Tag: Ozark wildflowers

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New Dent County Flora Entries

Many things happened last year, so I didn’t go out hiking and photographing many new plants. That doesn’t mean the are no new Dent County Flora entries.

New Dent County Flora Entry Hairy Goldenrod
This goldenrod wasn’t really a new plant. I had seen it over the years. The problem with goldenrods is identifying them. I think I finally have this one as Hairy Goldenrod.

Beginning an Entry

Of course, I begin a new entry by taking photographs. This sounds easy, but can be very frustrating.

Plants don’t run off, however they do blow in the wind, get eaten by insects and other animals or stepped on. Then there are the ones I find once and, somehow, can never find again.

Each plant needs several pictures. First is one of the plant. Some plants are surrounded by other plants.

Second are pictures of the front and sides of the flowers, the leaves and the stems. These can often be done all at once.

The last picture is of the fruit or seedpod. Sometimes I have to go back several times before this is ready to photograph.

Swamp Milkweed
Swamp Milkweed is a very showy plant and is available from nurseries and in seed catalogs. It does like plenty of moisture and lots of sunshine.

Which Plant Is It?

I can usually spot new plants, ones I haven’t seen before. I may not know the name of these plants, but I know they are new Dent County Flora entries.

My book shelf has many plant books on it. Some are popular plant guides put out by the Missouri Department of Conservation. Others are botanical works like Yatskievych’s three volume “Flora of Missouri”. Another favorite place to look is missouriplants.com.

I put pictures on iNaturalist. Sometimes someone there can identify this new plant.

Making an Entry Page

Usually the flower is the main photograph on the page. I crop and resize it to fir properly. The side of the flower, leaf, stem and fruit or seedpod form a column down one side.

Under the flower picture is the plant picture. Between them is a short comment about the plant like its habitat or key identification hints.

One thing I don’t do is tell people exactly where I find a plant, if it is rare or something people want to dig up. Some plants are so commonly found, it doesn’t matter as all a person has to do is slow down and look.

When Will the Flora get Done?

I don’t know if it ever will. In a way, I would like to finish it. In a way, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is getting out and looking for all of these interesting plants.

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Gravel County Road

My Missouri county seems to draw a lot of people from other places. Most of them are city people who don’t really want to live in the country so the county is busy paving their gravel county road system.

Me? I like living on a gravel county road. Like anything else, it has advantages and disadvantages.

gravel county road in winter
County gravel roads are the highways for people and animals in rural areas. They are easy to walk on. Reptiles love how they heat up. Deer love to browse they reach along the roadsides.

Disadvantages of a Gravel County Road

Dust, lots of dust is kicked up by passing vehicles and the wind. All that dust drifts away to settle elsewhere – like in the house. It coats everything in a brown layer.

Every rain storm seems to leave pot holes behind. Occasionally the road grader comes by to fill them in, but never address the reason the pot hole appeared in the first place. This is usually a ditch choked with branches, dirt and rocks or sloped so the water doesn’t run off.

armadillo along gravel county road
Ozark county roads have sides with ditches to hold water and sides covered with leaves and other plant pieces. This armadillo was spotted checking for grubs and earthworms buried under the leaves.

Loose gravel can be a problem too. It rolls under the tires letting them slide. Or the road develops washboards – a series of small mounds across the road – that challenge the shock absorbers which are another casualty of a gravel county road.

Gravel wears out tires. The best tires are all terrain or have mud and snow tread. The good ones are costly. Cheap tires with city tread can be deadly.

Mourning Cloak butterfly sunning on gravel county road
Mourning Cloak butterflies hide over the winter and often come out in the first warm days in February. This one is sunning on the road. There are no flowers for nectar, but it sips water and minerals from the roadsides and near streams.

Advantages of a Gravel County Road

My road has springs all along it and is no candidate for paving. That’s just fine with me. It discourages lots of idle traffic.

And that is the biggest reason for choosing to live on such a road. When the weather is bad, there is no traffic, only country quiet. Even many nice days have little or no traffic.

I can walk a mile or more up or down the road enjoying the wildflowers, spotting the wildlife that also use the road. And have no one drive by.

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Winter Mullein Rosettes

On a winter walk the side of the road is green with chicory, dandelion, dock and more stubbornly hugging the dirt. More noticeable are the winter mullein rosettes.

