Posted by wilde on June 30th, 2010 — Posted in Food, Vegetable
Partridgeberry, Mitchella repens, is a member of the Madder Family, Rubiaceae. It’s one of the plants that just make me think, “Forest Flowers.” You won’t find it growing anywhere else but in a forest or perhaps in a shade garden. Partridgeberry is native to the Eastern North America.
The terminal white or pink trumpet-like flowers are fragrant. The four petals are fuzzy-looking due to hairs on the inside of the petals. Twin flowers seem to be connected at their bases by a common stipule.
Small, rounded opposite leaves and twin flowers of partridgeberry.
Stems are creeping with small, opposite, leathery, round evergreen leaves. Leaves usually have a light-colored midrib and sometimes the other leaf veins stand out with a lighter color. Leaves are otherwise dark green and entire, or untoothed.
Low-growing partridgeberry with its twin flowers.
Partridgeberry on the forest floor with old oak leaves. Photo taken 3 June 2010.
Twin flowers coalesce into a single red berry that may last through winter and remain at the tip of the vine until Spring. Peterson’s Edible Plant Guide
tells us the berry is edible – it just doesn’t taste like anything. The tasteless berries can be used as a survival food or added to salads for a bit of color.
Partridgeberry does seem to have medicinal properties. A leaf or berry tea was used historically for treating female problems, such as irregular or painful periods and childbirth pain, which lent partridgeberry the nickname Squaw Vine. Astringent qualities of the tea led to its external use for skin irritations and as a wash to soothe arthritis.
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Posted by wilde on June 29th, 2010 — Posted in Food, Vegetable
About five years ago we went to a Native Plant Sale held at Millersville University, Lancaster County, PA. We picked up two native plants, Wild Ginger and Spiderwort, Tradescantia virginiana.
Wild ginger is much more plentiful in the wild, at least in the places we’ve looked. The wild ginger we planted has spread out a little bit and the original plant carried its flower from earlier this year until the second week of June. Spiderwort flowers beautifully in the later part of May into June.
Greenery of the spiderwort plant rises up early starting in April. Photo below taken 11 April 2010.
Leaves of spiderwort are already up 8-10 inches.
Spiderwort greenery getting taller.
A couple of weeks later (23 April 2010) the foliage is over a foot tall. The linear leaves arch over as they get taller. It will take 2-3 weeks from this stage for the spiderwort to start blooming. Check out how small this spiderwort plant was in 2006.
Many purple-blue flowers of spiderwort.
This year I should have staked up the plant as it got heavy with blooms and now is laying over to the side. The flowers are still really pretty!
Heavy blooms of spiderwort made the flower stems bow down to the ground.
Didn’t get flowering pics until 31 May 2010. Spiderwort flowers were blooming until 11 June for a 2-3 week blooming period for 2010.
Younger plants may have fewer flowers open at one time. Each bloom lasts for a day and then only in the morning. The blossoms wilt and turn to jelly by mid-day.
Pretty Spiderwort flowers.
Beautiful purple blossoms.
Note the stamens with golden-yellow anthers, fuzzy purple hairs, and the flower pistil with a round end or stigma in center of bloom. Note that the lower left flower has four petals instead of the typical three – only saw one flower with four petals out of about 80 blossoms. Click on any of these photos for a larger view.
Purple spiderwort flowers are hairy in the center.
Beautiful spiderwort flowers!
The flowers are so pretty that people used to make them into candy. Peterson’s Edible Plant Guide says all you have to do is rinse the flowers with water, dry gently, brush with egg white and coat with sugar. Not sure the effort would be worth the taste, but at least they’d be real pretty!
- Candied Flowers (christiescorner.com)
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