WildeHerb is a collection of wild herb and wildflower sightings.
Plant Sightings
Plant sightings is the main focus of wildeherb. Plants native to North America, and especially the Northeastern United States and Pennsylvania, are found, identified, observed and photographed to become part of a living diary about our plant friends, new and old.
Houseplants seem to get more attention during the doldrums of winter than any other time. Not much else is growing green now, or dare I say, flowering?
We had a surprise blooming from a houseplant that had spent its summer and part of autumn on a balcony outdoors. Once inside it was protected from the harsh weather, but it didn’t get regular watering or perhaps not enough water at some point. Some leaves have brown tips, but others are dark green and glossy. It’s in a room that’s cooler than the rest of the house. Maybe it sensed it wasn’t in the best of conditions and tried to reproduce.
I think it’s a type of Dracaena with short, wide leaves that are lance-shaped and pointed at the end. The base of the leaves overlap as they sheath the main stem. When the leaves eventually fall away, they leave behind a diamond-like pattern on the stem that is characteristic of Dracaena.
Dracaena flower stalk and foliage. Photo taken 11Jan2011.Dracaena with many new white flowers in bunches along its flower stalk. Photo taken 26Dec2011.
A couple weeks later the flowers were still taking their turns blooming. Individual flowers are clustered into round groups.
Flowerstalk of dracaena. Photo taken 11Jan2011.
In the close-up below you can see the individual flowers that have already bloomed are turning brown. Flowers still blooming are creamy white.
Closeup look at individual flowers. Photo taken 11Jan2011.
This summer the farmer across the road planted several fields of sunflowers. We had fun watching the flowers grow tall through the month of August anticipating the big yellow blossoms. Their sunny faces were opening up and in full bloom by September.
Sunflowers on a sunny day
Below are links to a video and archive of some of our favorite sunflower photos. The audio is an instrumental titled Warda’s Whorehouse by Phillip Glass and Foday Musa Suso from Music From the Screens.
If you ever get a chance to stand among sunflowers growing in a field en masse, take a few moments to soak in the sunshine with them. It is a very uplifting experience. We guarantee a smile!
Flowering plants that we see this time of year are only house plants that have been protected from the harsh and freezing cold weather of winter.
A few Christmas cacti bloomed when kept out in the mudroom, but dropped their blooms when brought into the house. The mudroom is like a closed-in porch that gets no direct heat. It doesn’t freeze out there because the room is attached to the house, yet there are no heating ducts to keep it warm. This area is on the south side of the house, so when it’s sunny the room gets much warmer than on cloudy days due to the full-length window or slider door that faces south. Nights are definitely cool, though! The cacti seem to love it.
Christmas cactus blooming. Photo taken 26Dec2010.Christmas cactus in bloom. Photo taken 26Dec2010.
I’m not sure if it was the warmth of the house in itself that caused the other Christmas cacti to drop their blooms, or if it was the change from a cool location to a warmer one. Probably the latter, but at any rate I’m glad the ones left in the mudroom liked it there.
On a warm and sunny day I caught this little kitty enjoying a roll on the flagstone. She had been nibbling the catnip that you can see in the foreground.
Catnip keeps this feline entertained on a sunny day. Photo taken 12Nov2010.
The perennial roots will keep catnip here for a long time. New sprouts will pop up in the adjacent areas as old sticks die back. Next Spring new growth will arise near the old growth. Some of the stems can be quite woody, especially near the base.
We like having catnip planted near the house. I don’t know if it acts to deter insects, but it does keep the felines close by. We really appreciate knowing that we won’t be bothered by mice or other rodents with our cat hunters nearby.
Flowers of Pearly Everlasting Anaphalis margaritacea at Orcas Island, Washington.Image via Wikipedia
Walking around a corn field that will be harvested in a couple weeks surely tells us it’s autumn. The corn is drying up, but still quite a lot of green leaves on the upper half of the tall stalks. The leaves crunch under our feet and the birds are really active. Starlings are starting to flock together. Earlier this week we probably saw the hummingbirds for the last time this year as they visited the butterfly bush near the house.
There aren’t very many flowers drawing our attention these days as the trees are really showing their fall colors now. The maple trees are in full color up on the ridge, but down in the city the color change hasn’t begun in earnest.
We did see a lone flowering plant with white flower heads in clusters. The flowers were a bit odd in that they looked kind of like a cotton swab. There are no petals to speak of so the flower parts are said to be indistinguishable.
The whole plant seems to have a covering of cottony growth, but that is accentuated in the globular flower heads. The long linear leaves have white wooly undersides. The leaves are alternate and entire and do not clasp the stem.
Sweet Everlasting, also called Catfoot or Rabbit Tobacco, is botanically known as Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium, a member of the Aster family, Asterideae. The group of related Gnaphaliums may be called Cudweeds. By the way the derivation of the genus name, Gnaphalium, comes from a Greek term meaning ‘tuft of wool.’
