimes I even stick my finger in one, just to see if it fits.

Whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia) is our second native yellow loosestrife to bloom, coming right on the heels of swamp candles. At about a foot tall it isn’t much taller than swamp candles but it is bushier. This plant doesn’t have as much of a need for water as swamp candles but I’ve seen it near water occasionally. Its common name comes from the way its leaves are whorled about the stem, meaning each group of four leaves all radiate about the stem in the same plane. If you picture looking at the edge of a plate while holding it parallel to the floor, that is what you see with whorled leaves. Four small yellow flowers grow out of the four leaf axils. It’s a pretty plant, especially when massed as they often are.

The old orange “ditch lilies” (Hemerocallis fulva) have come into bloom. This daylily is so common I see it everywhere I go, including in roadside ditches, and that’s where the common name comes from. It is one of those plants that were passed from neighbor to neighbor and spread quickly because of it. Today it is one of those plants that new homeowners go out and dig up when they can’t afford to buy plants for their gardens. It was introduced into the United States from Asia in the late 1800s for use as an ornamental and plant breeders have now registered over 40,000 cultivars, all of which have “ditch lily” genes.

Just after I said that I never saw mock orange (Philadelphus) anymore I saw one on the roadside. This is a very old-fashioned shrub that gets its common name from its wonderful fragrance, which smells like citrus. No yard should be without one in my opinion, but it seems to have fallen out of favor. I have a huge old example that bloomed beautifully but I had to move it and all it has done since is sulked. Normally they are a care free, plant it and forget it kind of shrub that can give many years of pleasure without asking for anything in return.

I’ve wondered for years now whether this campion is a true rose campion or if it is a white campion (Silene latifolia) with a pink blush. I’m fairly certain it is a blushing white campion but I’ve never really known for sure. In either case it’s a pretty flower.

I saw a scabiosa blooming in a local garden, trying to entice insects. It’s a busy but beautiful thing.

Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) is also called creeping thistle, but it is also called cursed thistle, mainly because of its deep and extensive creeping root system. The plant is nearly impossible to eradicate once it gains a foothold and for that reason it is considered a noxious weed in many states. It isn’t considered invasive here in New Hampshire but it is on the watch list. Wherever I’ve found them growing, they haven’t spread at all. I think the flowers are pretty, but I’m not the one trying to dig them out of my pasture.

I saw one of the smallest violas I’ve ever seen. It couldn’t have been any bigger than an aspirin, and it had just a blush of blue on it.

These are some roadside flowers that caught my eye. They are all lowly weeds and none is native but if you can put all that aside and just love them for what they are you’ll enjoy the outdoors a lot more.

Finally, because I won’t get another flower post in before the 4th of July, I thought I’d show you some of nature’s fireworks in the form of flowers. The male blossoms of tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) always remind me of “bombs bursting in air.” I hope everyone will have a safe and happy 4th.

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness. ~Michelangelo

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Early to Mid June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Bird's Foot Trefoil, Bowman's Root, Canada Anemone, Canon SX40 HS, Clematis Ramona, Fawn's Breath, Fragrant White Water Lily, Grape Flowers, Hancock New Hampshire, Iris Loreley, Keene, Lesser Stitchwort, Lupine, Maiden Pinks, Maple Leaved Viburnam, Meadow Anemone, Multiflora Rose, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Orange Hawkweed, Sheep Laurel, Silver Leaved Cinquefoil, Spring Flowers, Spring Hiking, Spring Plants, Swanzey New Hampshire, Yarrow, Yellow Flag Iris on June 16, 2021| 22 Comments »

Our beautiful fragrant white water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) have just started blooming but as this photo shows, the leaves are already being eaten. Each blossom lasts only 3 days before the stems coil and pull them underwater to set seeds, but there are so many of them constantly coming into bloom it seems like the flowers last all summer. This is the most beautiful of all our aquatics, in my opinion. Some say the scent reminds them of honeydew melon.

I don’t know if I could think of a more beautiful name for a plant than “fawn’s breath.” This plant (Gillenia trifoliata) gets that name from the way that its very pretty flowers dance at the ends of long stems at even the hint of a breeze. Even presumably, the breath of a fawn can set them dancing. It is also called bowman’s root but I’ve never been able to discover why. This is a native plant which grows in 21 of the lower 48 states but here I have to find it in gardens. The roots of the plant were used as a laxative by Native Americans so it is also called Indian physic.

My color finding software calls this color “plum,” “rose,” or “orchid” but many websites call it pink. Since the plant is named maiden pink (Dianthus deltoids) that would make sense, but colorblindness means my opinion doesn’t really matter. Whatever color it is that these eyes see is beautiful.

And whatever color you choose to see them as will be beautiful as well. Maiden pinks are originally from Europe and have escaped cultivation but they aren’t terribly invasive. They seem to prefer the edges of open lawns and meadows but they will also grow in abandoned lots and other waste areas in almost pure sand. I’ve read that the name “pinks” comes from the way the outer edges look as if they were cut with pinking shears but I don’t know how true that is. I’m sure the flowers have been here longer than pinking shears.

You might have noticed some small yellow flowers in that photo of maiden pinks. They were the flowers of silver leaved cinquefoil (Potentilla argentea.) It is not silverweed (Potentilla anserina) and shouldn’t be confused with that plant. It comes from Europe and is considered invasive but it is quite pretty and it can often be found in the same areas that maiden pinks grow in. The leaves are silvery white on their undersides, and that’s where the common name comes from.

In this part of the state the only lupines that could be thought of as wild are the ones that grow along the sides of highways, but they are not truly wild because the seed was put down by the highway department when the roadsides were redone. I knew of two places where these highway lupines grew but this year there wasn’t a sign of them, so this one comes to you from a local park. Tame or wild doesn’t matter really. It’s their beauty that matters and these had lots of it.

It’s clematis time and I like this one very much. It comes from the bud dark as you see here and over the course of time it lightens to a paler blue with a darker stripe down the center of each petal.

I believe its name is Ramona.

And here is Loreley. (Lorelei) The name refers to the sirens that would perch on cliffs along the Rhine and entice sailors to their doom with their enchanting song, much like the sirens who lured Ulysses and his crew in the Odyssey. It was introduced in Germany in 1909 and its beauty has been pleasing people ever since. Indeed this iris has pleased me my entire life. My mother planted it before she died and if I were to search my memory for a flower as far back as I could reach, this is the one I would find there. I’ve carried both the memory and the actual plant with me throughout my entire life.

