Tag: Ozark wildflowers

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Finding Wildflowers

This is the busiest time of summer with putting food by for the winter and planting the fall garden as summer plants are ready to remove. Hiking the hills is not often on the schedule which leaves me finding wildflowers in different places.

finding wildflowers gave me this new bur marigold
Gardens attract lots of wild plants better known as weeds. Some are immediately pulled. Others are allowed to grow just to see what they are. This bur marigold turned out to be a pretty wildflower.

In the Garden

Wild plants want to grow and gardens are ideal spots. Gardens have open, rich soil. Water arrives often. Competition is minimal as vegetables get harvested regularly.

My garden hosts a variety of wild plants such as chickweed, dead nettle, dock, English plantain, wayside speedwell, two morning glories, evening primrose, chicory, bulbous buttercup and daisy fleabane. There are others and some occasional visitors such as pokeweed.

A friend asked me about a plant in her garden with lovely orange flowers. It reminds me of a marigold, but is one of the bur marigolds. There are several, but most have tiny rays people often call petals. I have pictures and will identify it later.

floating primrose flower
When finding wildflowers, the searcher needs to be on the lookout all the time. This floating primrose grows around the end of a lake put in near a house. Probably ducks or geese stopped on the small lake and dropped off the seeds. I spotted it by looking down after taking a picture of a pink rose mallow flower.

Other Places

Finding wildflowers is mostly a matter of watching for them. I love driving with no one following me as I can go slowly and look over the plants along the roads. Wild sunflowers are blooming now and I’m looking for new ones.

Across from my friend’s house is a large pond. Her ducks moved over to it. Around it are several clumps of pink rose mallow.

I’m sure these clumps were planted there. However rose mallow, the white ones, grow wild in several places. There are wild pink ones down toward where the witch hazel I visited in the spring, but that takes a morning to go to.

The planted pink rose mallows will do as examples of a color variant. So I traipsed across the road. The mallow wasn’t the only wildflower there.

The Yerba de Tajo was one I’d found at ShawneeMac Lakes. The yellow one was new. I very much doubt it was planted there. That adds floating primrose to my Dent County Flora.

Most of my produce I’m saving is stuffed into my freezer now along with the extra roosters. Okra and one more package of chopped peppers will finish packing the freezers.

Once the fall garden is planted, maybe I can go back to hiking the hills finding wildflowers.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Sweet Elderberry

Walking along the road the last few days, a sweet fragrance drifts by or hangs in the air. There are several sources including persimmon trees and prairie roses, but the scent of sweet elderberry is the strongest.

Elderberry plants could almost be classed as shrubs, at least the older ones. They are perennials. Unless the road crew comes by, the stems overwinter and sprout new leaves in the spring along with new canes that shoot up around them.

Hard to Miss

Even out of range of the sweet elderberry perfume, an elderberry in bloom is difficult to miss. The canes are up to six feet tall with huge umbels of waxy white flowers. Large compound leaves hanging on long petioles jut off from the canes.

The plants seem to prefer open areas near wet areas. Roadsides and edges of pastures are prime places to look for them.

sweet elderberry flowers
This elderberry grows behind the mailbox. It makes trips to get the mail a sweet experience while the flowers are open. Later the berries will grow and ripen, perfect for a few snacks, although the ripe berries don’t seem to have much flavor.

The New Miracle Plant

People seem to like think eating one special thing will cure all that ails them. Sweet elderberry is a recent target.

The berries are small, barely a quarter inch across and haven’t much flavor in my opinion. But these same berries are now being farmed, gathered from wild plants, juiced and sold for high prices as miracle plants.

Perhaps ingesting this juice will help some people. The true benefactors of this new interest are the pollinators, provided the fields aren’t sprayed.

Eating a sensible diet and getting plenty of exercise is a better way to better health. Of course, that means giving up most caffeine, alcohol, sugar and white flour which is difficult. A side benefit is losing weight and feeling better.

