Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is a native holly that drops its leaves in the fall. That’s what enables them to survive in colder climates. If your winter landscape seems dark and dreary, you will want to plant some of these shrubs where you can see their profusion of colorful berries from the heated side of your home’s windows. One way I knew that my next-door neighbor was a gardener before I ever met him, was that he had a hedge of winterberry screening his house from the road.

I admire this hedge of winterberries every time I drive by it. These are 'Winter Red'.

Planting winterberries is a good way to feed the birds in winter without filling the feeder. Many kinds of songbirds eat the berries, though my neighbor’s hedge doesn’t appear to be touched. Some say that the berries have to be frozen several times before the birds like them. If that is true, then it is not surprising that the berries haven’t been eaten, as we have had a surprisingly mild winter so far.

These berries are an important food source for many kinds of birds

Mike used to have cages around his winterberries to permit them to attain some size.

Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. “It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!”

Queen of the Prairie in the Secret Garden, early July

By the end of July, Queen of the Prairie is just about done blooming.

Queen of the Prairie provides pollen for bees, beetles, and flies, according to Plants For a Future.

Recently some road work has caused me to take a detour on my way to town, and gave me the opportunity to see several stands of Queen of the Prairie growing alongside the road. It seems to be native to my immediate area, which makes me feel that it was a good choice for the Secret Garden, where I try to plant local natives exclusively. While I have acid clay, the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program says it is native to fens, which are “calcium-rich peat-producing wetlands.” What this tells us is that Queen of the Prairie hasn’t read the reference books, so if you are in Zones 3-7 and have a sunny, moist area where it can send its rhizomes out without overwhelming other plants (or are willing to be vigilant), give it a try.

Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. “It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!”

I recently discovered trailing arbutus growing on our property

Found After Twenty Years

I follow the same route each time I go up, covering as many side trails as I can, instead of taking the most direct path straight up the hill. I love to go “exploring” when I know I won’t get lost, and you never know what you will find in the old familiar haunts. This past Thursday I discovered trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens), also known as Mayflower, growing on a side trail that I call the Witch Hazel Walk. How can it be, I ask myself, that I have lived here over twenty years and have never seen this plant?

William Cullina, author of The New England Wild Flower Society Guide to Growing and Propagating Wildflowers of the United States and Canada, states in his article Propagating and Transplanting Trailing Arbutus or Mayflower, “a patch 2 feet in diameter is at least a decade old.” The patch I found might have been two feet in length, but perhaps a foot wide, so this patch, small as it is, probably hasn’t been growing for as long as we’ve lived here. Also, the leaves are not that different from those of winterberry and partridge berry, both of which we have in abundance, so if I saw trailing arbutus when it was not in bloom, I might have mistaken it for one of the other two native plants.

A patch of trailing arbutus is rather unassuming.

How Did It Get Here?

How did the patch get started? It is possible seeds lay dormant for the many years the site was pasture, and then grew back into forest. The fruit of trailing arbutus is food for mice and other animals, and it is more likely that seed was brought here in that manner. However, according to the New York Floral Atlas, a qualified herbarium specimen hasn’t been submitted for my county. Officially, at least, it doesn’t exist here. I could find no mention of birds eating the fruits, but if they do, that would be the most reasonable explanation for how a patch got started here.

Trailing Arbutus Is All About Fragrance

What’s the big deal about trailing arbutus, anyway? The flowers are not that showy and the whole plant is rather easy to ignore, but those flowers have a marvelous fragrance, similar to jasmine. Cullina says the scent “hangs heavily in the air,” but I had to lie on my stomach and put my nose to the flower to catch the scent, and so did Fiona Dudley of Asheville Naturals, so I know it’s not just me. Perhaps you need to have a bigger patch, or perhaps the temperature must be warmer. For me, I got all the thrill I needed just finding it there.

The Trailing Arbutus

John Greenleaf Whittier
I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made
Against the bitter East their barricade,
And, guided by its sweet
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.

From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
Lifted their glad surprise,
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,
And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.

As, pausing, o’er the lonely flower I bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
Which yet find room,
Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day
And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.

For Wildflower Wednesday, I try to feature a native plant growing wild on our property. I took a walk on Monday to see what was blooming, and found only one plant blooming, a shrub which looked to me like a pussy willow. I looked through my books and discovered that’s exactly what it was: Salix discolor, the pussy willow. This surprised me a little bit, because I thought those decorative pussy willows sold everywhere in late winter were of European origin. According to William Cullina, author of Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines they are: “Most of the cut pussy willows sold by florists are European, especially florist’s willow (S. caprea), and gray florist’s willow (S. cinerea), or Asian, including the black willow (S. melanostachys), from Japan.” But S. discolor, which is native, is also called pussy willow, and has the familiar catkins as well.