This iris lives in the water at the edge of ponds and rivers and though it might have enticed a sailor or two it has pleased few people in this country, because it is very aggressively invasive. I once saw a small pond that was so full of them nothing else could grow there so that’s why, even though it is exceedingly beautiful, it is hated by many. It is the yellow flag (Iris pseudacorus) and it is originally from Europe. It was introduced here in the mid-1800s as a garden plant. Of course it escaped and began to naturalize and was reported near Poughkeepsie, New York in 1868 and in Concord, Massachusetts in 1884. Today it considered highly invasive and its sale and distribution is banned in New Hampshire. As you can see though it distributes itself, and how do you ban that?

Orange hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca) is also from Europe and is also considered invasive but the difference between it and the yellow flag iris is that it isn’t aggressive. I see thousands of examples of yellow hawkweed for every one orange hawkweed and I’m not sure why that is. The color orange is virtually invisible to bees so that might account for its relative scarcity here. In fact orange wildflowers as a group are hard to find. The only other orange wildflower I can think of is jewelweed (Impatiens capensis.)

Sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) is blooming and I love its dime size purple flowers with their ten anthers all tucked into their own pockets. It is thought that by having the pollen bearing anthers in pockets like they do laurels keep the pollen from being washed away by rain, but I don’t think that is a scientific fact. What is a fact is the anthers reside in the pockets under tension, so when a heavy enough insect lands on the flower the spring loaded anthers release from their pockets and dust it with pollen.

For years I’ve gone back and forth on whether these were sheep laurel or bog laurel. Since I kept finding them growing in standing water I thought they were bog laurels, but sheep laurels are the only ones that have flower clusters with new growth coming out below to grow up around them, and the photo above matches more than a handful of examples I have seen online. It took a while to see this clearly but luckily I have helpers who often gently prod me in the correct direction. I’m very lucky to have them and grateful that I do.

I once gardened for a lady who absolutely despised anemones and forbade me to plant any in her yard. She never told me why she didn’t like them but she had spent considerable time in Europe and the Middle East so I assumed she must have foreign anemones (maybe windflowers?) in mind. When I pointed out that the white flowers that grew in one corner of her recently purchased yard were anemones she was surprised but she also thought they were pretty, and said they could stay. Of course they were native meadow anemones (Anemone canadensis.)

Meadow anemone is an old fashioned garden favorite that has much larger flowers than our other native wood anemone. Though it seems to spread out in a garden it’s easy to control. It’s also called crowfoot because of the foliage and it is also known as Canada anemone. Native Americans used this plant medicinally and its root and leaves were one of the most highly regarded medicines of the Omaha and Ponca tribes. It was used as an eye wash, an antiseptic, and to treat headaches and dizziness. The root was chewed to clear the throat so a person could sing better, but I’d want to find out what toxins it might contain before I tried it.

Pretty little bird’s foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) has come into bloom. It is in the legume family and grows about a foot tall, and is a common sight along roadsides and waste areas. It gets its common name from its clusters of brown, 1 inch long seed pods, which someone thought looked like a bird’s foot. The plant has 3 leaflets much like clover and was introduced from Europe as livestock feed, but has escaped and is now considered invasive in many areas. It can form large mats that choke out natives.

The flowers on our native viburnums like the maple leaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) shown will almost always have five petals, and the leaves though quite different in shape throughout the viburnum family, are usually dull and not at all glossy. In fact I can’t think of one with shiny leaves. Each flattish maple leaved viburnum flower head is made up of many small, quarter inch, not very showy white flowers. If pollinated each flower will become a small deep purple berry (drupe) that birds love to eat. This small shrub doesn’t mind dry shade and that makes it a valuable addition to a native wildflower garden. The Native American Chippewa tribe used the inner bark of this plant to relieve stomach pains. What I like most about this little shrub is how its leaves turn so many colors in fall. They can be pink, purple, red, yellow, and orange and combinations of two or three, and are really beautiful.

Multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) has beautiful small white (rarely pink) flowers that are about an inch across but unfortunately it is very invasive and forms prickly thickets that nobody I know would dare to try and get through. It is from Japan and Korea and grows to huge proportions, arching up over shrubs and sometimes growing 20-30 feet up into trees. A large plant bearing hundreds of blossoms is a truly beautiful thing but its thorny thickets prevent all but the smallest animals from getting where they want to go. Its sale is banned in New Hampshire but since each plant can easily produce half a million seeds I think it’s here to stay.

I love to look deep into a multiflora rose blossom, and I love to smell their heavenly fragrance. It’s very easy to understand why it was originally brought here.

I am always reminded each spring that one of the great delights of wandering in the New Hampshire woods is the amazing fragrance of wild grape flowers that wafts on the breeze. Their perfume can be detected from quite a distance so I usually let my nose lead me to them.

I’m always surprised that such a big scent comes from such tiny flowers, each no bigger than the head of a match. Each will become a grape when pollinated. We have a few varieties of wild grape here in New Hampshire including fox grapes (Vitis fruitlabrusca), and frost or river grapes (Vitis riparia.) The fruit is an important food source for everything from birds to bears.

Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) has been used medicinally for nobody knows how long; it has even been found in Neanderthal graves. The scientific name Achillea comes from the legend of Achilles carrying the plant into battle so it could be used to staunch the flow of blood from his soldier’s wounds. Yarrow was a valuable healing herb, one of the nine “holy herbs,” and was traded throughout the world since before recorded time, and that is believed to be the reason for the plant being found in nearly every country on earth today.

Lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea) flowers are small but there are enough of them so the plant can’t be missed. They grow at the edges of fields and pastures, and along pathways. The stems of this plant live through the winter so it gets a jump on the season, often blooming in May. It is a native of Europe and is also called chickweed. The 5 petals of the lesser stitchwort flower are split deeply enough to look like 10 petals and this is one way to tell it from greater stitchwort (Stellaria holostea,) which has its 5 petals split only half way down their length. The common name Stitchwort refers to the plant being used in herbal remedies to cure the pain in the side that we call a stitch. It is also called starwort and I love seeing its pretty flowers twinkling in the tall grasses that they grow among.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. ~Rumi

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Late May / Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Bead Lily, Blue Eyed Grass, Bridal Wreath Spirea, Canon SX40 HS, Common Speedwell, Early Azalea, Germander Speedwell, Hawkweed, Hawthorn Blossoms, Keene, Lupine, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Pink Lady's Slipper, Robin's Plantain, Roseshell Azalea, Spring, Spring Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, White Baneberry, Yellow Goat's Beard on June 3, 2020| 29 Comments »

In June our biggest and most beautiful wildflowers come into bloom and, though most wildflowers are now found in sunny pastures and meadows, there are some still blooming in the woods. One of the most notable summer woodland wildflowers is the pink lady’s slipper(Cypripedium acaule.) I can remember when it was hard to find this native orchid but now thankfully they are making quite a good comeback, I think that’s because people realize that they can’t just dig them up and expect them to grow in their gardens. The plant interacts with a Rhizoctonia fungus in the soil and this fungus must be present for them to reproduce. They will die in just a few short years if the fungus isn’t there.