Place to Start

In Missouri there are plenty of Conservation Areas with walking trails. Park the wheels, put on a hat and go walking. Right now, you can follow the sweet elderberry scent along some of those trails.

Meet other Ozark plants in Exploring the Ozark Hills.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Purple Milkweed Blooming

Missouri is home to a wide variety of milkweeds that spread their blooms over the warm months. The purple milkweed blooming along the roads and in the edges of the woods is the first of the milkweed parade.

No Milkweeds Means No Monarchs

This is what the Missouri Conservation Department keeps saying. And it is true as milkweeds are the only plants their caterpillars feed on.

Those milkweeds are fewer in number every year as the places where they grow are plowed under, sprayed and mowed. They have no modern economic value, so they are destroyed with little thought for the consequences.

butterflies love purple milkweed blooming
Butterfly gardens, especially those with milkweeds are popular for monarch butterflies. Purple milkweed, Asclepias purpurescens, is a good choice for semi shade. It is a lovely plant and very popular with butterflies, wasps, bumblebees. clearwing hawkmoths and more.

Valuable Milkweeds

Although the big push to grow milkweeds is for the monarchs, there are other reasons too. An easy dozen kinds of insects visit the flowers.

Purple milkweed blooming is a magnet. Frittilary butterflies were tromping around drinking nectar. Dodging their feet were wasps, bumblebees and bees. Another visitor is the clearwing hawkmoth that hovers like an hummingbird.

Flower or crab spiders ambush prey on the flowers. Various beetles move in. The plants attract aphids and milkweed bugs.

Perennials

Because milkweeds are perennials, they are great for erosion control. Some are very showy like the popular butterfly weed. Others need lots of space like the common milkweed that spreads into a patch. Most like lots of sun.

A huge patch of purple milkweed blooming is gorgeous. The clouds of orange, brown, yellow, white, purple, black and more butterflies shifting between the upright umbels add to the beauty.

cover for "Missouri's Milkweeds, Milkvines and Pipevines" by Dr. Richard E. Rintz
A guidebook and more to the milkweeds, milkvines and pipevines known to grow in Missouri.

Growing Places

I see purple milkweed blooming in places with some shade and moisture. The common milkweed does well in road ditches, sometimes reaching six feet fall or more. Butterfly weed likes it drier and sunnier. It is rarely over two feet tall. Water gardens or the edges of ponds and lakes is favored by pink swamp milkweed.

Green, whorled and spider milkweeds are easy to grow too. They like dry and sunny places.

Butterfly gardens need milkweeds.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Searching for Witch Hazel

A few wildflowers, international travelers like wayside speedwell and dead nettle, bloom even in January thaw. But I’m searching for witch-hazel, a native bush that blooms in February.

Hard to Find

Witch-hazel used to be common in gravelly stream beds. Now it is hard to find. Unfortunately for it, people want the inner bark to make herbal tinctures.

Although it is possible to buy seedlings and grow this plant, many herb diggers go searching for witch-hazel in the wild. As they have no real investment in the plant or property, they strip the plant. Some plants survive. Some don’t.

Herb Diggers

Many native plants are similarly attacked. Ginseng, golden seal, bloodroot are a few.

I met someone who dug golden seal. This person had never seen it bloom as he dug the plant up before it could reproduce.

Other herb diggers strip flowers from plants like elderberries and wild plums. These plants are not difficult to cultivate and seedlings are available from state nurseries every year for very little money.

searching for witch hazel
In Dent County, MO, the witch hazel blooms in February down in creek bottoms. At least it does if the herb diggers haven’t found it. A friend knew of this large patch so we went searching for witch hazel, hoping it was still in bloom. It was still blooming as were the many black alder bushes.

Recovery

When we moved to this place in the Ozarks, there was very little golden seal or bloodroot or echinaceae. We did our best to keep the herb diggers away.

Now I go back in a ravine to find a field of bloodroot in bloom. Another hill has a wide strip of golden seal which is scattered in other places too.

Very few people are invited to see the lady’s slippers blooming in other places. This plant, too, is popular for people to dig up and move to personal gardens where it soon dies.

