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In April when I walk, I often find Bloodroot (Sanguinarea canadensis) covering a shady bank on one of my favorite walks. I don’t think many residents know of their existence, as I only found them by accident. The eight to ten white petals easily identify the plant. Bloom lasts about two weeks, but even when not in bloom Bloodroot is easy to recognize. Its deeply-lobed leaves unfurl in bright light, looking somewhat like bluish-green fat hands.
Like many gardeners, identifying wildflowers, shrubs, and trees is one of my favorite hobbies. As I admire the wild-growing flowers, the thought often crosses my mind what a wonderful addition they would be to my own garden. Wildflowers lure most gardeners to try and grow them, and there are good reasons to use native plants in your garden. They are adapted to the climate and soil type, and therefore thrive with less care. Most can survive with little water other than natural rainfall. Native plants also provide food and habitat for wild animals, birds, and butterflies.
With the Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) blooming along many roadsides in spring, many people are tempted to dig them up to add to their own yard. Our wildflowers should never be transplanted or have the flowers picked. For Trillium, Ladyslippers, and many others, it is against the law. Even for those not on the state-protected list, most do not survive moving. With so many growing in our area, what is wrong with picking the flowers? Although abundant here, they are not plentiful everywhere. For each flower picked, the potential for seed production is lost, reducing the chances for a wildflower community’s continued survival or its reestablishment in another site.
Luckily, during the past decade, more nursery plantsmen and conservationists have collected wild seed, so gardeners can now purchase plants for their garden without hurting the local native plant populations. Some native plants are ‘rescued’ when development threatens their existence. These rescued plants are often sold, giving gardeners another opportunity to collect wildflowers safely.
Advancements in propagation techniques allow gardeners to purchase nursery-grown Ladyslippers, but be prepared to pay a lot for each one. These orchids become rarer in the wild as the flowers seem irresistible to everyone who sees them. For many of us, purchased plants may become the only way to ever enjoy these flowers. Other easily cultivated native plants, like Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum), Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), and Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa), have been developed by commercial growers and are commonly available as garden plants.
As a gardener, I know humans have introduced many invasive species like Dandelions, Japanese Knotweed, and Phragmites, into many of our native North American habitats. I have witnessed it, and to some extent participated (in ignorance) of the problem.
As little as two hundred years ago the forests surrounding the Great Lakes lacked earthworms. The Ice Age and glaciers eliminated the native species, and during the 10,000 years since the last glacier, our trees and plants evolved to live in the wormless local soils. This became a thick layer of duff or the debris of trees and shrubs that lined the forest floor. Duff remains for years, slowly decayed by fungi, but providing a habitat for many Michigan ferns, delicate wildflowers, and small animals like salamanders.
Since settlers first moved into this area, they introduced European earthworms like the red wriggler to encourage composting. Gardeners still think of worms as a desirable asset to their garden’s soil. These worms eat decaying matter, aerate the soil, and leave humus-rich worm casting behind as they burrow. In general, they do good things for garden soil.
In the forests, however, worms eat the duff in as little as two years, lowering the soil’s acidity and making nutrients more available. The plants in our forests survived in the poor fertility and the high acidity of our original native soils. While the introduction of worms won’t necessarily harm the mature trees growing there, the duff’s absence affects the number of seedlings growing in an area. It also makes an advantageous situation for unwanted invasive species that couldn’t have grown in the more acidic original soil.
Bloodroot
As this debris layer disappears, so does the habitat for plants like Trillium, Solomon’s Seal, Blue Cohosh, Sweet Cicely, Mayflowers, Wild Ginger, Lady Fern, Bloodroot, Bellwort, and the tiny Goblin Fern which might already be extinct in this area. They adapted to germination and growth in the thick layer of duff that provided them nutrients, moisture, protection from extremes in temperature and predators, and microorganisms like fungi necessary for their survival.
It is also believed the loss of the duff effects the salamander population that fed on insects living in the debris. The salamanders, in turn, provided food for snakes, shrews, thrushes, and screech owls, so the earthworm invasion affects a whole chain of living organisms.
Worms were introduced from dumped fishing bait, on the root-soil clumps of purchased plants, and on the tires of vehicles entering the local forest. The most severe invasions are usually near roads. This is one reason the U.S. Forest Service is restricting logging and road-building in certain forest areas in states around the Great Lakes.
Trillium
Once the earthworms infest an area, little can be done to remove them without doing more harm to the forest. We know many of the above plants grow in worm-infested soil because we grow them in our gardens, but a study in the Chippewa National Forest in northern Minnesota showed these species do not return to worm-infested forests.
