Lone Turkey Shuffles Out of Woods

Turkeys are common in our neck of the woods. At the right times you can see flocks of fifty birds or more as they shuffle through an open field. Mostly, we hear them while the turkeys walk through the woods.

If you sit outside long enough, you’ll be able to hear a gobbler corraling his flock of hens together. A group of twenty or more turkeys will meander through the woods looking for something to eat.

We can hear shuffling sounds as they flip aside and turn over leaves while they march through the forest. Listen long enough and you can find out in which direction the group is headed. Often, the scratching of many feet signals their presence before we hear any gobbling or clucking.

One time I looked onto a corn field from our attic window and saw a huge group of wild turkeys, a few dozen I guess. I wondered if I could hear them making any sounds. I lowered the window and to my delight I heard a clamor of clucks and gobbles. The sounds those big birds were making were unbelieveable! I mean, there were so many turkeys and it seemed as if all of them were telling stories. It was a grey and cold autumn day, and it was drizzling, so maybe they felt safe to be so noisy out there. They really seemed to be enjoying themselves!

I wonder what wild herb this turkey gal is looking for…?

Turkey in the back yard.
Turkey in the back yard.

I didn’t know when I snapped this photo on 6 May 2010 that a whole troup of turkey birds were in the adjacent woods kicking up leaves and eating bugs!

Wild Geranium Blooms During May in PA

Wild geranium is one of the first wild flowers that I learned once we moved to our place on the “mountain top”, which is a ridge top in the Ridge and Valley Province of the Appalachians in Pennsylvania. The large pastel-colored blossoms are a pleasant addition to the woodlands that are now green everywhere.

Wild Geranium, Geranium maculatum, also called Spotted Geranium, is a perennial that grows in open woods where sunlight reaches the forest floor. We find it along the lane, next to the farmer’s road, and at the edge of the field where the field meets the trees.

Large enough not to be missed by the casual woods walker, wild geranium flowers and leaves are prominent. The foliage is easy to spot so you can find it even when the flowers aren’t in bloom. The palmate leaves of wild geranium are deeply cut and have rounded teeth or lobes.

A nice specimen of wild geranium along the lane near the pond on 2 May 2010.
A nice specimen of wild geranium along the lane.
Flowering wild geranium along a country road.
Flowering wild geranium along a country road. Photo taken 17 May 2010.

In the image above note the rounded petals of the lilac-colored flowers. Five-petal flowers of lilac, pink or light purple occur in clusters at the stem tips.

Close up image of wild geranium blooms.
Close up image of wild geranium blooms.
Blooming wild geranium on 2 May 2010.
Blooming wild geranium on 2 May 2010.

Note that the drooping flower buds have not yet opened. When the wild geranium flowers are spent, the petals dry up, turn a deeper blue color and fall away.

Pink to faded blue flowers of wild geranium.
Pink to faded blue flowers of wild geranium.

New lilac and old blue flowers of wild geranium. Photo above taken 17 May 2010. From these observations it appears that Geranium maculatum has at least a two-week blooming period.

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Blue False Indigo Flowers in Spring

Blue False Indigo is a very attractive plant that blooms in the middle of Spring. A perennial that sports large clover-like leaves in light green flowers quite beautifully in dark blue and deep purple.

So far, I’ve only seen it in flower beds and not in the wild anywhere. As a matter of fact, the blue false indigo photographed here grew from seeds collected from seed pods of a group that had flowered so nicely the spring before. Blue False Indigo, Baptisia australis, is a member of the Pea Family that is native to North America.

My introduction to this deep purple flowering perennial were a dozen or more plants that were part of the landscaping at the local college library. I made a mental note to myself to return to the scene of the lovely deep purple flowers when the seed pods seemed to be ripe and rattle with seeds.

When I went back there it must have been the end of the summer. The seed pods had turned their faded purple color and the seeds rattled in their pods. Took out my trusty pocket knife, sliced off a few flower stems and slipped them in my backpack. Each one had a half dozen or so seed pods.

A couple years later the seeds were finally planted in a flower bed next to the house. What you see in the image below is a cluster of plants that are about six years old. No flowers appeared the first year on the scant foliage, only a few blooms opened the second year. I’m sure the plant would be considered mature now as the deep purple to blue flowers have been outstanding for the last four years.

Look for the blue false indigo to start blooming in the beginning of May.
Look for the blue false indigo to start blooming in the beginning of May.
Purple flower spikes and clover-like leaves of blue false indigo.
Purple flower spikes and clover-like leaves of blue false indigo.

The pointed, oval leaves appear in threes, and they start out in an accordian shape, all folded up. The clover-like leaves are widest near the tip.

Long flower spikes rise up above the foliage.
Long flower spikes rise up above the foliage.