Botanically orchids are considered the most highly evolved of all flowering plants because of their unique reproductive strategy; they have both male and female reproductive structures fused into a single structure. Many different insects pollinate orchids but in lady’s slippers bees do the job. They enter the flower through the center slit in the pouch and once inside they discover that they’re trapped and can’t get out the way they came in.

Once it enters the pouch through the slit seen here there is only one way out for a bee; guide hairs inside the flower point the way to the top of the pouch or slipper, and once the bee reaches the top it finds two holes big enough to fit through. Just above each hole the flower has positioned a pollen packet so once the bee crawls through the hole it is dusted with pollen. The flower’s stigma is also located above the exit holes and if the bee carries pollen from another lady’s slipper it will be deposited on the sticky stigma as it escapes the pouch, and fertilization will have been successful. Isn’t evolution amazing?

At a glance the leaves of blue bead lilies (Clintonia borealis) are often mistaken for those of lady’s slippers, but lady’s slipper leaves are deeply pleated and blue bead lily leaves are not, they’re smooth like those seen here. The two plants like the same conditions and often grow side by side. It’s easy to see that blue bead lilies are in the lily family; they look just like small Canada lilies. I like seeing both the flowers and the blue berries that follow them. It’s been described as porcelain blue but it’s hard to put a name to it. I call it electric blue and I really can’t think of another blue to compare it to, but it’s beautiful.

Every time I look closely at blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) I wonder why they didn’t call it yellow eyed grass, but that’s not all that’s wrong with the name because the plant isn’t a grass at all; it’s in the iris family. Its light, blue green leaves do resemble grass leaves though.

Beautiful little blue eyed grass flowers are often not much bigger than a common aspirin but their color and clumping habit makes them fairly easy to find. I think they must be sun lovers because that’s where I usually find them. Some plants like cool damp weather, but this isn’t one of them.

Robin’s plantain (Erigeron pulchellus) is the earliest of the fleabanes to bloom in this area. Its inch and a half diameter flowers are larger than many fleabane blossoms but its foot high stalks are shorter. One way to identify this plant is by its basal rosette of very hairy, oval leaves. The stem and stem leaves (cauline) are also hairy. The flowers can be white to pink to lavender and are made up of ray florets surrounding yellow disk florets in the center. These plants almost always grow in large colonies and often come up in lawns. They’re a good indicator of where the flower lovers among us live because at this time of year you can see many neatly mowed lawns with islands of unmown, blossoming fleabanes. I’ve seen several already.

Robin’s plantain has the biggest, most beautiful flower of any of the fleabanes in this area in my opinion.

I’ve never seen germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys) bloom like it is this year. All of the sudden I’m seeing them everywhere and I wonder if they’re becoming invasive. It’s also called bird’s eye speedwell and is another plant introduced from Europe and Asia.

After trying to photograph speedwell flowers that are one step above microscopic the germander speedwell seems gigantic in comparison because of its 3/16 to 1/4 inch flowers. It has the strange habit of wilting almost as soon as it is picked, so it isn’t any good for floral arrangements. Like all the speedwells I’ve seen it has one lower petal smaller than the other three.

So wait just a minute. I just said that “all the speedwells I’ve seen have one lower petal smaller than the other three,” but that can’t be true any longer because the common speedwell (Veronica officinalis) in this photo doesn’t have a smaller petal anywhere. Though I’m sure it’s common speedwell I can’t explain why the flowers would be so different unless the plant is a natural hybrid. This plant is a European native and its leaves were once used as a substitute for tea there. It has also been used medicinally for centuries. Its flowers are about a third the size of a germander speedwell blossom.

Each strap shaped, yellow “petal” on a yellow hawkweed flower head (Hieracium caespitosum) is actually a single, complete flower and each forms its own seed. The buds, stem, and leaves of the plant are all very hairy and the rosette of oval, overlapping leaves at the base of the stem often turn deep purple in winter. The Ancient Greeks believed that hawks drank the sap of this plant to keep their eyesight sharp and so they named it hierax, which means hawk. It is an introduced invasive and names like “yellow devil” and “devil’s paintbrush” show what ranchers think of it.

When we move out of the forest to their edges we find sun loving plants like hawthorn, which was in full bloom on this day. There are over 100 species of native and cultivated hawthorns in the U.S. and they can be hard to identify. Native Americans used the plant’s long sharp thorns for fish hooks and for sewing. The wood is very hard and was used for tools and weapons.

Hawthorn (Crataegus) blossoms aren’t much in the way of fragrance because of a compound called trimethylamine, which gives the plant a slightly fishy odor, but they’re big on beauty with their plum colored anthers. They are also important when used medicinally. Hawthorn has been used to treat heart disease since the 1st century and the leaves and flowers are still used for that purpose today. There are antioxidant flavonoids in the plant that may help dilate blood vessels, improve blood flow, and protect blood vessels from damage.

The club shaped flower heads of white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) are very easy to confuse with those of red baneberry (Actaea rubra) but that plant’s flower head is spherical rather than elongated. The flower head of white baneberry is always taller than it is wide and if pollinated the flowers will become white berries with a single black dot on one end. That’s where the common name doll’s eyes comes from. The berries are very toxic and can be appealing to children but luckily they are very bitter so the chances that anyone would eat one are fairly slim.

I find goat’s beard (Tragopogon pratensis) growing in a meadow in full sun and that single spot is the only place I find them. Goat’s beard flowers close up shop at around noon and for this reason some call it “Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon.” A kind of bubble gum can be made from the plant’s milky latex sap and its spring buds are said to be good in salads. Another name for goat’s bead is meadow salsify. It is native to Europe but doesn’t seem to be at all invasive here. In fact I often have trouble finding it.

Bridal wreath spirea shrubs (Spiraea prunifolia) are loaded with beautiful flowers right now but I suppose they’re considered old fashioned because you never see them at newer houses. In Greek the word spirea means wreath, but the plant comes from China and Korea. Scottish plant explorer Robert Fortune originally found it in a garden in China in the 1800s but it grows naturally on rocky hillsides, where its long branches full of white flowers spill down like floral waterfalls. After seeing the plant pictured it was easy to see why he chose to bring it back on board a ship.

When I was gardening professionally every yard seemed to have at least one bridal wreath spirea growing in it but now I hardly see them. They’re very pretty, I think.

Lupines found in our meadows and along the roadsides in this part of the state are thought to be a cross between our western lupine (Lupinus polyphyllos) and various European varieties, so they are not native to New Hampshire, but they’re still very beautiful. Our native lupine is the sundial lupine (Lupinus perennis,) which is host to the endangered Karner blue butterfly. Lupines are in the pea family and like white and red clover fix atmospheric nitrogen into a soluble form that can be used by plants. It is said that the lupine has been cultivated for 2000 years or more, beginning in ancient Egypt, because the seed is so high in protein. These are beautiful plants to have in the garden but are very susceptible to aphid attack.