Some ecologists hope the ecosystem of the forest may eventually come to a new balance. In the meantime, don’t spread earthworms into wormless areas, don’t dump worm bait in forested lands, and keep your vehicles on roads and trails. Gardeners in wooded areas need to keep compost piles and worm contaminated soil from contaminating the woodlands. These may seem like small measures, but it was a little thing that started this change.
(Updated. Originally published in the Cadillac News in 2002.
The perennial wild violet is sometimes unwanted when it spreads rampantly through lawns and garden beds, but its domesticated relatives are cold hardy plants perfect for local gardens. Edible, you can use the flowers and leaves of violets as a garnish or as an ingredient in salads, cold soups, gelatins, jams, or almost any desert. For entertainment you can serve up an accompanying story about violets.
Johnny Jump Up
This comes to mind as I dig the unwanted weeds out of the cracks between my brick walkway; all except the Johnny Jump-Ups. They’ve been given permission to grow wherever and however they want.
Long Spurred Violet
Annual pansies and perennial violets come from the same genus, Viola. They have been grown for food and medicine for centuries and in that time, the plants have accumulated a volume of myth and folklore. Pansies bloom longer in a northern garden than they do in areas with hot long summers, occasionally lasting long into the summer. Gardeners have hybridized violas extensively to produce the wonderful array of flowers now available.
These low growing plants come in many colors and color combinations. In northern areas most bloom in April and May, but some like Viola tricolor, or Johnny-jump-up, bloom all summer long. The small flowered types make great ground covers. The large flowered plants are great in containers or for a splash of color in the garden. Most like moist growing sites, but will thrive in ordinary garden soil.
Downy Yellow Violet
The perennial violet is often called the sweet violet, although there are many species of perennial violets. Our native species are the marsh blue violet, the Labrador violet and the bird’s-foot violet, all found in Eastern North America. Violets readily hybridize making identification in the wild difficult. Most perennial violets sold in garden markets are hybrids. Some look more like pansies than the traditional ‘sweet violet.’
Sweet violets are Viola odorata, a European species with a history that goes back to the Greeks and Romans. Zeus turned his mistress Io into a cow to hide her from his wife, Hera, and gave Io violets to eat when she found grass unpalatable. They were also the favorite flower of Napoleon who became known as ‘Corporal Violet.’ His empress, Josephine, wore violets at their wedding to honor him. After his defeat and exile in 1814, Napoleon claimed he would return with the violets in the spring. When he returned to France in March of 1915, the violets were indeed in bloom. This may be why violets are the birth flower for March. Legend says before Napoleon’s final exile he visited his dear, but divorced, Josephine’s grave. He picked a few of the violets growing there and placed them in a locket he wore until his death.
There are superstitions tied to sweet violets, too. To give a gift of violets is to offer the recipient good luck, and wearing a garland of violets prevents dizziness. However, if violets bloom in the fall, epidemics will come within the year. I hope this lore doesn’t apply to the violas and pansies sold blooming in most nurseries during September.
Pick the blossoms of Johnny Jump Ups and add them to your dinner salad tonight.
I discovered this book on Net Galley and opened it out of curiosity. Bees and their populations are a huge environmental issue right now. I think I’ve mentioned in my last post and in other posts, the volume of honeybees in my area has declined drastically in the last few years. Hopefully this book will help gardeners become aware of plants to draw bees and maybe as gardeners we can provide a welcoming and safe environment for these extremely important insects.
100 Plants to FEED THE BEES: Provide a Healthy Habitat to Help Pollinators Thrive – The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Publication date: December 2016
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
ISBN-10: 1612-12701-0
ISBN-13: 978-1612-12701-9
While this book is a handbook of plants insects need, it is an important book for every gardener. The book begins with a very interesting short version of the multi-million year history of how plants and insects evolved into essential partnerships. For those who have ignored environmental problems, bees have been disappearing, and bees and humans also have an essential partnership. The DNR claims bees pollinate approximately roughly 75% of the vegetables, fruits, and nuts we eat. Personally, I love those plant products and want to keep bees around to do what they do best. Unfortunately, I’ve also noticed a distinct decline in the number of honeybees visiting my plants.
100 PLANTS TO FEED THE BEES offers an extensive list of plants whose flowers provide nectar and pollen for bees, and not only honey bees but native bees and other pollinators such as moths, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Each plant section contains a photo of the plant, the plant’s botanical name, and some basic information on the plant, plus a map of where it grows. Interesting information and sometimes warnings about the plant are also included. An example of a warning is mustard, which is considered a noxious weed in some locations, and illegal to grow.