Violet and indigo flowers command attention in the bright May sunshine. Once the blooming is in full swing the spikes tend to arch over with the weight of the flowers and developing seedpods. Photos above taken 2 May 2010.

Flowering blue false indigo.
Flowering blue false indigo.

The same false indigo plant flowered beautifully last year, as seen in the photo above taken 23 May 2009.

Pea-type flowers produce several seeds inside elongated seed pods.

Pea-type flowers of blue false indigo.
Pea-type flowers of blue false indigo.

Photo above taken 23 May 2007.

In the image below taken 23 May 2009 is a fertilized false indigo flower. Note that a seed pod is growing out of the flower and that the side wing petals have fallen away to leave the broad purple standard petal at the top and, in this case, a white keel at the bottom of the bloom. Stamens are usually tucked inside the keel.

Seed pod growing out of indigo bloom.
Seed pod growing out of indigo bloom.

By the end of May the flowers are past done and all seed pods are well-formed. The pods will turn a deep purple to black as they ripen. The stalks of colorful seed pods can be used as points of interest in flower arrangements.

Peterson’s Medicinal Plants Guide indicates that Blue False Indigo, as well as other species of Baptisia, are potential immune system stimulants. Native Americans used the roots in treating inflammation.

Once the stems get 3 feet tall or so it only takes a brief storm to knock them over. We’ve tried different ways of staking up the greenery of false blue indigo and so far we like this little fence idea the best. Small slats of wood were interlaced to form a sort of fence to hold up the stems.

Primitive wooden fence for holding up false blue indigo stems in summer.
Primitive wooden fence for holding up false blue indigo stems in summer.

Sour Grass is Yellow Oxalis in the Yard

The yellow flowering oxalis is a very common plant in our location here among the trees. It seems to prefer areas of moisture and shade. You can find it in lawns, gardens, waste places, fields, roadsides and open woodlands.

As kids we called the yellow-flowering oxalis “sour grass”. The seed pods are edible and taste a bit sour. I wonder if this is one of those things that big brother had me try first! Actually, it was probably just one of those things that people know about their own landscape, like what plants are edible and which aren’t. Some of this knowledge is passed on orally from generation to generation, but if it’s not in your experience, how would you know? Good thing you stopped by! 🙂

Oxalis herbs are also referred to as Wood Sorrels. The wood sorrels are marked by clover-like leaves in threes with each leaflet being heart-shaped. Yellow Wood Sorrel, Oxalis europaea, is an introduced species here in Pennsylvania and it’s native to Europe. There is also a pink flowering species, called Violet Wood Sorrel, Oxalis violacea, that I have not seen growing wild in our area of Pennsylvania.

Small yellow oxalis came up through cracks between flagstones.
Small yellow oxalis came up through cracks between flagstones. Never mind the dandelion in the background.

Leaves are light green to maroon. When the plant has maroon leaves it makes the yellow blossoms really stand out.

Wood sorrel flowers have five petals and ten stamens and measure about a half-inch across. Oxalis flowers and leaves close up in the evening and re-open in the sunlight. Cloudy days will keep many Oxalis plants from opening their flowers at all.

Black Cherry Trees Flowered Beautifully in 2010

Under the Cherry Blossom Tree
Image by stephenccwu via Flickr

I’m wondering if the wild temperatures we had this spring affected the blooming time of our Black Cherry trees. We know that extremes in weather conditions will alter blooming times for many flowers and prohibit flowering altogether in some cases. Each year we wonder if the cherry blossoms will bloom during the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC.

2010 has been a wild roller coaster ride as far as temperatures go. We’ve had swings from 20 degrees above to 20 degrees below the average high temperatures. Surely, the blooming times of some plants were affected. A point in case is the Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida. Its flowering was next to nil for 2010. Very few wild flowering dogwood trees bloomed in our immediate area. The same observations were seen as far away as Virginia, where the dogwoods did not bloom heavily as in previous years, if at all.

It’s easy to draw conclusions, but we really don’t know for sure what causes certain plants to really put on a show one year and barely be apparent the next. Without a proper study one can always find an alternate explanation. Perhaps the accumulation of necessary nutrients takes longer in some years affecting their reproductive cycles. Is that why we have bumper crops of acorns in some years and not so many in other years?

Last year was a great year for the Maple-Leaved Viburnum in our forest. They flowered most beautifully.

Certainly, temperature does have something to do with blooming times, at least for some plants, like cherries. By the way, the cherry blossoms in Washington were right on time for 2010 with a 10 day blooming period and a blooming peak on March 31.

At any rate it is interesting to see changes from year to year. Just observe the same plants over a several year period, you’ll be able to learn a lot from your little green friends.

