Prime Prairie

I'll admit it... There are times of the year when the prairie isn't the most aesthetically interesting ecosystem. But she is coming into her own now, and from June through October, the prairie will display staggering biodiversity.  A slowly but constantly changing cast of colorful characters will appear in the endless sea of waving grass.

Here is a partial (because I won't remember them all) list of what I saw blooming in the prairie today:

Shooting stars (still holding on!), golden Alexander, spiderwort, cream false indigo, wild indigo, wild roses (pictured below), lupine (pictured below below), wild hyacinth (pictured way below), wild geraniums, Canada anemone, daisies, fleabane, mustards -- yellow, white and garlic (I didn't say all the flowers were desirable), cow parsnip, bladder campion, hawkweed, irises, a patch of something bright red and far off the trail in a wetter area, no idea what it was... That's all I'm remembering at the moment.  I'm sure there was more, but I probably got the best ones. Even so... That's a lot!

It's Just Galling!

This is one of my favorite periodic occurrences because it is just so strange. The cedar trees which, for most of the year have unremarkable brown growths on their branches, suddenly look as though they're carrying bright orange, slimy pompoms. And right now, they look like their game got rained out, because the recent rain has bogged down the usual gelatinous koosh-ball appearance of them. They are cedar-apple rust galls, but these galls are a totally different animal than the goldenrod and oak galls about which I wrote in the fall. Actually, these galls aren't an animal at all. But they are still called a gall because they, like the insect galls, cause the plant itself to form growths of its own tissue. Technically, cedar-apple rust galls are a pest and bad, but I think they are fascinating. This orange phenophase is when the rust is sending out spores into the wind... where they land on an apple (or similar) tree and infect it. On these hosts, they cause bright orange leaf spots, and eventually, later in summer, they also bear spores, which in turn land on cedar trees and cause their branch growths. Quite a life cycle!

Also just starting to bloom:
cream indigo, and
bladder campion.

In sad (for Naomi) news... some of my carefully cultivated Jewelweeds have bitten the dust. This is through no fault of their own, or nature, or me... I have these neighbor kids. They are nice, curious, and sometimes mischievous children. They play outside a lot (of which I approve). They play in my yard more often than I'd approve of, especially on the day when one of them ate a poisonous jack in the pulpit berry because it "looked like red corn"... but that's another story for another day. Anyhow, we've had many chats about not stepping on plants. Well, yesterday, the area between our two houses was a lake from all the water, and on my side of the lake is where the jewelweeds grow among the daylilies. They were playing in the lake with boats or somesuch and needed to go on my side. The daylilies are quite large, the jewelweeds still small spindly things... so they very carefully stepped around all the daylilies. They were actually so proud of themselves they called me over. "Look, Ms. Naomi, we didn't step on any of the plants!" Well, OK... but these little ones were plants, too and you stepped all over them! I did show them; we'll see if it still happens again. Anyhow, I hope the remaining ones will spread a lot of seeds again, and eventually... those kids will grow up.

Coreopsis, campion and clover, oh my!

These coreopsises (which is an interesting word to make plural... coreopses?) are in full bloom, their bright yellow cheering up another grey day. They are another one of those flowers with color so pure it looks like you could just jump right in to a pool of it, and it's about my favorite color.

Rushes and sedges of many varieties are currently bearing seedheads. I can't even pretend I'm good at IDing them -- other than being able to categorize a plant as a rush, a sedge or a grass... using, of course, the old sing-song mnemonic that botany students everywhere learn: Sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses have asses [nodes] down low to the ground.

Note: I would love to be able to differentiate them accurately; I have a book but it isn't great. Any suggestions welcome!

Anyhow, here is a rush to represent them all.

Bladder campion (and also daisies) are lining roadsides everywhere. Despite their weediness and the fact that they aren't native, I quite like the bladder -- really an inflated, purple-veined calyx sac -- for which they are commonly named.

And this is the almost-blooming blanket flower that grows all over at school, though it is technically native to slightly more western prairie areas.

In the world of weeds (which sometimes seems to be the entire world), here are 4 that are in full bloom: orchard grass, yellow sweet clover, vetch, and red and white clovers intermingling together.