Plant Sightings

Driving up through the Pennsylvania mountains today we saw that the redbud trees were in full bloom. What a beautiful sight to see their purple blossoms all along the highway. Keep your eyes on the road, but look for nature’s beauty – she’s everywhere!

Common cinquefoil is beautifying our backyard this morning. For a week or so there will be these little bright yellow spots dotting the landscape. Of course I could go out and pull it up after the flowering so that more grass could grow on the lawn, but we don’t care too much for mowing the grass. The cinquefoil stays.

I actually look forward to all the wild flowers that spring up in the yard. We’re located on a mountain ridge in a forest clearing so there’s plenty of volunteers that come up in the areas without trees. I delight in seeing them all – No planting needed!

The series of spring flowering volunteers include

• dandelion

– Is this the most commonly recognized flowering plant on the face of the planet?

• ground ivy
• Pennsylvania bittercress
• thyme-leaved speedwell
• garlic mustard
• northern downy violet
• arrowleaf violet
• common blue violet
• cinquefoil
• mustard
• strawberry
• yellow hawkweed

Ok, some of my happy volunteers are aliens, but now they live here, too. The true American yard should be a melting pot, don’t you think? I admit to pulling up the really invasive garlic mustard every chance I get because I don’t want it to totally take over our spaces.

We’re not in the right ecosystem to have a perfectly manicured grassy lawn. For that you’d have to be back in the UK where the weather is much more conducive to keeping the grass green.

In the interest of going green I’m not going to spread chemicals and work my hands to the bone trying to force the grass to grow. Save your money, your water and your time and let the natives take over the landscape.

If I lived in a planned neighborhood and everybody on the street had nice green lawns, I’m sure that mine would stick out from the rest. As it stands now our vegetable garden is in the front yard as that is where the best sun shines. I say, “Dare to be different!” – it’s the only way to make progress in the war against the lemming-like behavior of suburban inhabitants.

One of my favorite scenes in Spring is the return of the coltsfoot. Driving down most any country road in central Pennsylvania you can see these early “dandelions” before anything else is blooming.

Of course coltsfoot is an entirely different plant than dandelion, but many people will mistake it for such. Coltsfoot, Tussilago farfara, does look like dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, in that the yellow flowers have many rays, but that’s where the similarity ends.

The flowering stems of dandelions are thin hollow tubes, where the coltsfoot stems have noticeable scales.

Coltsfoot flowering along a country road in Pennsylvania.

When coltsfoot flowers its leaves are hardly noticeable as they are just beginning to be formed, whereas dandelion leaves are present before it flowers. A dandelion’s basal leaves are narrow, lobed or cleft and at ground level, while coltsfoot leaves are roundish, broad, held high and their shape suggests a colt’s foot. When flowering is over for the season coltsfoot leaves continue to grow until they’re larger than your palm.

Another similarity between the two is the white, fluffy seed head produced by the spent flowers. Pictures to come later.

I mentioned that coltsfoot is the only thing flowering now, but that is not quite correct. Maybe it’s the first noticeable, native flower. A couple of very small flowers are out now too, namely Pennsylvania Bitter Cress, Cardamine pensylvanica, and Purple Dead Nettle, Lamium purpureum. And the natives are being out done right now by the flower garden bulbs. Check out this nice purple and white crocus!

Purple and white crocus blooming in the flower garden. Another crocus is about to come up, you can see its bud on the left at the base of its white-striped linear leaves.

Stay tuned for more flowering beauties and look around your neighborhood for what’s coming up!