Plant Sightings – Page 34

Black Cherry Trees Flowered Beautifully in 2010

June 18, 2012June 10, 2010 by wilde

: 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.

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

Flower buds opening on a cluster of black cherry blossoms.

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.

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?

Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom (cbsnews.com)
Map of ancient cherry trees to save traditional fruit from extinction (telegraph.co.uk)

Lariope-Liriope is a Tough Plant

February 6, 2016June 9, 2010 by wilde

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.

: 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.

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

February 6, 2016June 8, 2010 by wilde

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.

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 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

June 18, 2012June 7, 2010 by wilde

: 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.

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. 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.

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

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.

Rolled Leaves of False Solomon’s Seal Unfurl One By One

June 5, 2010 by wilde

Finding a plant that you’ve never seen before can be exciting and even exhilarating, depending on the rarity of the plant and the likelihood of ever seeing it again – and on the efforts taken to observe such a thing. Finding a plant that you already know, but haven’t seen in the flowering or fruiting stage, or locating a flower in a new location can be just as exciting.

Once you’re familiar with some perennial plants, and if you know where a perennial plant comes up in the Spring, you can watch these plants change through the seasons. The same can be said for planting annuals by seed.

A fun project to do with interested children is to keep a photographic record by clicking a few photos each week as your plants develop. Compare the growth of your plant by comparing photos as you go along. You might learn a thing or two about your favorite perennial or wild herb.

A fairly common plant of our mixed-hardwood forest is a flowering herbaceous plant called False Solomon’s Seal, Smilacina racemosa. It’s noted for its similarity to Solomon’s Seal, Polygonatum biflorum, except for its terminal flower stalk and lack of dangling bell-shaped flowers.

Leaves of both False Solomon’s Seal and Solomon’s Seal are linear-veined oval leaves that alternate along a single arched stem. As the plant emerges from the ground the leaves are already forming.

False Solomon's Seal leaves sprouting from the ground.

A closer look at the twisted stalks of False Solomon's Seal emerging from the ground.

The twisted stalks of the perennial False Solomon’s Seal coming up at base of an oak tree.

Frontal view of False Solomon's Seal leaves unfurling.

Leaves are rolled together at first and unfurl as the plant stalk grows, about 8 – 12 inches tall in these images, taken 2 May 2010. The main reason we can confidently state these are False Solomon’s Seal plants is that we’re familiar with these perennials that come up in the same place each Spring.

Dove’s Foot Geranium Taking a Foot Hold

June 18, 2012June 4, 2010 by wilde

Last autumn I brought back a specimen of what I think is Dove’s Foot Geranium and planted it next to the house. The plant overwintered quite well, started growing in early spring, and now is spreading out.

In the image above, taken 2 May 2010, the large plant on the left overwintered in PA but was originally from NY. Note the new shoots – that must be arising from new roots – on the right of the original New York geranium.

We still look forward to its blooming later this summer. Once we can see the flower arrangement, flower size, and seedpods, we’ll be able to verify the Geranium species.

I Heart Geraniums (craftzine.com)

Yellow Flags Flower Down by the River

June 18, 2012June 3, 2010 by wilde

A friend gave us a few plants a couple of years ago, but not a store-bought variety. His property is next to the Juniata River and one of his favorite past times is to go down to the river and see what he can find. Sometimes he’ll come back up the hill with buckets of minnows or baby catfish that would then be raised in fish tanks. River rock and driftwood are common finds and so are plastic chairs and other sundry items that get washed downstream during heavy rains. Once in a while he’ll venture far enough to dig up flowering plants that he usually transplants near his goldfish pond.

We were lucky to receive these beautiful yellow flags or yellow irises. The plants get about three feet tall, but many of the sword like leaves arch over to a foot or two tall. From year to year the iris plants get bigger and this year they flowered the most in their three years here on the mountain ridge. I think last year each plant had one flower stalk with 1 – 3 blooms. This year there are five flower stalks among two clumps of iris planted in different areas. Each flower stalk had 1-5 flowers.