2010 was a great flowering year for the wild cherry trees of the genus Prunus.

Saplings that are about an inch in diameter and about 12-15 feet tall, flowered the most this May that we have ever seen them. Perhaps these little trees just got big enough to flower that much. Maybe the rain and temperatures were optimal for flowering of the cherry trees in our locality. We can’t say with certainty what caused the exquisite blooming, but we can say it was a good blooming year for our little wild cherries.

Black cherry flowers in elongated clusters.
Black cherry flowers in elongated clusters.
Black cherry blossoms.
Black cherry blossoms.

We were lucky to see so many blossoms of wild cherry this year.

Flower buds opening on a cluster of black cherry blossoms.
Flower buds opening on a cluster of black cherry blossoms.
Cluster of black cherry flowers.
Cluster of black cherry flowers.

Two similar wild cherry trees grow in the same type of habitat at the edge of the woods or in recently cleared areas. To decide whether the flowering cherry trees we’re looking at are Black Cherry or Common Chokecherry, we need to look at the margins of the leaves. Are the teeth sharp or blunt? If the teeth are sharp, we have the Common Chokecherry, Prunus virginiana. If the teeth are blunt, we’re looking at the Black Cherry, Prunus serotina.

Consider the overall shape of the leaf. Is it elongated and pointed, or more squat with a short tip? Black cherry leaves are elongated, lance-like, and have 13 or more lateral leaf veins. Common chokecherry leaves have fewer leaf veins, 8 – 11, and are short-pointed at the tip.

To verify these identifications, note whether the fruits retain the calyx lobes (of the old sepals) at the top of the fruit next to the stem. If the cherry does not retain the calyx lobes, it is a common chokecherry. If the cherry retains the calyx lobes, it is a black cherry.

Common Chokecherry Black Cherry
leaves with sharp teeth leaves with blunt teeth
leaf vein pairs 8-11 leaf vein pairs 13+
short pointed leaf tip
fruit with no calyx fruit retain calyx lobes

Fruit from either tree is edible, if somewhat bitter. Grolier’s Field Guide to North American Trees tells us that every three or four years black cherry trees have a bumper crop of fruit. If the birds let you have enough, why not make some wild cherry jelly?

Our black cherries here are gaining size, but they’re still green. It seems that many of the flowers don’t produce fruit at all because of the few number that reach maturity. Has anyone seen a cluster of wild cherry fruit that was as long as the flower cluster? Typically, you’ll see two or three ripe berries for each cluster of a few dozen flowers.

Three cherries left on the stem.
Three cherries left on the stem.

The green cherries aren’t ready to eat of course, but you can see the retained calyx lobes at the top of the fruits, near the stem. Photo above taken 31 May 2010. Note the blunt teeth at the leaf margins and many side veins in the leaf, which indicate this to be a Black Cherry.

In reality you’ll probably never get enough wild cherries to make jelly. Besides many kinds of birds, raccoons, rabbits, squirrel, deer and bear will eat cherries. One of our black cherry trees didn’t bear any more fruit than three cherries on the whole tree, even though it flowered beautifully as seen in the first two images in this post.

I’m curious…does anyone out there use wild cherries for food or to make jelly?

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Lariope-Liriope is a Tough Plant

However you spell it, liriope or lariope, is a very tough plant. It can survive and grow in many types of soil and various habitats. It’s used in flower beds as border plants and on hills to aid in erosion control.

Liriope muscari
Image via Wikipedia…one tough plant!

A while back someone found their way to wildeherb while searching for the proper way to trim their liriope plants. Read on to see why I say, “Mow them down!”

Apparently, liriope is relished by deer. Well, perhaps relished isn’t quite the right word. I’ve been watching these lariope plants that we brought back from NC years ago. They seem to have adapted to our climate just fine. Each year these perennials come back stronger than the previous year. Liriope flowered in 2006 after having been transplanted two years prior.

Early this spring I was shocked to see the foliage was eaten down to the nubbins. Since the foliage went missing in early Spring, instead of during the growing season, I would think that liriope isn’t first on the relish list of deer. Perhaps it was a rabbit or another animal, but judging by the amount of vegetation that was eaten whoever it was certainly was hungry. I’m still curious about it because I’ve read that lirope is deer resistant.

It was a bummer to think that we might lose the lariope plants, but we needn’t fear about that. It turns out that the foliage came back with a vengeance, as they say. Today, the greenery looks full and lush, and we look forward to another round of deep purple flowers this summer.

Lariope leaves growing up this year.
Lariope leaves growing up this year.

Even after the leaves from last year were eaten, lariope leaves grew out strong this spring.