A number of plants called biennials spend a year growing, overwinter and bloom the next year. Mullein and thistles are some of them.

thistle winter rosette
Thistle rosettes are easy to know. The prickly leaves mark this one as a bull thistle.

Thistles

Bull thistle rosettes invaded the yards around the house a number of years ago. These are a biennial so the rosette appears first and the flowers the next year. We left a couple to see what the plants would be like.

Great shafts lined with thorns grew up reaching five or six feet tall. These had many branches and each branch was tipped with a pink hairy flower head.

These flowers are very popular. Hummingbirds drink nectar. Butterflies walk around on them sipping. Later a variety of birds including goldfinches, cardinals and sparrows eat the seeds.

Moth Mullein flowers
Moth mullein is a lovely wild flower. I let several grow and flower in my garden as well as in the yard. They do tend to come up in the hundreds the next year.

Winter Mullein Rosettes

Two mulleins invaded the front yard years ago. One is moth mullein with spikes of white flowers with purple hairy stamens. These usually get two feet tall, but can make three.

winter mullein rosette
Nothing else looks like a winter mullein rosette. The leaves can be darker green, but they are always fuzzy.

Common mullein rosettes have big, furry leaves looking like a bird nest on the ground. Unlike thistles that hug the ground, even under where the lawn mower reaches, mullein leaves stand up.

In the summer, tall stalks grow up five or six feet. Usually there is a single one with others appearing later as branches. Other times the stalks become elaborate candelabra. Yellow flowers open randomly along the stalks.

Herbal Tea

Nothing seems to be fond of the furry mullein leaves. However, they do make a nice herb tea. It has a slightly dusty, mild taste. A single leaf is good for two batches of tea for me. I usually toss in some mint leaves or calendula flowers with it.

The impressive flower spikes and wild tea are good reasons to let the mulleins grow.

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Winter Seeds

Wildflowers are gone. Most trees are bare. Is there anything to see on a nature walk? Perhaps winter seeds can provide a guessing game.

Elephant Foot Seeds
Elephant foot sends up flower stalks almost two feet. The pink flowers are interesting to look at. Then winter comes. The stalks turn dry and brown, but are recognizable.

What Is This?

A bare stalk sticks up with a crown of pointy seeds on the top. There are no leaves or flowers to give a clue to which flowers produced these seeds.

Thinking back, I know what this is. There were big leaves and pink flowers with petals like fingers in little boats on top of stems.

This is elephant’s foot in winter. There are lots of these stalks so there might be lots of plants next year.

Buckbrush or coral berry fruits
Buckbrush spreads underground. It’s flowers are small bells. Then the red berries show up. These are supposed to be good wild bird fruits. They are not considered edible by people, just something colorful to see in early winter.

Looking For Clues to Winter Seeds

One good clue is remembering what flowers I saw in this place last summer. This narrows the list of possibles a lot as spring ephemerals and plants not found here are eliminated.

Leaves might be a clue. Sometimes a few green ones are left. Usually there are some dead, brown ones. It takes care to uncurl a dry leaf.

The shape of the seed head is another clue. Monarda flowers leave behind a ball with pockets where the seeds were. These are called beebalm and horsemint commonly.

Fruit is another clue. The persimmon trees often have a few persimmons still hanging on. These are shriveled and dry, but definitely persimmons.

Buckbrush has long stems lined with clusters of red berries. These dry and shrivel and turn dark after a time. I read that lots of birds like them, but I think they are a last choice on the menu.

Tall Goldenrod seed head
Tall goldenrod seed heads look like little, fuzzy hats perched on top of brown stems.

Why Bother?

Cold winter walks can be more about exercise than looking at plants. The faster the walk, the sooner the return to warmth.

Overwintering bees and caterpillars or pupae value these winter seeds and stalks. They hide inside them or under those fallen leaves to survive the cold. That’s fine for them.

For me, I like having an idea where to look for various wildflowers next year. Those winter seeds give me clues.

There is much to look at during an Ozark winter. Some of it is in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

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Remembering Wild Flowers

Killing frost is looming over the Ozarks. Already plants are preparing for winter. I am looking through my pictures remembering wild flowers I saw over the summer.