Included in the 100 plants are native wildflowers and non-native or introduced wildflowers (weeds), garden plants, herbs, trees and shrubs, and even pasture plants. I was glad to see many of the plants I’ve recognized growing in my area, and my garden holds many other recommended selections. I was surprised to see Tilia Americana or the common basswood tree, until I remembered standing under my trees when in bloom and hearing myriad bees busy in the tree’s unseen upper stories. I appreciated the list of insects each plant attracts far beyond bees, too. I looked over an online version of the book, and then pre-order a volume. I recommend all gardeners purchase a copy of 100 PLANTS TO FEED THE BEES, and a big thanks to Xerces Society authors Eric Lee-Mäder, Jarrod Fowler, Jillian Vento, and Jennifer Hopwood for this work.
Many science fiction stories deal with aliens, either aggressive sentient beings set to grab all Earth’s resources for their own, or beings we encounter in our own space exploration with whom we establish friendly communications and accord. Personally, from our experiences on Earth, I think we tend to fall into the first category, but hope we might eventually reach the second. We do try.
As self-appointed most intelligent species, our learning curve has been dismally flat in inter-species communications. Of the thousands of species living with us on this planet, we have only managed to instill communications on a few, a process called training. However, though we may understand our pets’ behaviors, we have never established true communications with them. How do we expect to communicate with completely alien species if we cannot do so with Earth species, say, like trees?
For the most part, we love trees. They grow into majestically beautify forms that inspire our imaginations. We treasure their shade, they increase the value of our property. We appreciate their lumber for its structural strength, the beauty of its grain in products we make from it, and for the fuel it provides to warm us.
We don’t believe trees intelligent because we’ve never discovered brain or nerve tissue in their physiology. However, even that is changing. Consider the paper Aspects of Plant Intelligence and another paper on the consideration of that topic. Then consider some commonly known facts. Trees clean the environment. They remove carbon dioxide from the air, and poisons from the soil. They control erosion and clean water. They can protect their own domain (soil), often changing it to their own specifications. They react to changes in their environment to preserve their existence. They make their own food. And they leave a long lasting, un-technical record of their existence (tree rings). So just how intelligent are we?
Plus trees outlive us by many years. The short-lived trees often reach between 100 and 150 years. Not so much greater an age than us, but definitely longer. The longest-lived trees often outlast us by hundreds or even thousands of years. If you check out the link just given, note Prometheus, the Bristlecone Pine. Prometheus lived for 5,000 years, faithfully recording the Earth’s history annually. What did we do? We cut it down.
Now granted, after Prometheus was cut down, other Bristlecone Pines were saved for the sake of the seniority they hold. Yet you can, hopefully, understand why I doubt our ability to deal with anything alien. Before we deal with outer space, we need to sharpen our learning curve here at home.
INTELLIGENCE IN TREES 5
References
Goldenburg, E. “n.d.” Last modified 2011, October 08, 5:12:44 PM) Eldan Goldenburg’s lab notebook, notes about my work and other peoples’.
Blog@Case. “n.d” Retrievd May 2 , 2009 from http://blog.case.edu/exg39/2006/06/01/plant_intelligence
Hightshoe, G. (1988). Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines for Urban and Rural America, A Planting Design Manual for Environmental Designers (pp. 88). Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY: New York.
Prometheus (tree), (last modified 2012, October 09, at 23:18) Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_%28tree%29
Trewavas, A. (2003). Aspects of Plant Intelligence. Annals of Botany 92. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4243628/?report=classic
We had over twenty inches of snow a little over a week ago. Yesterday I was out collecting greens to make a wreath and the snow was nearly completely melted. Underneath the pine I clipped I found this moss, bright green and spongy. You can see a small clump of ice still on the ground. In botany we are concentrating on vascular plants and, in particular, dicots and monocots, but these tiny little plants are beginning to intrigue me.
Moss underfoot
Then while walking the road I saw these two tree trunks. I believe the trees are popple, but they are so different from the normal greyish-cream color.
Popple trunks on a damp November day.
Virginia Bluebell
One of the most beautiful May blooming flowers is Mertensia virginica or Viginia Bluebells. The pink buds elongate into clear blue tubular flowers that hang amid oversize ovate to round shaped leaves. The leaves often grow to fist size or larger. They are a wildflower native to this area, but according to DNR a threatened species since a 1999 survey.