The native pussy willow is dioecious, meaning the male and female catkins are on different plants. I found both types growing right next to each other on my walk. They were getting beyond the furry “pussy” stage.

This is the male, or pollen-bearing, pussy willow, looking rather sodden from the rain. You can see the familiar furry catkins in the background.

The silver-haired pussy willow catkins are really designed to trap sunlight. Like a miniature greenhouse, the catkin’s interior heats up well above the ambient air temperature, allowing it to grow in the cold of late winter.

These are the female catkins, found on a shrub close by the male one.

Flower Buds as Food

• Finches
• Grouse
• Cardinals

Pollen

• Sweat bees
• Adrenid bees

Leaves as Larvae Food

• Twin-Spotted Sphinx Moth (Smerinthus jamaicensis)
• New England Buck Moth (Hemileuca lucina)
• Frosted Dagger Moth (Acronicta hastulifera)
• Impressed Dagger Moth (Acronicta impressa)
• Red-Winged Sallow Moth (Xystopeplus rufago)
• False Sphinx Moth (Pheosia rimosa)
• Sigmoid Prominent Moth (Clostera albosigma)
• White Furcula (Furcula borealis)
• White Admiral (Limenitis arthemis)
• Western Admiral (L. weidemeyerii)
• Orange-Tip Admiral (L. lorquini)
• Green Comma (Polygonia faunus)
• Comma Tortoise Shell (Nymphalis vau-album)
• Mourning Cloak (N. antiopa)
• Aspen Dusky Wing (Erynnis icelus)

In addition, many small mammals browse the twigs in winter, and many birds take cover or nest in the branches.

On our land, the native pussy willow grows along the edges of our little brook in the places where it tends to overflow its banks and make a swamp area. It also grows on the bank of our pond.

I took that walk on Monday, and since then, we’ve had yet more rain, but also quite a bit of warmth. I bet there will be more native plants blooming soon. I know I had seen a trout lily in bud on my walk. This time of year, there are changes every day. What wildflowers are blooming in your garden?

Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. “It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!”

This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit Coles Creek State Park in Waddington, NY, which borders the St. Lawrence Seaway. This is almost as far north as you can get in New York State. Parts of St. Lawrence County are USDA Hardiness Zone 3b, but right along the St. Lawrence Seaway it’s “only” Zone 4b. Location is everything, and a large body of water does wonders to moderate the growing conditions. I was walking along the shoreline, marveling at the jewelweed I saw, not because it was a prime specimen–on the contrary, it looked rather beat up–but because it had no frost damage. Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis or I. pallida) collapses in a heap at the first whisper of frost, so I was pretty confident there had been no frost along the shoreline. This place is two hundred miles north of my garden, and I’ve already had a freeze, for pity’s sake.

That almost surreal climatological disjunct must be why I didn’t recognize this plant at first glance:

I came across this plant on the St. Lawrence Seaway shoreline. Photo taken with HTC Droid Incredible

Here's a closer view of my mystery plant. Photo taken with HTC Droid Incredible

No wonder it looked familiar, I grow it in my garden! But in my garden it doesn’t look so neat and compact. I suppose that could be because it’s trying to grow through and around some large-leaved rhubarb. And in my garden, it’s in one of the moistest spots I have, and here, it’s growing amongst the rocks. Oh, wait, those rocks are right along the shoreline. I bet the roots go right down through them. It’s all starting to make sense now.

According to my 1986 copy of National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers, soapwort got its name because you can create a lather from the crushed leaves. The Wikipedia article states that museums still use the soap derived from it to clean delicate fabrics. It is a perennial native to Europe, with fragrant flowers that range from white to a light pinkish purple.

Unfortunately, it is also considered a thug by anyone who grows it in a garden. I grew the double form, Saponaria officinalis ‘Rosea Plena’, which is supposed to be less invasive because it doesn’t produce seed. But Jigs and Jo Ann Gardner, writing in Gardens of Use & Delight report that “after trying unsuccessfully for several years to kill it (Roundup did not touch it), we accepted its presence and learned to chop out extra roots every spring.” Myself, I’m trying to remember if I saw it this year. Between the rhubarb and the lawn mower, it may have died out. I will have to check next spring. At any rate, you’ve been warned.

It was a lesson for me to see how a familiar plant in an unfamiliar location can look so very different. The European settlers brought soapwort with them for its practical uses. The St. Lawrence area began to be settled in the mid to late 1700′s, and I found myself wondering if this plant in front of me was the descendant of one of those brought over by an early settler. It is certainly a plant with a history.