Lucky Year

I mentioned searching for witch-hazel to a friend as I need pictures to include in my Dent County Flora. She happens to know where a patch of it grows. Another friend has some planted near his house.

Pictures of the plant in the wild are preferable so my friend and I will go visiting that patch. But, if I need to get a better plant picture, I may visit my other friend’s plants as they won’t be tucked into a wild community making the plants hard to see.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Buttercup Parade

One task for mid winter is to sort through and back up the plant pictures taken over the year. There weren’t a lot of them last year for many reasons. Still, I’ve come across a buttercup parade.

What is a buttercup parade? After all, a buttercup is a buttercup. Except there are several of them that grow around the place.

Early buttercups lead the buttercup parade
I found a number of these small buttercups growing along my Ozark road. These plants are hairy, leaves, stems and under the sepals. The petals are long and separate.

Wildflower Series

There are a number of wildflower parades around the area. One is the purple ironweed. For people driving by, these are only tall plants topped with purple flower heads.

When I go walking out to the fields where the ironweeds bloom, there is a succession of different ones. Usually the Arkansas blooms first followed by the Purple. Then the tall ironweed takes over arging with the Western. Last is the Missouri. All this runs from July to September.

Another series is the various white snakeroot, wild quiine, common boneset and false boneset. Summer is taken up by the yellow sunflowers. And the blue and purple asters run their series in the late summer into fall.

Dent County Flora

These series don’t matter to most people. Those few who drive by looking at the wildflowers see only the colors.

The series do make a difference to me as I keep nibbling away at the list of plants growing in Dent County. I must first notice the plants are different. Then I take a series of pictures on each plant and flower, marking them so I can come back to get pictures of the seeds or fruits.

Hardest of all is poring over the plant identification books trying to identify each of the plants. This brings me back to the buttercup parade.

buttercup parade in the garden
Bulbous buttercups showed up in my garden one year. They are pretty, bloom a long time and so they stayed. As with other garden wildflowers, they seed prolifically. I now pick out one or two to grow into their lovely mounds and pull the rest.

Which Is Which?

As far as I know now, there are four buttercups growing around me. They are the Early, Harvey’s, Hispid and Bulbous. I have pictures of all four. Now I get to double check the identifications in “Flora of Missouri” and www.missouriplants.com and put them into the Dent County Reds (Yellows and Orange) book.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Finding Culver’s Root

Finding Culver’s Root was a challenge. This wasn’t because the plant was hidden away somewhere or growing in some special place.

The plant was growing right there along the road. It was even in the same general location where I had seen it several years ago.

Memory versus Reality

I remembered Culver’s Root as being tall and robust. The flower column was several inches tall lined with white flowers. It caught the eye.

The guide book “Missouri Wildflowers” reports the plant can be six feet tall. Maybe my memory wasn’t really at fault.

This year the Culver’s Root plants are much smaller and thinner. Perhaps the recent dry weather and late spring frosts affected them.

Waiting

Finding Culver’s Root was only the first step. The whorled leaves and flower stalk marked these few plants as the ones I sought.

However, the flowers were still buds. That means checking the plants every couple of days until the flowers open.

Culver's Root flowers
Sometimes the flower spike on Culver’s Root stands straight up. The plants I found had interesting curves in theirs.

Photographer’s Problem

The Culver’s Root plants were beside the road. They were also near the top of a hill and over the edge. This is a steep hill dropping down into the creek bed.

Although I know the drop is only 30 feet or so, it looks much farther to me. I don’t want to slip on the gravel and go over. Heights bother me.

The Solution

The flowers started opening. As is true of many such flower stalks, the lower flowers open first. As these fade, the ones above them open until the top flowers open.

I sat down on the edge of the road. The plants were just within reach. I pulled a couple over, steadied them and took some pictures.

Now that finding Culver’s Root is off my list, I think I’ll tackle the native cactus. A friend spotted a plant so the waiting for it to bloom begins.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Wildflower Hiking

It’s that time of year again. The weather has warmed up. Wildflowers are blooming. It’s time to go wildflower hiking.