Native azaleas can be hard to find in this area but I know a few places where I can find the early azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum.) Even though it is called early azalea the Rhodora often blooms earlier. It’s also called roseshell azalea and I often find them by their fragrance, which is a bit spicy and a bit sweet. Finding a seven foot tall one of these blooming in the woods is something you don’t forget right away, and I think I remember the exact location of every one I’ve ever found. Unfortunately there aren’t many.

Another common name for the early azalea is wooly azalea, and it comes from the many hairs on the outside of the flowers, which you can see here on the buds. It is these hairs that emit the fragrance, which is said to induce creative imagination.

The flowers of the early azalea aren’t quite as showy as some other azaleas but I wish you could smell their heavenly scent. It isn’t overpowering but when the temperature and breeze are just right you can follow your nose right to them. It’s a great time to be outside finding beautiful things like these.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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Late May / Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Eyed Grass, Blue Flag Iris, Bridal Wreath Spirea, Bunchberry, Canon SX40 HS, Cow Vetch, Dogwood, Golden Clover, Keene, Lesser Stitchwort, Lupine, Maiden Pink, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Perennial Bachelor's Button, Purple Dead Nettle, Purple Spiderwort, Spiderwort, Spring, Spring Plants, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Sweet Woodruff, Wild Geranium, Yellow Hawkweed on June 6, 2018| 36 Comments »

If I’m seeing our beautiful native blue flag irises it must be June. And this year I’m seeing them everywhere, so it must be a great year for them. The name flag is from the Middle English flagge, which means rush or reed, and which I assume applies to the cattail like leaves of an iris.

Though Native Americans used blue flag irises medicinally its roots are considered dangerously toxic and people who dig cattail roots to eat have to be very careful that there are no irises growing among them, because the two plants often grow side by side. Natives showed early settlers how to use small amounts of the dried root safely as a cathartic and diuretic, but unless one is absolutely sure of what they’re doing its best to just admire this one. It’s an easy thing to admire.

Our meadows and roadsides are just coming into bloom and the maiden pink (Dianthus deltoids) in the above photo was found at the edge of a meadow. It might look like its cousin the Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria,) but that flower doesn’t have the jagged red ring around its center like this one does and it blooms later, usually in July. Maiden pinks are originally from Europe and have escaped cultivation but aren’t terribly invasive. They seem to prefer the edges of open lawns and meadows. Their colors can vary from almost white to deep magenta. I have volunteers growing in my lawn and I mow around them. They’re too beautiful to just cut down.

In 2015 the highway department replaced a bridge over the Ashuelot River and widened the road leading to and from it. They put what I thought was grass seed down on the roadsides once the bridge was finished, but it was wildflower / grass seed mix containing lupines (Lupinus.) For a couple of years they were growing all along the sides of the road but this year there are just a few. That could be because they are an aphid magnet and I saw many in this colony covered with the sucking insects. I’ve always loved lupines and I’m always happy to see them come into bloom. I hope they survive in this spot.

The lupines come in light and dark shades in this spot, but they also come in pink, white, red, and even yellow.

Lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea) blooms among the tall grasses. This plant is originally from Europe and is also called common or grass leaved stitchwort. It like disturbed soil and does well on roadsides, old fields, and meadows. The Stellaria, part of its scientific name means star like, and the common name Stitchwort refers to the plant being used in herbal remedies to cure the pain in the side that we call a stitch.

I find purple dead nettle (Lamium maculatum) growing in a local park. It’s a beautiful little plant that makes a great choice for shady areas. It is also an excellent source of pollen for bees. Dead nettles are native to Europe and Asia, but though they do spread some they don’t seem to be invasive here. The name dead nettle comes from their not being able sting like a true nettle, which they aren’t related to. I’m guessing the “nettle” part of the name refers to the leaves, which would look a bit like nettle leaves if it weren’t for their variegation, which consists of a cream colored stripe down the center of each leaf.

Wild geraniums (Geranium maculatum) have just started blooming. Other common names include alum root, old maid’s nightcap and shameface. In Europe it is called cranesbill because the seed pod resembles a crane’s bill. The Native American Mesquakie tribe brewed a root tea for toothache from wild geranium, but I’m not sure if it’s toxic. Much Native knowledge was lost and we can’t always use plants as they did. Somehow they knew how to remove, weaken or withstand the toxicity of many plants that we now find too toxic for our use.

I’ve told this story many times but I’ll tell it once more for the more recent readers: When I was just a young boy living with my father I decided that our yard needed a facelift. We had a beautiful cabbage rose hedge and a white lilac, and a Lorelai bearded iris that my mother planted before she died but I wanted more. I used to walk the Boston and Maine railroad tracks to get to my grandmother’s house and I’d see these beautiful blue flowers growing along the tracks, so one day I dug one up and planted it in the yard. My father was quiet until I had planted 3 or 4 of them, and then he finally asked me why I was bringing home those “dammed old weeds.” He also walked the tracks to get to work and back, so he saw the tradescantia (Tradescantia virginiana) plants just as often as I did. Though I thought they were lost and needed to be rescued, he thought somebody threw them away and wished they’d have thrown them just a little farther. We had blue flowers in the yard for a while though, and today every time I see this plant I think of my father. I’m sure everyone has plants that come with memories attached, and this is just one of mine.

Though my color finding software sees some purple in the previous tradescantia photo I think it was just the play of light on its petals. This one is the real purple one. I don’t know its name but it grows in a local park. It’s pretty but my favorite is the blue one.

I don’t think I could imagine more beautiful colors and shapes in a flower than those found on the perennial bachelor’s button (Centaurea). They make excellent low maintenance, almost indestructible additions to the perennial garden. I found this one growing in a local park.

Dogwood (Cornus) blossoms have 4 large white bracts surrounding the actual small greenish flowers in the center. They have just come into bloom.

Bunchberry is also called creeping dogwood and bunchberry dogwood. Can you see the resemblance to the dogwood blossom we just saw? Just like that dogwood the large (relatively) white bracts of bunchberry surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. Later on the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries which give it its common name. Even the plant’s leaves show the same veining as the dogwood tree. Native Americans used the berries as food and made a tea from the ground root to treat colic in infants. The Cree tribe called the berry “kawiskowimin,” meaning “itchy chin berry” because rubbing the berries against your skin can cause a reaction that will make you itch.

Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that it must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) has leaves that grow in a whorl, which you can see in this photo. This is a low growing summer wildflower with 4 petaled white flowers that seems to prefer the shade at the edges of forests. It makes an excellent old fashioned groundcover which, if given plenty of water, will spread quickly. The odoratum part of the scientific name comes from the pleasant, very strong fragrance of its dried leaves. The dried leaves are often used in potpourris because the fragrance lasts for years. It is also called sweet scented bedstraw and is a native of Europe.

Each strap shaped, yellow “petal” on a yellow hawkweed flower head (Hieracium caespitosum) is actually a single, complete flower. The buds, stem, and leaves of the plant are all very hairy and the rosette of oval leaves at the base of the stem often turn deep purple in winter. The Ancient Greeks believed that hawks drank the sap of this plant to keep their eyesight sharp and so they named it hierax, which means hawk.

Golden clover (Trifolium campestre) is an imported clover originally from Europe and Asia. It is also known as large trefoil and large hop clover. The plant was imported through Philadelphia in 1800 to be used as a pasture crop and now appears in most states on the east and west coasts and much of Canada, but it is not generally considered aggressively invasive. Each pretty yellow flower head is packed with golden yellow pea-like flowers. I see the plant growing along roadsides and in sandy waste areas.

I know that I just showed blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) in my last flower post but I saw this quite large clump of them the other day and couldn’t resist a photo of it. It’s a very beautiful little flower.

When I was gardening professionally every yard seemed to have at least one bridal wreath spirea (Spiraea prunifolia) growing in it but now I hardly see them. The 6-8 foot shrubs are loaded with beautiful flowers right now but I suppose they’re considered old fashioned because you never see them at newer houses.

In Greek the word spirea means wreath, but the plant comes from China and Korea. Scottish plant explorer Robert Fortune originally found it in a garden in China in the 1800s but it grows naturally on rocky hillsides, where its long branches full of white flowers spill down like floral waterfalls.

Cow vetch (Vicia cracca) is a native of Europe and Asia that loves it here and has spread far and wide. According to the Invasive Plant Atlas of the United States the vining plant is present in every U.S. state. Cow vetch can have a taproot nearly a foot long and drops large numbers of seeds, so it is hard to eradicate. It is very similar to hairy vetch, but that plant has hairy stems. I like its color and it’s nice to see it sprinkled here and there among the tall grasses.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty, if only we have the eyes to see them. John Ruskin

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Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Black Locust, Bristly Locust, Canon SX40 HS, Clematis, Dame's Rocket, Dutchman's Pipe Vine, Fringe Tree, Greater Celandine, Keene, Lupine, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Ox Eye Daisy, Perennial Bachelor's Button, Red Sandspurry, Rosa Rugosa, Spring, Spring Flowers, Wild Sarsaparilla, Yellow Hawkweed on June 14, 2017| 36 Comments »

I saw this view along one of our roads recently. Lupines and Ox eye daisies seemed to go on forever. There were a few white lupines but most were blue / purple. It’s a hint of what will come; soon our meadows will explode with color.

Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) is an introduced plant that came from Europe in the 1600s but it doesn’t seem very invasive; the few colonies that I know of hardly seem to spread at all, and that’s possibly because they are biennials. This plant is in the mustard family, Brassicaceae. The young leaves of dame’s rocket are rich in vitamin C and oil pressed from its seed is used in perfumes.

Dame’s rocket flowers are sometimes mistaken for phlox, but phlox has 5 petals rather than the 4 petals seen on dame’s rocket. Phlox also has opposite leaves and those on dame’s rocket are alternate. The flowers are very fragrant in the evening and are said to smell like a mixture of cloves and violets.

When I was growing up we had a hedge of rugosa roses and I’ll never forget their wonderful scent. This rose reminded me of them because it too had that same scent. I think it was in the rugosa rose family but it wasn’t the exact one we had. The Latin word “rugosa” means “wrinkled,” as in the wrinkled petals this one had. They are a shrub rose that come along just after lilacs so if you’re looking for an extended period of fragrance in the garden I can’t think of anything better to extend it with. Rosa rugosa has been cultivated in Japan and China for about a thousand years but it has only been in this country since 1845. After its introduction it immediately escaped cultivation and can now be found just about anywhere on the coast of New England.

Pliny the Elder said chewing the root of greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) would relieve a toothache, but modern science has found that every part of it contains a range of isoquinoline alkaloids that makes it toxic if used in large amounts. When used in the correct dosage the plant’s yellow sap can be used against warts and moles. If used at all, all of the latex sap should be washed from the hands because it can cause irritation if rubbed into the eyes. Greater celandine is native to Europe and Asia but early settlers brought it with them to use medicinally, and it has found its way into all but 19 states in the U.S.

All the books will tell you that the flowers of greater celandine have four yellow petals but nature doesn’t know the words always and never, so you have to use a little common sense when identifying plants. Things like leaf shape, where it grows, flower size and color, and the yellow sap all have to be considered when identifying this one.

I love the beautiful colors and shapes found in the perennial bachelor’s button blossom(Centaurea). They make excellent low maintenance, almost indestructible additions to the perennial garden. I found this one growing in a friend’s garden.

Each strap shaped, yellow “petal” on a yellow hawkweed flower head (Hieracium caespitosum) is actually a single, complete flower and each forms its own seed. The buds, stem, and leaves of the plant are all very hairy and the rosette of oval, overlapping leaves at the base of the stem often turn deep purple in winter. The Ancient Greeks believed that hawks drank the sap of this plant to keep their eyesight sharp and so they named it hierax, which means hawk. It is an introduced invasive and names like “yellow devil” and “devil’s paintbrush” show what ranchers think of it.

This beautiful clematis was spotted in the garden of friends of mine. Its blossoms are large, probably 6 inches across. I think its name is “Nelly Moser.” Though we do have native clematis most clematis cultivars have a Chinese or Japanese lineage. According to Wikipedia the wild clematis species native to China made their way into Japanese gardens by the 17th century, and in the 18th century Japanese garden selections were the first exotic clematises to reach European gardens. From there came our first “exotic” clematis, an old favorite called Jackmanii, which is still grown today.

Fringe trees (Chionanthus virginicus) might look like another exotic import from China or Japan but they’re native to the east coast of the U.S. It’s a beautiful and fragrant tree that you rarely see anywhere, and I wonder why it’s so under used. It is said to be tougher than dogwood, more dependable than saucer magnolia, longer-lived than cherry, and smells better than Bradford pears. So why don’t more of us use it?

When seen alone the fringe tree’s blossoms don’t seem like much to get excited about but when they get together in lacy, drooping clusters at the ends of the branches they are quite beautiful. Fringe trees are one of the last to show new leaves in spring and they can look dead until the leaves and flowers appear.