Our intrepid author photo-botanizing with cell phone on the shores of the St. Lawrence River. Photo by Cadence Purdy

Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. “It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!”

At last.  Finally. Why chicory, Cichorium intybus, the blue flower of August roadsides, should have avoided our rural road for so long, is a mystery to me. So forlorn have I been made by its absence, when all neighbouring roads were bright with its sky-blue gaiety, that I have from time to time been tempted (mea culpa) to introduce it, always without success. ‘Introducing’ here equates with ‘transplanting’, something that the long thick taproot of chicory makes difficult. I should have tried seed, since the single plant now (September 14^th.)  flowering just to the east of our driveway must have come that way unless some kind neighbour, knowing of my longing and the deep taproot, moved a plant, perhaps while I was sleeping. It is unlikely that we shall be grinding up the root to make a coffee-substitute unless Mr. McGuinty introduces a ‘levy’ or a ‘debt repayment charge’ on coffee as a conservation measure, or blanching the leaves prior to putting them into a salad, as ‘Europeans’, who will eat anything (I quote, but I am not sure from whom), are said to do.

Chicory flowers are most often seen from a seat in a car

Wild, But Not Native

And so we can add chicory to a long list of roadside flowers that includes birdsfoot trefoil, nightshade, pink and white mallow, hawkweed, goatsbeard, daylily, Queen Anne’s Lace, St. John’s wort, ox-eye daisy, silvery cinquefoil, viper’s bugloss, and perennial sweet pea; an impressive list of beautiful flowers that may well have fuelled the ‘native plants’ enthusiasm that has swept across poets and stockbrokers with country places though, as it happens, not one of the plants in that above list is indigenous; every one was either introduced, arrived accidentally or is a garden escapee. Some of them would make good garden plants – if they didn’t grow so well along the roadside.

Why the Preference for Native Plants?

What is it that makes so many people announce an enthusiasm for ‘native’ plants, a preference for native plants over exotic alternatives as garden residents? Two reasons suggest themselves. The first is that native plants grow more strongly, are hardier and/or more beautiful. Is there any evidence to support these affirmations? Much depends on what is meant by ‘native.’ The flora of upper New York State is more likely than the flora of British Columbia to be successful in southern Ontario; plants that grow well on the acidic Canadian shield may languish on the alkaline soils of our Township, and even within your Township, your community, perhaps even on your street, there will be variations in soil conditions, snow cover, wind protection, rainfall, that will make some plants thrive and others fail whether or not they are ‘native.’ A high percentage of the plants we grow here are ‘native’ to somewhere, whether it be Canada, China, Japan or Turkey. Some succeed, some fail, but success or failure is not determined by the plants’ country of origin, but by whether the plants can adapt to the conditions that our garden can offer them (and, of course, we sometimes vary those conditions in order to try to make a plant grow). Yes, the sugar maple, Acer saccharum, grows well here, but so do A. triflorum from Manchuria and Korea, A. griseum and A. truncatum from China and A. maximowiczianum from Japan. A. circinatum, a small tree which turns marvellous shades of orange and crimson in the fall is from ‘Western North America’, and is horticulturally no more a native than the other maples listed.

Our Motives Are Seldom Unambiguous

There is a second possible explanation for gardeners choosing a ‘native’ plant when they could buy a more attractive ‘exotic’ where both have the same chances for success. It is that they think there is something patriotic, some sense of pride in country in doing so, even some economic benefit, as when we buy Canadian manufactured goods in preference to less expensive imports, hoping to cushion a local industry and save the jobs of workers, whereas when we buy a Sugar maple rather than a Paperbark maple, we are simply voting for more of the former and fewer of the latter, though it might be a matter of economic indifference to the nursery industry whether it produces one or the other. Is it possible that when we choose a ‘native’ plant another, less worthy motive is at work? Could an irrational fervour for ‘native’ be a tacit antipathy to its obverse – the alien, the exotic, the foreign? A recent book, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America, by Philip J. Pauly suggests that, for ‘America’, i.e., the U.S., at least, it might.