Mostly I stay around home as I have many interesting places to check out. Once a week I hike the trails at ShawneeMac Conservation Area. In spite of doing much the same wildflower hiking for nearly thirty years, I still find new plants and take time to admire old friends.

wildflower hiking find of Robin's Plantain
Robin’s plantain is one of the fleabanes. Daisy fleabane is the common one. What sets this one apart is the number of rays. When first spotted, this flower seems surrounded by a halo of pinkish to white fringe. As with other members of the Asteraceae or Aster family, little tube flowers are massed in the central disc. I find these about two foot tall plants scattered, usually in low areas such as ravine bottoms or, as this one is, in a river floodplain.

Some Recent Hikes

One recent hike was to check out a patch of lady’s slippers. They bloom in May. This spring has had several frosts which slowed things down a little. The patch I checked will bloom in about a week.

The Canada geese are enjoying ShawneeMac Lakes. There are so many water loving plants along the lake edges. This hike is often done wearing boots so I can wade in a little for better pictures of the pond weed and water shield among others.

One of my old friends was missing on my wildflower hike along the river. I used to find Confederate violets back in the sandy floodplain. This year I found Virginia bluebells Robin’s plantain, but none of these violets. The river has changed its course this year wiping out some of the banks and gravel bars, creating a few new ones.

Canada geese preening at ShawneeMac Lakes Conservation Area, Missouri
Going wildflower hiking doesn’t mean not looking at other things such as these Canada geese using a submerged tree as a resting spot, a place to clean, straighten and oil feathers. These birds and others find ShawneeMac Lakes Conservation Area in the Missouri Ozarks a nice place to visit or stay.

New Plans

Another change this year is in how many pictures I am taking. Last year I ended up with over 18 Gb of pictures. It takes hours and hours to work all of these up. Many of these flowers I’ve taken pictures of for years. This year I’m trying to not take so many of these concentrating on new ones or ones missing pictures or ones I’m not sure of my identification of.

Much as I enjoy going wildflower hiking, I have many other projects as well. Gardens, goats, chickens and others take up time too. And there is “Hopes, Dreams and Reality” to finalize and publish.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Spring Flowers Coming

Last year I spent most of the spring and summer collecting plant pictures. As spring flowers start opening this year, I am again going out with my camera.

Dent County Flora

There are so many plants growing wild in Dent County. I keep trying to track all of them down. Last year I added fifty plus new plants and completed nearly as many more.

Still, I’m only around four hundred plants completed out of nearly two thousand. I have a long way to go.

first of the spring flowers
These little wayside speedwell flowers greeted the New Year. That makes them the first of the wildflowers to bloom this year in the Ozarks.

Time Constraints

For several reasons last year, I abandoned nearly every writing project to work on the plants. I don’t plan to do that again this year. It’s tempting as the plants are straight forward to do.

First I spot a plant. Then I take pictures of the flower, the back of the flower, the leaf, the stem and the plant. For most plants I have to come back to get pictures of the fruit or seed pod which is when I have problems.

Finding Plants a Second Time

Once spring flowers start opening, all plants start growing. Even a week can make an area look very different.

The plant which was so obvious is now tucked under other plants. Its flowers are gone. Even if I mark the plant, I sometimes can’t find it again.

hoary bitter cress heralds spring flowers coming
Spring flowers are starting to bloom in the Ozarks. Most of the ones I’ve seen are not native although daffodils are international as are dead nettle and henbit. The yard has numerous little white flowers like these which are hoary bitter cress, another transplant from Europe.

Adding Plants

The pictures are transferred to my computer. The plants are identified. Pictures are selected and put on the Dent County Flora page. The plant is marked as completed.

That is how it is supposed to work. Sometimes the pictures aren’t good enough. Some plants are difficult for me to identify and I must seek help from guidebooks, the internet and iNaturalist. And there are those plants I don’t get all of the pictures for.