I’m guessing that there’s a good chance that most people have never seen the pipe shaped flowers of a Dutchman’s pipe vine (Aristolochia durior) because you have to move the vine’s large leaves aside and peek into the center of the plant to see them. Dutchman’s pipe is native to some south eastern hardwood forests and has been cultivated in other parts of the country and Canada since the 1700s.

The old fashioned Dutchman’s pipe vine has very large, heart shaped leaves and has historically been used as a privacy screen or for shade on porches and arbors. You can still see it used that way today, but most don’t see these small flowers. They’re mottled yellowish-green and brownish purple with a long yellow tube, and are visited by the pipevine swallowtail butterfly and other insects. The plant contains a compound called aristolochic acid which can cause permanent kidney failure, so it should never be taken internally.

The round white flower heads of wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) hide beneath its leaves and quite often you can’t see them from above. Compared to the ping pong ball size flower heads the leaves are huge and act like an umbrella, which might keep rain from washing away their pollen. Each sarsaparilla flower is very small but as a group they’re easy to see. Dark purple berries will replace the flowers if pollination is successful, and it’s usually very successful. This is one of the most common wildflowers I know of and I see them virtually everywhere I go, including in my own yard. The roots of the plant were once used to make root beer but the drink that was called sarsaparilla contained no part of the plant. It was made from birch oil and sassafras root.

Our locust trees are blooming. The one shown here is a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) loaded with white, very fragrant blooms. One way to identify the tree is by the pair of short spines at the base of each leaf. Like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains. Its hanging flower heads remind me of wisteria.

Locusts are in the same family as peas and beans and the flowers show the connection. Black locusts were prized by colonial Americans for their tough, rot resistant wood. In 1610 colonists found black locust trees planted beside Native American dwellings and thought the Natives were using the tree as an ornamental, so they decided to use it that way as well. They also used the wood for ship building, forts and fence posts while the Natives used it to make bows and blow darts. It was once said to be the toughest wood in all the world and was one of the first North American trees exported to Europe.

Bristly locust (Robinia hispida) is more shrub than tree, but it can reach 8 feet. The beautiful pinkish purple flowers are very fragrant and bees really love them. Every time I find one in bloom it is absolutely covered with bees, which makes getting photos a challenge. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems. Even its seedpods are covered by hairs. Bristly locust is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to all but 7 of the lower 48 states, with a lot of help from nurseries selling it for ornamental use.

The beautiful little flowers of red sandspurry (Spergularia rubra) are hard for me to see because they’re so small, so I take photos of them so I can see them better. This plant was originally introduced from Europe in the 1800s and it has reached many states on the east and west coasts but doesn’t appear in any state along the Mississippi river except Minnesota. It must have been introduced on both coasts rather than first appearing in New England and then crossing the country like so many other invasive plants have. I find them growing in dry, sandy waste areas. I’m not sure what the web or plant fibers surrounding this flower were all about.

I was bending down the stem of a sandspurry with one hand and taking its photo with the other so the penny is out of focus, but at least you can see how tiny this beautiful little flower really is, and that’s what’s important. I think you could fit about 8-10 of them on a penny.

Maybe, beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming it goes straight to our hearts. Maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside. ~James Patterson

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Late May / Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Bead Lily, Blue Flag Iris, Bunch Berry, Canon SX40 HS, Dogwood, Early Azalea, Keene, Lupine, Native Plants, Native Wildflowers, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Old Fashioned Iris, Ox Eye Daisy, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Pink Lady's Slipper, Red Clover, Roseshell Azalea, Sarsaparilla, Spring on June 4, 2016| 48 Comments »

We’ve had August heat in May and that has coaxed many of our wildflowers into bloom, and some earlier than usual. Our humble little native blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) has just come into bloom. This plant seems to like sunny, dry, sandy waste areas or roadsides because that’s where I always find it growing. It’s always worth getting down on my hands and knees to admire its tiny but beautiful blue / purple flowers.

Our native blue flag irises (Iris versicolor) have appeared, so it must be June. Actually, they were early this year and bloomed the last week of May. The name flag is from the Middle English flagge, which means rush or reed and which I assume applies to the cattail like leaves. Though Native Americans used this plant medicinally its roots are considered dangerously toxic and people who dig cattail roots to eat have to be very careful that there are no irises growing among them. Natives showed early settlers how to use small amounts of dried root safely as a cathartic and diuretic.

Here’s an that iris has been in my family longer than I have. Before I was born my mother planted a few in the yard so I’ve known it quite literally my entire life, and now it grows in my own yard. Its name is Loreley, and it’s an old fashioned variety introduced in 1909. It’s one of the toughest irises I know of; truly a “plant it and forget it” perennial. It was bred in Germany, and the name Loreley (Lorelei) refers to the sirens who would perch on cliffs along the Rhine and entice sailors to their doom with their enchanting song, much like the sirens who lured Ulysses and his crew in the Odyssey.

Is it any wonder that Loreley is still grown 107 years after her introduction?

Bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) grow right up into the V made by the two trunks of this oak tree near my house but the heat made them bloom early this year and I missed seeing all but two or three. Bunchberry is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that it must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

Bunchberry is also called creeping dogwood and bunchberry dogwood. The large (relatively) white bracts surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. Later on the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries which give it its common name. Native Americans used the berries as food and made a tea from the ground root to treat colic in infants. The Cree tribe called the berry “kawiskowimin,” meaning “itchy chin berry” because rubbing the berries against your skin can cause a reaction that will make you itch.

Here’s a dogwood blossom to compare to the bunchberry we saw previously. It has the same 4 larger white bracts with small greenish flowers in the center. Though you can’t see them in this photo even the leaves show the same veining.

Our native azaleas continue to bloom. The beautiful example in this photo grows in a shaded part of the forest and is called early azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum,) even though the Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) is earlier. It’s also called roseshell azalea and I usually find them by their fragrance, which is a bit spicy and a bit sweet.

The flowers of the early azalea aren’t as showy as some other azaleas but I wish you could smell their heavenly scent. Another common name, wooly azalea, comes from the many hairs on the outside of the flowers. It is these hairs that emit the fragrance, which is said to induce creative imagination.

Last year the highway department replaced a bridge over the Ashuelot River and widened the road leading to and from it. They put what I thought was grass seed down on the roadsides once the bridge was finished, but this year there are cornflower blue lupines (Lupinus) growing all along the sides of the road. Were there lupine seeds mixed into the grass seed or have the lupines been there all along? These are questions I can’t answer but it doesn’t matter; I’m happy to see them no matter how they got there.

To me the ox eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) says that June has come but this year the warmth of May has brought them on a little early. This is a much loved flower so it is easy to forget that it was originally introduced from Europe as an ornamental in the 1800s. It quickly escaped cultivation and has now spread to each of the lower 48 states and most of Canada. Since cattle won’t eat it, it can spread at will through pastures and that means that it is not well loved by ranchers. A vigorous daisy can produce 26,000 seeds per plant and tests have shown that 82% of the buried seeds remained viable after six years underground. I like its spiraled center.