Luckily, because they are so lovely, many nurseries carry Virginia Bluebells, so gardeners can purchase plants. Besides blue, a white and a pink variety are known. According to many horticulturists, the plants are a necessary addition for every garden. After growing them, I agree, but they can need maintenance.
They are part of the Boraginaceae, a plant family known for its glaucous, or hairy, leaves and stems. However, Virginia Bluebells are hairless. Their wide, fragile leaves show they are shade-loving plants. A few hours of early morning light or late afternoon light is fine, or just filtered shade.
Mertensia also need moist, humus, slightly acid soil. If they like their location, they readily spread and reseed themselves, gradually forming a colony of plants. Once in place, leave them alone as they do not like transplanting. They spread and seed readily, and most likely to right where you don’t particularly want them. The first time I planted them, they died in the middle of the summer. I thought I would have to replace them, but like daffodils, Virginia Bluebells are ephemeral and disappear before summer is over. If you watch, after the foliage yellows but just before the plant dies, you will find little seedpods. Spread the seeds in a spot you would like them to grow.
To prevent digging them up after they die back you need to mark where they grew in your garden. To cover the empty space left by their early departure, grow them near plants that will fill the space as they grow, like Hosta or ferns. Annuals can also be interplant among the bluebells while they are growing.
Here is what I find interesting about Virginia Bluebells. I could not find one single legend, piece of lore or historical anecdote about them, not even the name Native Americans had for them. They are not used for food, medicine, or dye, and are not poisonous. Although I found one reference the Cherokee might have used them in herbal medicine, I found no corroborative accounts. So here is a plant loved and grown solely for its fleeting beauty.
Amelanchier laevis
Also known as the shadblow, the serviceberry are the first trees to bloom in spring, usually along with forsythia. Unlike the forsythia, they are native. The name serviceberry has two possible derivation legends. One is a corruption of ‘sarvisberry,’ a name the Romans gave to the sorbus, or European mountain ash. Early American settlers noticed the Amelanchier’s fruit resembled the berries of the sarvisberry. The other comes from folklore. Early settlers saw the blossoming of serviceberry as the proper time to inter bodies held during the winter, or because travel was too difficult during winter to attend funeral services, so a memorial service was held when the serviceberry bloomed. The name shadblow comes from its bloom time concurring with the annual migration of shad in eastern rivers.
In June, the serviceberries produce red berries that ripen to deep blue, which gives the Amelanchier another common name, juneberry. Settlers prized the fruit for making jam, but because they are easily bruised and keep poorly, they have never made it into the food production industry. To collect berries from the wild you have to beat the Robins, Cedar Waxwings, and other birds and many mammals to them, not an easy task, so few of us have tasted juneberry jam. If you come across ripe wild serviceberry fruits, try them, for they are delicious, with a hint of pear flavor.
Serviceberries are members of the rose family, and if you look closely at the flower, you will see a disheveled resemblance to wild roses. The branches hold their five-petaledl white flowers in disordered groups and even the petals might not all match in length. About six species grow in Michigan, but these plants hybridize very easily, so species identification can be next to impossible.
Because they are an understory tree, or trees that live beneath the shade of taller trees, you can expect serviceberries to be small, usually less than twenty feet. There are also serviceberries that grow as small shrubs. Most serviceberries are hard to find under cultivation, perhaps because some tend to sucker and spread, particularly in the shrub group like the roundleaf serviceberry, A. sanguinea.
The Amelanchier grandiflora is a hybrid and grown as a specimen tree sometimes called the apple serviceberry. This hybrid is better behaved than its wild cousins, less prone to suckering and produces larger flowers.
Amelanchier are very tolerant and adaptable to many growing conditions. Their natural habitat is partial shade, but many grow in full sun. They can tolerate dry soil and drought once established. They are not prone to breaking limbs by strong winds and storms. Because of their rose relationship, they might get fire blight disease, but this is usually due to over fertilizing.
Amelanchier are hardy, small trees. With their early spring bloom, summer fruit, and great fall color, they provide multiple seasons of interest and make a perfect tree for small gardens or yards.
Most open fields in this area and many other parts of the United States look as if touched by Midas as goldenrod blooms in late summer-early autumn. Numerous species of goldenrod are found in Michigan, and even more in North America. Perhaps because of this local abundance, many gardeners don’t consider this plant garden worthy. It is true that most species are lanky and rampant, and invade places readily.
In Europe, there are not as many species, and when first imported into England from the Middle East, it was an expensive medicinal herb. Its Latin name of Solidago means to make whole, or heal. Solidago was believed to cure kidney ailments, and a compress relieved the pain of fresh wounds and insect stings. Early herbals list a long litany of ailments goldenrod could cure, including calming the nerves. It also had a sweet taste used to hide more unpalatable medicines. Today, medical research has not proved goldenrod capable of curing anything except maybe blah spirits when someone looks at its cheery plumes of tiny yellow flowers.