This has been a tough year so I didn’t get to go walking as much as I would like. Most of the flowers I saw were familiar ones. Some were not new, but were incomplete for my Dent County Flora.

remembering wild flowers like Jacob's Ladder
Jacob’s Ladder is an early spring ephemeral. It likes moist, shady spots. Some years it is numerous. This year I only came across this one plant.

Big Reason

I joined the Missouri Native Plant Society years ago. They take part in the citizen science listings on iNaturalist (www.inaturalist.org). Now and again I post pictures of flowers on the site.

Identification of the flowers can be difficult. Since this site has many people checking over the pictures and identifying the flowers, I find it helpful. There are those flowers the site has trouble with namely asters, goldenrods and sunflowers. I do too.

Asclepias tuberosa or Butterfly Weed
Roadsides light up in the Ozarks when the butterfly weed starts blooming. It ranges in color from yellow to red, even bicolor, but is usually bright orange. It is a milkweed and loved by many insects including butterflies. You can find out lots more in “Missouri’s Milkweeds, Milkvines and Pipevines” by Dr. Richard Rintz.

Another Reason

Since I do work on the Dent County Flora from time to time, I need to have my wild flower pictures. Although many are still on my computer, backup is important.

There have been years when my picture stash for one year has been over a gigabyte. (One year was over 3!) I don’t want that much sitting on my computer. They are copied onto flash drives.

Royal Catchfly flowers
The brilliant red of Royal Catchfly flowers along the road do catch the eye. The long, green calyxes have hairs with sticky goo on them so small insects like flies get stuck on them.

Personal Reason

I enjoy remembering wild flowers I’ve seen and photographed over the summer. As winter cold moves in, I can look back to bask in the summer sun.

Sorting through the pictures and preparing them to post on iNaturalist, I identify the old friends and try to name the new ones. There are many I didn’t take pictures of because I have so many of them already. Now I wish I had as one or two more wouldn’t hurt.

And I find the ones that complete sets for my Flora. Over the winter these will fill out more pages and help me make out a list to search for in the spring.

There is more about the wild flowers of the Ozarks in Exploring the Ozark Hills.

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Goldenrods Are Blooming

In spite of the drought many wildflowers are trying to put on a show along the roads here in the Ozarks. Goldenrods are blooming with their bright yellow making them hard to miss.

Downy Goldenrods are blooming
I stopped because of another goldenrod and found this Downy goldenrod right beside it. The reflexed bits under the flower heads make this one easy to identify as the only other one like this is very hairy. The rays on these flower heads are very long and showy.

How Many?

It’s easy to say goldenrod and give the impression there is only one. Driving by it’s also easy to think these yellow blurs are all the same.

They are not. Four goldenrods are blooming now and several have finished. As I try to get something done on my Dent County Flora, I’m taking pictures of some.

The picture taking is the easy part. Identifying the different ones is the hard part. Several look a lot alike. Luckily the four in bloom now are easier.

Hairy Goldenrods are blooming
Most goldenrods have big, branched flower tips. This is one Hairy Goldenrod, doesn’t. It is a single stalk with clumps of flower heads from the leaf nodes. The stalk is stiff. The rays are small and there are no recurved bits under the flower heads.

One Patch Missing

For years I would take pictures of the Tall goldenrod blooming just down the road. The road grader scraped that section away and none grew there this year. There are some along the road to town, but I miss the little patch. Orange day lilies are taking over that spot.

However, three others are still found along the road on the walk to the river. I do have several books to help me identify them. Unfortunately, I don’t really understand the descriptions with all the botanical terms.

My main way is through drawings and pictures, both in the books and at missouriplants.com. The flowerhead arrangements are different on the different kinds. The leaves are too.

Rough Goldenrods are blooming
Rough Goldenrods are smaller plants. they like to grow on roadside banks and nod over them. In a good year I will see these drooping out along a long stretch of roadside. They like lots of sun, although their bright color rivals it.

Other Roadside Attractions

Yes, the goldenrods are blooming. Their yellow is so attractive. They are not the only wild flowers along the road.

This is aster season. New England purple and gold, spreading blue, heath white are some of the colors. There are several blue lavender asters and several white heath asters.

White snakeroot, yellow brown-eyed Susans, sweet everlasting and thistles are wrapping up their time. The trees may not be in fall colors yet, but the roadsides are.