Each sarsaparilla flower is very small but as a group they’re easy to see. Dark purple berries will replace the flowers if pollination is successful, and it’s usually very successful. This is one of the most common wildflowers I know of and I see them virtually everywhere I go, including in my own yard. Every now and then you’ll find a plant with flowers but no leaves over them. I don’t know if these leafless plants are a natural hybrid or how the plant benefits from having fewer leaves. Fewer leaves mean less photosynthesizing and that means less food for the plant.

Seeing the light of creation shining from a red clover blossom (Trifolium pretense) is something you don’t ever forget, and I look forward to seeing them every spring. But light isn’t all that flowers radiate; scientists have found that they also generate weak electrical fields which insects like bumblebees can sense through the hairs on their bodies. The electric field bends their tiny hairs and that generates nerve signals which the bees use to tell the difference between flowers.

It’s easy to see that blue bead lilies (Clintonia borealis) are in the lily family; they look just like small Canada lilies. I like seeing both the flowers and the blue berries that follow them. It’s been described as porcelain blue but it’s hard to put a name to it. I call it electric blue and I really can’t think of another blue to compare it to, but it’s beautiful.

At a glance it might be easy to confuse the large oval leaves of blue bead lilies with those of lady’s slippers, but they don’t have the pleats that lady’s slippers have, and of course once the flowers appear there is no doubt. The two plants often grow side by side and bloom at the same time. It can take more than 12 years for blue bead lily plants to produce flowers from seed.

Pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) have come into bloom quickly and I think I’m seeing more of them than I ever have. I’m so glad that this native orchid is making a comeback after being collected nearly into oblivion by people who didn’t know any better. The plant interacts with a Rhizoctonia fungus in the soil and this fungus must be present for it to reproduce. If plants are dug up and placed in private gardens they will eventually die out if the fungus isn’t present so please, look at them, take a couple of photos, and let them be.

For those who haven’t seen one, a pink lady’s slipper blossom is essentially a pouch called a labellum, which is a modified petal. The pouch has a slit down the middle which can be seen in this photo. Veins on the pouch attract bumblebees, which enter the flower through the slit and then find that to get out they have to leave by one of two openings at the top of the pouch (not seen here) that have pollen masses above them. When they leave they are dusted with pollen and will hopefully carry it to another flower. It takes pink lady’s slippers five years or more from seed to bloom, but they can live for twenty years or more.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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Things That Get My Goat

Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Things I've Seen, tagged Ashuelot River, Button Bush, Canon SX40 HS, Cedar Waxwing, Chicory, Clouded Sulfur Butterfly, covered bridge, Gomarlo's Store, Lupine, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Ox Eye Daisy, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Purple Loosestrife, River Bank Cutting, Riverside Plants, Silky Dogwood, Staghorn Sumac, Swanzey, West Swanzey Food Market on August 26, 2015| 63 Comments »

Over the course of the almost 5 years that I’ve had this blog I’ve seen many things that have gotten my goat. That’s New England Yankee speak for something that angers you, by the way. Anyhow, I’ve decided that keeping my mouth shut about these annoyances is accomplishing nothing except allowing them to continue, so I welcome you to the first installment of Things that get my goat. Maybe I’ll hear from others who are also bothered by these things. I can’t be the only one.

At one time there was a small grocery store that stood very close to the Ashuelot River in Swanzey, New Hampshire. You wouldn’t have had to walk too far behind the car in this 1952 photo to have reached the covered bridge that crossed the river, and still crosses it today. Not too long ago, a couple of years I think, I watched this building being torn down and it was then that I heard rumors of a town park being built on the property. I didn’t have a good feeling about that.

The park, as it stands now, seems to consist of granite block terracing and an expanse of crab grass. It reminds me of an amphitheater, but if you sat on these granite blocks you would look out on more crabgrass, so I’m not sure amphitheater is the right word.

The park is sunken below street level and the retaining wall where it meets the street was once part of the foundation of the store in the first photo. Now concrete blocks that are supposed to look like stone are used as a retaining wall.

A new fence was installed and it makes sense because there is a 7-8 foot drop from street level down to where the riverbank starts.

What doesn’t make sense is what was done to the riverbank. All of the shrubs and wildflowers that once grew there have been cut down, and what is left is an ugly scar.

This photo I took last year shows what this section of the river bank once looked like. There were lupines, ox-eye daisy, birds foot trefoil, asters, yarrow, goldenrod, button bush, silky dogwood, smooth and staghorn sumacs, Virginia creeper, and many other plants and shrubs that were important to the birds, waterfowl and other wildlife in the area.

One of the things Swanzey is known for its covered bridges. This one was built in 1832 and is called the Thompson Bridge, named after the playwright Denmon Thompson, who lived in town. Of open lattice design, it has been called the most beautiful covered bridge in New England and it draws a lot of tourists to the area. Tourists easily translate to income and the cutting has opened up the view so they can see the bridge better. I understand that; it seems like a valid reason. But what I can’t understand is why all of these plants had to be butchered back to ground level when more selective cutting would have opened up the view and left a riverbank overflowing with blooming shrubs, vines, and wildflowers. Why not have someone who knows what they’re doing come and at the very least give their opinion about what should be done before just hacking away at it?

Because what once looked like this…

…now looks like this. I doubt very much that tourists are going to be drawn to this. Are there more “improvements” in store, I wonder? I have to say that I hope not. Over there on the upper right is where one of only two examples of chicory plants that I knew of grew. The beautiful blue flowers would have pleased the tourists more than this empty riverbank, I think.

At this time of year the beautiful blue berries of silky dogwood hung out over the water.

You might say “big deal, sumacs and silky dogwoods grow everywhere, so who cares if we cut a few of them down?” Well, the cedar waxwing in the above photo probably cares. They rely heavily on silky dogwood berries at this time of year and when I was on the bridge watching one recent evening he and many of his cousins kept flying to where the shrubs used to be, as if they couldn’t figure out why there were no berries there. Who knows how many generations of birds have been taught to forage here?

And that’s saying nothing about the 25 species of ducks and 28 species of birds that feed on buttonbush seeds. Or the robins, bluebirds, crows, mockingbirds and 300 species of songbirds that feed on the sumac berries. Or the raccoons, rabbits, muskrats and squirrels that used the shrubs for cover and food. Or the birds that nest in the thickets the shrubs create. Or the bees, butterflies and other insects that feed on the wildflowers.

As John Muir once said: When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

The saddest and most ironic part of this story is, I think, how just a few hundred yards downriver on the other side of the bridge a 250 year old timber crib dam was torn down in 2010. At the time that section of river bank was also “improved” and good money was paid by taxpayers to plant native shrubs and trees there. Many of the shrubs that were planted are silky dogwoods!