Pauly’s book is “skilled, authoritative, insightful, and original, a pioneering exploration of innovation in American horticulture and its relationship to the natural environment” (I quote from  Daniel J. Kevles review in the NYR). Pauly argues that horticultural improvement “has been as important as mechanical innovation in dramatically increasing the productivity and variety of American agriculture.” Much of this biological improvement has come about through the hybridization with, or introduction of, Old World plants. The introductions sometimes brought with them destructive pests, and both plants and pests were described as “aliens” or “foreign invaders”: when Japan agreed, in 1907, to limit the number of emigrants to the U.S., a field of Japanese cherries was planted two years later and Pauly comments, “a field of Japanese cherries in Washington was preferable to a settlement of Japanese working families in California.” In November 1918, an administrative order was issued prohibiting “the entry of most foreign nursery stock… the head of the US Forestry Association…called it the end of the ‘open door to plant immigrants’ and expressed the hope that ‘the treasonable activities of these enemy aliens will be curbed.’” Perhaps attitudes have changed, but our motives are seldom single, unambiguous. “Je m’étais trompé,” Proust wrote, with his habitual psychological precision, in Albertine disparue, “en croyant voir clair dans mon coeur.”

Weirdly wonderful bur cucumber fruit

Bur cucumber vine

Photo by urtica

You can see the tiny fruits

“These fascinating fruits go out with a bang, having an explosive dehiscence mechanism. Each fruit contains four seeds, which develop under increasing hydrostatic pressure. If birds or small mammals don’t interfere with the fruit before it fully ripens, the fruit will expel its seeds at a speed of 11.5 m/s!”

I’ve never seen that, either! Maybe I should start paying closer attention. What I do know is that after several freezes and thaws, the fleshy vegetation rots away, leaving an intriguing network of fibers reminiscent of a luffa:

The dried fruit is fascinating in its own right. Photo by monteregina

Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!

Joe-Pye weed grows along the seasonal brook at the edge of our property

The dusky mauve color complements the goldenrods also in bloom at this time

Three eupatoriums are fairly similar. I know my Joe-Pye weed is Eupatorium fistulosum because I cut one open and saw that it has hollow stems. The other two, E. purpureum and E. maculatum, both have solid pith, but E. maculatum has spots on the stems. According to William Cullina in Wildflowers: A Guide to Growing and Propagating Native Flowers of North America, “the names are used interchangeably in the trade, and there is some confusion about the identity of several selected cultivars. …[But] all make excellent garden plants.” However, the USDA says my Joe-Pye weed is actually Eupatoriadelphus fistulosus.

As you would expect from a native plant, the blossoms attract a variety of wildlife.

A bumblebee and a moth share the wealth on Joe-Pye blossom. Do you know the name of the butterfly?

Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!

The American Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) is a native shrub that grows in the ditches and hedgerows here. As you can see it has attractive white flowers.

American elderberry, Sambucus canadensis

Elder flower

We don’t eat the flowers. We just enjoy looking at them, because we are waiting for the berries.

Elderberries. Photo by me'nthedogs

Not to worry about the lack of sweetness, because we harvest these berries for pie:

Elderberry-Apple Pie

I discovered this in the 1974 edition of Farm Journal’s Country Cookbook, after my husband brought some fresh picked elderberries into the kitchen, and informed me they were used to make pie.

2 crusts pie pastry
2 cups elderberries from American elderberry (Sambucus canadensis)
1 1/2 cups tart apples — chopped and peeled
1 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons quick cooking tapioca
2 tablespoons butter

Wash and stem elderberries. Combine elderberries, apples, sugar, salt, and tapioca, crushing berries with back of the spoon. Spoon mixture into pastry-lined 9″ pie pan. Dot with butter and top with lattice crust. Bake at 400 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes, or until apples are tender and crust is golden.

Of course, the birds like the berries, too, so you have to beat them to the berries.

I’d be interested in hearing how you use the flowers or berries in cooking.

Update: Found a list of wildlife that appreciate the elderberry. Thanks to Gail for the term “faunal associations” which enabled me to find that page.

Photo of ripe elderberries by me’nthedogs. Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!

Lily Lake at Chenango Valley State Park

The cell phone camera is pretty good for a cell phone camera, but when it comes to small things that move in the slightest breeze, well, it’s a tough job for a cell phone camera (though I won’t rule out operator error). There is one plant I couldn’t identify and of course that is the one where the blossom came out blurry. If you can recognize this plant by its leaves, its overall habit, or its blurry flowers, please tell me what it is!

Overall habit of the mystery plant

These are the leaves. The flower stalk is visible emerging from the middle of the photo.

The flowers are pink. The one all the way on the right is sharpest.

Do You Know the Name of This Plant?

I have been through all my wild flower reference books, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s common, because I’ve leafed through my reference books many times and it doesn’t look familiar. I even tried calling the park office, but they’ve been busy every time. So I appeal to you, my readers, for help in identifying this plant.

Helen of Toronto Gardens correctly identified it as Desmodium glutinosum. Thank you, Helen! Now I can sleep at night.