More about wild flowers can be found in my book Exploring the Ozark Hills.

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Glade Exploring

Glades are special places often with plants found no where else. There is a small one near my home, so I went glade exploring.

What Is a Glade?

The ones I have visited have lots of rocks, thin soil and lots of dryness and heat. They are sloped. Chiggers love them as numerous lizards often live there, the preferred host for the minute biters. Before going glad exploring, be sure to spray to discourage these little attackers.

My small one is up on the side of a hill. It would seem unusual in that it is not far from the bottom of a small ravine. Yet it is definitely very dry much of the time with no trees other than some invading red cedars – the enemy of a glade.

Missouri Coneflower found when glade exploring
There are so many yellow aster type flowers. Although Missouri Coneflower reminds you of Purple Coneflower, it is in a different group, Rudebekia. They are still lovely to see especially when there are several dozen blooming.

What Did I Find?

No real rain has fallen in several weeks so all the plants were wilted to dried up, even the grass. Still, a few plants were still surviving. I was mostly interested in a yellow coneflower and the blazing star blooming among the rocks.

What I hope to find is an Adder’s Tongue, a type of fern. This grows in glades, but, being a fern, likes moisture. When the weather is dry, it withers away.

This fern puts up a single leaf, not a frond. It is usually seen in spring and fall when rain is supposed to fall.

Blazing Star Liatris
Three of these small Liatris flowers grow in my area. This one is officially called Blazing Star, although the others are often called that too. What sets this flower apart is the calyx below the tube flowers with the fat and pointed scales plus lots of hairs on the edges. To me this flower is purple, but it is often listed under pink in the wildflower books.

Another Fern

I have found another wet weather fern. It’s called a Resurrection Fern and grows on a large rock outcrop. Whenever it rains during warm weather, this fern unrolls its fronds.

This gives me hope the Adder’s tongue will reappear in this small glade once fall rains decide to come and visit.

Will it rain soon? Actually almost an inch fell the other day and the temperatures dropped into the eighties.

The rain is still on a cloud to cloud basis. This is when a thunderstorm cloud floats by and drops rain in one small area, but leaves nearby areas dry.

That small rain means I will go glade exploring to see if the small area has perked up as much as my pasture.

Find out more about many Ozark plants in Exploring the Ozark Hills.

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Intricate Flowers

In science texts flowers are drawn as lilies. These are simple flowers, easy to diagram. In reality many plants have intricate flowers.

Milkweeds are one of these flowers. European botanists started studying these in the 1500s. Yet the flower wasn’t completely diagramed out and understood until the 1960s.

Passion Flowers

Most passion flowers are tropical. Missouri hosts two of them. One is the large one commonly called Maypop. This four inch across flower is purple and white, hard to miss on its vine draping across bushes.

The second is the yellow passion flower. You have to take your time and look for this one as it is only a half inch across and a pale yellow green. This is a delicate vine that twines around other plants or fence wire in shady, moist areas.

Intricate flowers green passion flowers
These interesting green passion flowers are easy to spot once you recognize the leaves. The vines average four feet long. Later small, round berries hang down and turn purple when they ripen.

Intricate Flowers

A lily has a single set of petals called a corona. Passion flowers are different. They have an outer corolla made up of wavy filaments. Then is an inner short corolla sticking straight up. The little green passion flower has a third corolla of rolled petals.

In the center of the flower rises a single stalk. At the top three stamens branch off to hang down. The club ends open up to expose yellow pollen. Three pistils branch off opening sticky ends to gather pollen.

Maypops or Purple Passion flowers
Maypops or Purple Passion flowers can be grown in the garden. The fruit is edible. It is similar to a pomegranate in that the edible part is the flesh around the seeds inside the fruit.

Finding Intricate Flowers

Many of the wildflowers blooming over the spring and summer look like simple ones. Looks can be Deceiving.

Those dandelions, asters, daisies and sunflowers among others are really groups of flowers. Ray flowers form the petals. Disk flowers open to give off pollen and/or collect pollen to make seeds.

Aristolochia flowers have intricate shapes. Insect eating flowers form complex traps.