If you have liriope or lariope plants in a garden or along a walkway, you can trim them back in early Spring simply by mowing them down. The vegetation will come back to provide for another year’s enjoyment.

Liriope muscari is native to Asia and it goes by several common names, like monkey grass, spider grass and lilyturf.

Native Yarrow Patch Yields Bountiful Flowers

A couple of years ago I found a cluster of yarrow growing in the backyard. I noticed the foliage when the plants were small, maybe half a foot tall. Rubbing a leaf released the “flower arrangement” scent that confirmed I was looking at Yarrow, Achillea millefolium.

Learning the scents that plants make is only secondary to learning their physical characteristics to identify them. Sometimes you can cut to the chase by smelling the flowers or leaves, but if you can recognize a plant’s scent then you’re probably already familiar with it in other ways.

The yarrow plant has very highly divided leaves. The leaves are soft to the touch and arch over instead of being erect. The fern-like leaves are probably how most people would identify yarrow, instead of using its smell.

Foliage and flower buds of native yarrow.
Foliage and flower buds of native yarrow.

Yarrow that was transplanted into a flower bed has flourished into many plants from the original few. Note the foliage in the image above, taken 2 May 2010.

Flowers and leaves share the same stem. Yarrow flowers seem to be formed early and rise up higher as more leaves continue to develop. When the plant gets 1 – 3 feet tall the blossoms will be fully formed into a slightly rounded cluster of what appears to white, five petal flowers. The flowers are actually composite flowers with only a few broad ray flowers, most often five of them.

A cluster of yarrow flowers.
A cluster of yarrow flowers.
A side view of a patch of yarrow flowers.
A side view of a patch of yarrow flowers.

Two photos of yarrow flowers taken 31 May 2010.

Yarrow is a plant that is used widely in flower gardens and in fresh-cut and dried flower arrangements. White is the original, native flower color, but other colors have been propagated.

Peterson’s Edible Plant Guide indicates that yarrow leaves are often used to make tea. The pleasant flower arrangement scent is a nice addition to other herbs or used alone. Check out yarrow herbal remedies to learn more about how others use yarrow in herbal remedies.

Perfoliate Bellwort Flowers at the Edge of the Woods

Uvularia grandiflora1
Image via Wikipedia — Large-Flowered Bellwort

The bellworts seem to be delicate flowering herbs because of their dangling, single flowers and small size.

The image to the right is of a Large-Flowered Bellwort, so named for the size of its single flower. The yellow petals have a twist which helps to separate this kind of bellwort from other bellworts.

One bellwort in particular is a unique little plant. Its pointed oval leaves are pierced by the stem, except for the terminal leaves. The pierced leaves are called perfoliate leaves, which give the plant its name, Perfoliate Bellwort, Uvularia perfoliata. The stem and entire plant reaches about a foot tall at the most.

The Perfoliate Bellwort with its pierced leaves and single flower.
The Perfoliate Bellwort with its pierced leaves and single flower.

If you follow the stem of the perfoliate bellwort from the bottom up in the image above, you can see that a couple side stems branch off the main stem. However, only one of these forks will have a single terminal flower.

The lone lemon yellow bell-shaped flower hangs downward. Six elongated petals indicate the bellworts are members of the Lily Family, Liliaceae.

The flower is not as long as the leaf directly under it, which differentiates it from the large-flowered bellwort, Uvularia grandiflora. Also, the leaves of the large-flowered species are downy underneath unlike the smooth leaves of the perfoliate species.

A lemony yellow single dangling flower of perfoliate bellwort.
A lemony yellow, single, dangling flower of perfoliate bellwort.
Another example of perfoliate bellwort.
Another example of perfoliate bellwort. Photos above taken 2 May 2010.

A couple weeks earlier the bellwort started blooming. Its leaves still retained some of the curl from opening up when the images below were taken 23 April 2010.

Fresh new leaves of perfoliate bellwort.
Fresh new leaves of perfoliate bellwort.

Two bellwort plants in the image above still retain a little curl in their leaves, signaling that these plant leaves are fresh and new.

Orange roughy flower center.
Orange roughy flower center.

Another sign that we are looking at Perfoliate Bellwort instead of Large-Flowered Bellwort is the rough, orange center of the blossom. The large-flowered species has a smoother and more yellow center to the flower than the perfoliate species.

Eight or nine plants typically come up in this same area each Spring.

The Perfoliate Bellwort is a perennial herbaceous plant native to North America. In eastern woodlands it grows in the understory in the same types of places that you find black raspberry, blackberry, pasture rose, Solomon’s seal, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, and ferns.

Peterson’s Medicinal Plants Guide indicates that Native Americans used tea made from the roots to treat coughs, sore mouth, sore throat, and a number of ailments that appear to have inflammation at their root.

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