Goldenrod still has some uses. Weavers use the flower heads for a natural dye. It provides varying tones of yellow depending on how the dye is made. Its dried flower heads provide winter bouquets, keeping their yellow color in a much softer tone. The only other notable use of goldenrod was in 1948, when Texas tried to develop it as an agricultural crop for an ingredient in goldenrod gum and candies. They didn’t succeed.
For many years goldenrod suffered an undeserved reputation for causing hay fever. Insects pollinate goldenrod, so its pollen is large and sticky to make it easier to coat the insect body for pollinating the next flower. This makes the pollen heavy and more likely to drop to the ground than become air-borne.
European gardeners think of goldenrod as an important garden plant and have developed many cultivars and hybrids. These have been exported back to the United States and are now commonly available in nurseries. The hybrids have been dwarfed, and the coarse stems and foliage somewhat refined to produce better garden plants. ‘Golden Thumb,’ also known as ‘Tom Thumb,’ is about twelve inches tall. Other cultivars that grow about twenty-four inches are ‘Baby Gold,’ ‘Golden Baby,’ and ‘Golden Gates.’
I still like mine best in the surrounding fields.
Bracken Fern
Imagine a time when dinosaurs had mysteriously disappeared, and only little rat-like mammals ruled the planet. Then imagine these small animals scurrying around under bracken fern. The same bracken fern that line our lightly shaded forest floors and edge our fields. Maybe their green fronds are what make our landscape seem so pristine and primeval. Bracken fern are one of the most common global-wide plants known, one species growing in the Northern hemisphere, another in the Southern hemisphere.
You can’t miss bracken fern. It has two fern-like fronds emerging from an upright single, frond-topped rigid stalk. When newly emerged, the fronds are soft and pliant. As they age, they toughen making a walk in shorts through a colony of bracken an unpleasant, scratchy experience. This large fern grows knee-high or taller, and is most often found in partial shade to sunny, dry locations. Matter of fact, you won’t find it in waterlogged soils or heavily shaded areas where you expect to find ferns.
Bracken is a pioneer plant. It can grow on many types of soils, and the soil’s acidity or alkalinity doesn’t seem to matter. Wind-born spores allow it to quickly inhabit newly disturbed soils. It will be one of the first to start growing after a fire has swept through an area. Its dried fronds cover the ground in fall. This dried material helps fuel incipient fires and insure bracken’s survival by burning away competition while its rhizome root enables it to survive the same fire. This rhizome also forms the stalk, which is not the hollow ‘stem’ of most herbaceous perennials plants.
During bracken’s long survival it has evolved methods to ensure its continued existence. These methods do not make it a garden friendly plant. It secretes chemicals into the soil that inhibit the growth of neighboring plants. Chemicals in its leaves kill or inhibit the growth of insects. The plant invades crop fields, competing for the soil’s nutrients and moisture. It can poison cows and horses grazing on its fronds. Research has shown eating bracken can produce tumors in animals; the only plant known to have this capability.
Resistant to many herbicides, the only reliable way to eradicate bracken from an area is to repeatedly cut the above ground growth. This weakens the rhizome and eventually kills it.
An important crop used to thatch roofs and fuel a quick fire in Medieval Europe, today bracken is a human food crop. The emerging tightly curled fronds, or fiddleheads, are considered a delicacy raw, cooked, salted or pickled. It has been used as an ingredient of beer, the ground rhizome dried and ground for flour, and it is still used in parts of the world as an herbal remedy. Yes, it is still eaten despite the carcinogenic results of tests on lab animals and ties to leukemia and cancers of various digestive organs in humans.
To its credit, with it’s poisonous traits, bracken may become the source for new insecticides.
Another benefit come from the bracken. Their rhizomes extract phosphorus and transmute it into a type more readily available to plants, so the presence of bracken can indicate a nutrient rich soil. The fronds are sensitive to acid rain and act as an indicator of air pollution.
Long ago someone thought this upright, triangular arrangement of fronds made this fern look like an eagle. Bracken’s botanical name Pteridium aquilinum reflects this, aquilinum meaning ‘eagle-like.’ The genus name ‘Pteridium,’ derives from the Greek word for fern, and bracken comes down from Old English for any fern, but the word applied in particular to this fern. Its survival is more certain than that of its namesake.
Rhobin's Garden 