Three flower buds of the yellow flag or yellow iris.

Three flower buds are apparent in the images above. Photos taken 2 May 2010.

Beardless yellow iris flowers. Photo taken 7 May 2010.

The yellow flag is typical of Iris species, where the large yellow “petals” that are veined with purple and that arch downward are really the sepals. Smaller upward pointing petals are the true petals. Inside to the petals are three styles, which look like smaller erect petals. The yellow flag has purple lines on the large bright yellow sepals and a lighter yellow color on the other flower parts.

Even though the yellow flags, that were found down by the river, seemed to be a natural plant there, the Iris pseudacorus is not native to the United States. Yellow irises are native to Europe and the specimens that we find along rivers and creeks are garden escapees. We could also say the yellow flags are naturalized to our area in South-central PA.

Somehow it feels good to have re-captured a wayside plant. We can enjoy its beautiful yellow blossoms and sword like foliage whenever we’re outside the house.

There is no indication in Peterson’s Edible Plant Guide or Peterson’s Medical Plants Guide that the yellow flag has any edible or medicinal value. Beyond its appeal as a garden member, its long linear leaves could be used to make small baskets for collecting berries and cones. The leaves also lend themselves as natural additions to cut flower arrangements.

In the autumn the iris plants can be separated into individual fans and re-planted. Use a sharp spade to slice through the roots in between the small groups or fans of leaves. Or, dig up the entire plant and use a sharp knife or shovel to separate the fans, roots and all. Transplant to new area, water and mulch. Look forward to next year’s blooms!

Fleabanes the First Aster-Type Flowers to Bloom

June 18, 2012June 2, 2010 by wilde

: Image via Wikipedia Fleabane

Some flowers will bloom and re-bloom and we’ll see them brightening our roadsides and fields until fall. Some of the earliest flowers that stick around for a while are the fleabanes.

Fleabane comes in two often-seen varieties, both having compound flowers with numerous, very thin, strap-like white ray flowers that surround yellow disc flowers.

Daisy fleabane, Erigeron annuus, also known as Sweet Scabious, has ray flowers that are shorter than the width of the central yellow disc. Ray flowers number from 40 to 70, fewer than the common fleabane which has over a hundred rays.

Common fleabane, Erigeron philadelphicus, also known as Philadelphia Fleabane, has ray flowers that are about the same length as the width of the central yellow disc.

Daisy fleabane can reach five feet tall, but the shorter common fleabane only gets about three feet tall.

The leaves for both types of fleabane are long, hairy and toothed, but the stem leaves of common fleabane clasp the stem whereas the leaves of daisy fleabane do not clasp the stem.

Common fleabane may start flowering in April and end in August, while daisy fleabane flowers later in the season and longer, from June to October. Since the flowering times of daisy fleabane and common fleabane overlap in the summertime, we have to look at their physical characteristics to tell them apart.

The flowers may be hard to distinguish especially if you don’t have one of each plant to make the comparisons. Probably the easiest way to differentiate the two fleabanes is to look at the alternating stem leaves. Common fleabane leaves clasp the stem.

Ray flowers number more than 100 in this Common Fleabane.

Flower buds are often pink, and sometimes the mature flowers retain the pink color instead of turning to white as most of these roadside posies do.

Any of the plants that are mowed down can regenerate to flower again later in the season. Perhaps that’s one reason why we see the fleabanes flowering along many roads in the summertime.

The whole plant of common fleabane has been used in tea to treat a number of illnesses, as Peterson’s Medical Plants Guide indicates astringent and diuretic properties. Sufferers of HHT, Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia, a blood vessel disorder that causes bleeding, may like to know that hemorrhages of the stomach, bowels, bladder, kidneys and nose have been stopped with folk remedies of common fleabane. (Errata: the 1990 version of the Peterson’s Medical Plants Guide lists Erigeron philadelphicus as Daisy Fleabane, not Common Fleabane.)

Perhaps tea of either fleabane would have similar properties for stopping bleeding…can anyone verify this notion?

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