Branched groups of flower heads are at the top of a single cottony main stem that appears to be covered with white wool or cotton. Flowers are white with tinges of yellow mostly appearing when the flowers go to seed.
Branching flower heads of Sweet Everlasting. Photo taken 6 September 2010.
Sweet everlasting has a long bloom period, perhaps a few weeks during July through October. It’s fragrant, too. Smelling sweet and kind of like maple syrup. The miniscule flowers are surrounded by white scaly bracts.
White cottony flower heads of Sweet Everlasting. Photo taken 6 September 2010.
From above the alternate and linear nature of the leaves is obvious.
Looking down on the 2 ft. tall Sweet Everlasting. Photo taken 6 September 2010.Sweet everlasting flowers gone to seed. Photo taken 10 October 2010.
A month later most of the Sweet Everlasting flowers have gone to seed. The central and upper leaf clusters of flower heads still have their seeds intact. The other flower heads have opened up to release their seeds. The opened flower bracts look like dried flowers. This characteristic is shared with a related flower called Pearly Everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea, which is very showy and often used in dried flower arrangements.
Doing a little research today I ran across something that has to be useful to many of us who appreciate and grow plants. Often we’ll start plants by seed, or purchase young plants from a local greenhouse grower. It’s not often that we need to use a rooting hormone to start a plant from cuttings, but sometimes that’s the best way to propagate a plant.
Any garden center will have rooting hormones available for purchase. All you do is take your plant cutting and dip the root end into the rooting hormone and plant the cutting just as you would a transplant. The rooting hormones aid the young plant in developing roots so that it can grow big and strong.
You might pay $6 or $8 for a 2 oz. container of a powder like Rootone.
Instead of paying even a few dollars for a product that you can get directly from nature, forego the convenience and make your own rooting hormone tonic. All you need is a plant that contains the rooting hormones and make a little brew with it. The rooting hormones are known chemically as indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) and 1-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA). If you’re curious about other plant hormones, there are five major kinds. IBA and NAA are in the group of hormones known as auxins.
There are two types of trees that provide an easy source of these rooting hormones, poplar and willow trees. Harvest a few growing branches with leaves and cut the stems into 2-4 inch lengths. Fill a large pot with the wood bits and cover with water. Heat on low for a couple of hours, but do not boil. Turn off heat and let stand for 24 hours. Strain the liquid and compost the wood. Use the liquid as a rooting tonic. Submerge cuttings in tonic until ready to plant.
Instead of plant hormones for a rooting tonic, some folks rely on honey. They dip their cuttings in honey and take advantage of the natural fungicides and antibiotics in honey. The high sugar and mineral content probably helps the survival of stem cuttings dipped in honey.
Either way, I’ll be using a little help from nature to take some cuttings from the herbs that we could lose during winter. The blueberry patch out back seems another likely place to try these cuttings techniques!
After the woodman was finished dumping off a truck load of firewood, I noticed that a few of the logs rolled away to the edge of the woods. Here, one lodged against the base of a couple of Smooth Solomon’s Seal plants, Polygonatum biflorum. I was delighted to see so many of the berries still intact.
Two wild Solomon's Seal plants with one crossing over the other. Photos taken 6 September 2010.
Dark blue berries dangle from the arching single stem. Oval, linear leaves alternate from side to side, each being connected to the main stem directly. This type of stalkless leaf, one without a stem of its own, is called sessile.
Looking down on the blue berries.
The berries were about a half-inch in diameter. This surprised me for some reason. I thought they’d be small and delicate like their greenish-white flowers. See an earlier post on the Solomon’s Seals flowers.
Side-view of dangling, blue berries of Solomon's Seal.
Checking the fruit trees out back one day at the beginning of August, I saw two groups of yellow-orange and black-striped caterpillars. There were a dozen or more caterpillars all huddled at the ends of two empty branches of a blueberry bush. They must have eaten the blueberry leaves with abandon as all the leaves were gone on the stems that the squishy critters were found. None of the other four blueberry plants had any of these caterpillars.
Funny thing is I found them by spotting their poop. Those little grenades tend to collect under caterpillar feeding areas and give away the hungry camoflaged mouths.
Caterpillar scat collecting on bark used as mulch for blueberry bushes. Photos taken 3 August 2010.
Once you see the scat you can more easily spot the critters who deposited it. Caterpillars that have found the right food source will stay put and continue to feed, so their scat is usually directly below where they’ve been feeding. It’s a little surprising that I didn’t see the critters first, because they were all huddled together at the end of the branches.
Group of hairy yellow-orange and black-striped caterpillars at the end of a blueberry branch.
Large grouping of caterpillars huddled on one stem near other stems that they stripped of leaves.
Prolegs and pedipalps, long hairs and yellow stripes. Anyone know who I am?
The blueberry shrubs and other fruit trees were checked often in the following weeks, but we haven’t seen this type of caterpillar again. I wonder what type of butterfly they would have morphed into. It’s really too bad they chose to eat from that blueberry bush!