So here we are on one side of the bridge spending tax dollars to plant silky dogwood while on the other side of the bridge, just a couple of hundred yards away, we’re busy paying more tax dollars to cut them all down. I’m sure this must make sense to someone somewhere who probably wouldn’t know a dogwood from a dandelion, but it makes absolutely no sense to me.

Just as ironic is how most of the native wildflowers were cut and good sized patches of purple loosestrife, one of the most invasive plants that we have in this area, were left standing. There are still one or two goldenrods, asters and smartweeds growing here but they won’t be able to compete against the loosestrife. It will eventually win out. Instead of using it to cut down native plants would the money be better spent trying to eradicate invasive species along the river bank? There are many, including Japanese barberry, burning bush, and oriental bittersweet. They’ve taken over the woodland just downriver from here.

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. ~Theodore Roosevelt

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More Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Bird's Foot Trefoil, Blue Eyed Grass, Blue Flag Iris, Canon SX40 HS, Keene, Lupine, maple Leaf Viburnum, Multiflora Rose, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Red Clover, Smooth Arrowwood Viburnum, Spring, Star Chickweed, Summer Wildflowers, Wild Grape Flowers, Wild Radish, Yellow Hawk Weed on June 13, 2015| 31 Comments »

I saw a hillside covered in lupines recently. They aren’t our native sundial lupines (Lupinus perennis) but they’re still very beautiful when massed like this.

At the bottom of the hill that the lupines were growing on many native blue flag iris (Iris versicolor) grew in a wet area. The lupines trickling down the hillside and the blue flags pooling at the bottom made a breathtakingly beautiful sight but unfortunately I couldn’t get in all in one photo.

Gosh these are beautiful flowers; another one of those flowers that I can just sit beside and lose myself in. The name flag is from the Middle English flagge, which means rush or reed and which I assume applies to the cattail like leaves. Though Native Americans used this plant medicinally its roots are considered dangerously toxic. Natives showed early settlers how to use small amounts of dried root safely as a cathartic and diuretic.

Native maple leaf viburnum blossoms (Viburnum acerifolium) had just about gone by before I remembered to look for them. Each flattish flower head is made up of many small, quarter inch, not very showy white flowers. If pollinated each flower will become a small deep purple berry (drupe) that birds love to eat. What I like most about this little shrub is how its leaves turn so many colors in fall. They can be pink, purple, red, yellow, and orange and combinations of two or three, and are really beautiful. The Native American Chippewa tribe used the inner bark of this plant to relieve stomach pains.

The puffy little yellow blossoms of bird’s foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) are a common sight along roadsides and waste areas. It is in the pea family and grows about a foot tall. It gets its common name from its clusters of brown, 1 inch long seed pods which someone thought looked like a bird’s foot. The plant has 3 leaflets much like clover and was introduced from Europe as livestock feed but has escaped and is now considered invasive in many areas. It can form large mats that choke out natives. It does very well among the ox eye daisies and lupines growing along the banks of the Ashuelot River.

I found a spot where more blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) grew than I’ve ever seen in one spot. They were growing in soil that was on the sandy side in full sun along the side of a road, and obviously were happy there. Wild turkeys love the seeds so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a flock of them here this fall.

I’ve already featured blue eyed grass once this spring but something this beautiful deserves a second showing. This little flower is in the iris family and is said to have the same features. All of the iris family is usually thought of as very poisonous but Native Americans had many medicinal uses for this plant.

Red clover (Trifolium pretense) always seems to glow as if it had its own inner light, and maybe it does. The rounded heads of tiny tubular flowers are beautiful things to see when you take the time to give them a closer look. Though it was brought to this country from Europe and is invasive, I can’t remember ever hearing anyone complain about it. It is a very old medicinal herb that has been used for centuries and now various published studies say that compounds found in the plant show some promise in fighting cancer. Just imagine all the healing power that might be in these plants that hardly get a second look.

I always find wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) growing at the edges of corn fields at this time of year, not because it likes growing with corn but because it likes to grow in disturbed soil. Wild radish is in the mustard family and is sometimes confused with wild mustard (Brassica kaber,) but that plant doesn’t have hairy stems like wild radish. Everyone seems to agree that this is a non-native plant but nobody seems to know exactly where it came from or how it got here. The flowers can be pale yellow, pink, or white and honey bees seem to love them no matter what color they are.

I’m always surprised that such a big scent comes from such tiny flowers, each no bigger than the head of a match. Each will become a grape when pollinated. We have a few varieties of wild grape here in New Hampshire including fox grapes (Vitis fruitlabrusca), and frost or river grapes (Vitis riparia.) The fruit is an important food source for everything from birds to bears.

Smooth arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) has yellowish white, mounded flower clusters and is blooming along stream banks and drainage ditches right now. Red twig dogwoods are also beginning to bloom, but they have four petals and the viburnums have five. Dogwood flower clusters also tend to be much flatter on top and seem to hover just above the branch. Smooth arrowwood viburnum has a much more rounded flowering habit. Later on the flowers will become dark blue drupes that birds love. It is said that this plant’s common name comes from Native Americans using the straight stems for arrow shafts. They also used the shrub medicinally and its fruit for food.

Star chickweed (Stellaria pubera) has 5 white petals so deeply notched they look like 10. At one half inch across they are bigger and showier than other chickweeds, but still quite small. Even so, other common names include giant chickweed and great chickweed. It is an introduced plant, most likely brought from Europe where it has been used medicinally since ancient times. Legend says that if its blossoms are open there will be at least 4 more hours without rain. If the blossoms close, rain is coming. I’m hoping to see open chickweed blossoms this morning.

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning. ~ Lydia M. Child

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Late May / Early June Flowers

Beautiful little blue eyed grass flowers are often not much bigger than a common aspirin but their color and clumping habit makes them fairly easy to find. I think they must be sun lovers because that’s where I usually find them. Some plants like cool damp weather, but this isn’t one of them.

Robin’s plantain has the biggest, most beautiful flower of any of the fleabanes in this area in my opinion.

I’ve never seen germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys) bloom like it is this year. All of the sudden I’m seeing them everywhere and I wonder if they’re becoming invasive. It’s also called bird’s eye speedwell and is another plant introduced from Europe and Asia.

When I was gardening professionally every yard seemed to have at least one bridal wreath spirea growing in it but now I hardly see them. They’re very pretty, I think.

Another common name for the early azalea is wooly azalea, and it comes from the many hairs on the outside of the flowers, which you can see here on the buds. It is these hairs that emit the fragrance, which is said to induce creative imagination.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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Late May / Early June Flowers

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