Spring Flowers Start Opening

Already I’ve missed one flower I needed. There are a few more I know how to find. I have a list of plants with missing pictures.

The hills are calling. So are my writing projects. So are the goats and garden. It will be a busy spring and summer.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Bad Weather News

Floods, tornadoes and such are definitely bad weather news. The pictures and stories about these are terrible.

In my corner of the Ozarks, these events are not happening. There is another, more silent disaster threatening.

Now, I am not a winter enthusiast. Snow is nice out the window from a warm room. Cold is to be avoided whenever possible.

That means our recent warm temperatures have felt nice. Walking and working outside without heavy coats on is great. Even in winter gardens need things done.

However, I would forgo this pleasure to stop the approaching ecological disaster.

Necessary Cold

Plants around here expect cold weather to last until March. They sit tight waiting for warm weather to announce the spring growing season. Warm weather like the last few weeks.

Greeting the New Year were wayside speedwell flowers spread across part of the yard. These bloom during any warm spell all winter.

Speedwell flowers not bad weather news
These Wayside Speedwell, Veronica polita, flowers may be small, but their summer sky look cheered up New Year’s Day this year. An international traveler, these are tough plants blooming when winter offers even a week of warm weather.

The daffodils and iris have started to grow over a month early. Both can take a lot of cold, but not common February temperatures.

Slippery elm trees are almost in bloom as are several maples, a month early. Flowers don’t survive really cold temperatures.

Many of the usual spring plants around the yard such as plantains, shepherd’s purse and white avens are looking like spring is coming soon. That does not bode well for the many spring ephemerals such as bloodroot and trillium.

Many plants are annuals. If they sprout now and get killed by cold before seeding, many will not come up again.

Trees with frozen flowers produce no fruit. Two of the last three years have seen few pawpaws for this reason.

Floods and tornadoes affect people as well as plants so these get bad weather news coverage. But the silent disaster of warm winter temperatures for weeks is bad too.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Dent County Flora Books

I started taking wildflower pictures when I got my first digital camera. That was when I wrote Nature Notes for the Kaleidoscope, a local ad paper. These first morphed into “Exploring the Ozark Hills” and now are the basis for my Dent County Flora books.

Plants are interesting subjects to photograph. The best part is that they don’t disappear while I am setting my camera up. I can also get up close to most of them. (Water plants, stinging nettles etc. are given space.)

If you haven’t looked at plants much, you should. They come in a wide range of sizes, colors, scents and uses.

Plants are usually some shade of green. Indian Pipe, Pinesap and Coral Orchids aren’t green.

Wildflowers range from less than an eighth of an inch across to six inches around here. Some don’t have petals. Flowering dogwoods have white bracts (special leaves) with yellow green flowers in the center.

Dent County Flora books photograph of nodding spurge flower
Notice my finger tip compared to this flower. Many flowers are very small and difficult to photograph. There are two flowers in this picture. The white, four petal one is the male producing pollen. Below it is the green female with pistil sticking out. This plant is the Nodding Spurge, Euphorbia nutans, and will be in Dent County Whites.

Wanting to know what these plants were named, I needed several pictures of each. The flower, the back of the flower, the leaf, under the leaf, the stem, the fruit or seedpod and the plant adds up into a lot of photographs. And more than one of each thing is a good idea.

Every year I took more photographs and stored them. The stash got bigger and bigger, filling a 16GB key, then a second one. I hate having them sit unused.

An ulterior motive was an excuse to go hiking. This would add even more photographs to my stash.

A second motive was a challenge. How many kinds of plants could I find and identify? This had to be in my county as the goats keep me close to home.

Enter the Dent County Flora books. My list of plants found in Dent County has some 2000 plants on it. One book will not work. So there are the Dent County Blues, the Dent County Reds, the Dent County Whites, the Dent County Greens etc.

Will I ever find them all? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s enjoyable looking for the plants, getting the pictures and creating the pages of my Dent County Flora books.

I have assembled some pages from the Dent County Blues into a pdf found here.