Dismissing flowers as simple bits of color is a mistake. Stop and take a closer look at them and discover some of the intricate flowers or even admire the simple ones which are more complex than the text diagrams make them seem.

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Honeybee Swarm Capture

“I heard this loud buzzing when I came out of the house. When I went to look, there were thousands of bees coming into the yard.” It was a honeybee swarm.

My companion was watching a special sight, one the local beekeeper who put up the bee trap has never seen. The mass of bees landed on the box and gradually disappeared into it.

Persimmon Trees

The bee trap was strapped onto a native female persimmon tree. We enjoy her fruit every fall. The goats go crazy for them.

Insects like honeybees go crazy for the flowers and this tree was in full bloom. This was probably why the swarm’s scouts knew about the tree and came to check for a good place to live around it.

honeybee swarm capture bee trap
A bee trap isn’t very large, only a couple of feet long, a foot high and half a foot wide. The bees must be very crowded inside, but they don’t seem to mind.

Bee Traps

The local beekeeper told us this is more of a bee lure than a trap. The scouts a honeybee swarm sends out are looking for a place with room inside and a roof to keep the rain out. A bee trap provides this plus foundation for a honeycomb.

These scouts found the bee trap, went back to the swarm and it came our way. In a couple of days the swarm has settled into their new home.

Bee Trap Door
A bee trap is a temporary home for a swarm. When the beekeeper moves the trap, the door is changed from the open to the small holes. The bees still get ventilation, but can’t get out until they get to their new hive home.

What Is a Honeybee Swarm?

When a hive gets too crowded, the bees raise a new queen. The new queen takes over. The old queen leaves with a crowd of bees to find a new place to live.

Bees can swarm for other reasons. When we first moved here, two hives were in the backyard. After the old beekeeper died, the hives were abandoned.

Parasites moved in. The bees moved out. We knew honeybees still lived out in the woods as they were regular visitors to the white clover in the lawn and the flowering vegetables in my garden.

The local beekeeper will move this honeybee swarm into a regular bee hive. The descendants of the old hives will again live as domestic bees.

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Really Big Garden Weeds

I’ve mentioned my weedy garden a few times lately. Perhaps you are picturing those pesky little seedling weeds needing only a bit of cultivating to end their careers. Picture instead some really big garden weeds.

Ozark Spring Plant Paradise

Usually the Ozarks enjoys spring for, at most, a week. Then temperatures and humidity soar into summer. That didn’t happen this spring.

Cool weather now in the seventies with frequent quarter to half inch rains are only now edging toward those summer temperatures. In the meantime the cool crops like turnips, cabbage and snow peas are looking luxuriant. Weeds love this too.

meet some really big weeds
Although lambs quarters and evening primrose are allowed to grow in my garden, they do tend to become a nuisance. These have invaded my asparagus patch and will end up as goat treats or compost. They did get really out of control this year.

Classes of Weeds

There are those pesky little seedling weeds. Then there is the chickweed beloved by baby chicks and others about ankle tall. Lambs quarters, daisy fleabane and oats are some of the really big garden weeds.

Another way of dividing weeds is into those that stay and those that definitely go. Many weeds have lovely flowers. I leave a few – note the word few – of these to bloom. All others leave as soon as I can get to them.

Weather Considerations

I will work out in the garden in a misty rain. It is annoying, but not enough of one to make me quit and head for cover

Serious sprinkles and downpours mean garden time is over. Lately I’ve taken several showers as I head for the house.

Moth Mullein is not one of the really big weeds
Moth mullein is one of the wildflowers I let grow in my garden. Others are: chicory, evening primrose, yellow wood sorrel, lambs quarters, blue and purple morning glories and chickweed. Although I enjoy having them there, they do tend to become a problem as they produce lots of seeds. That means many of the plants are pulled out as weeds with only selected plants allowed to grow and bloom.

Where Do Really Big Garden Weeds Go?

Since the grasses are busy making seeds, the compost pile is not a good option. Grasses and small weeds end up on a brush pile.

The really big garden weeds get pulled, trimmed, piled and carted off each afternoon. I pile them up in the goat hay trough shortly before letting the herd in for the night.

Goats are sloppy eaters so many stems end up on the floor. These will end up in the compost pile. The rest is savored by the herd.

There will be a lot of unhappy goats when the really big garden weeds are all pulled.