Letting Go

Upon returning from my trip up north, what I notice most about my native prairie habitat isn't what's here but what's gone.  When I left, there were a lot of hangers-on... plants that were well past their peak bloom, but there were still a few left.  But, despite hot weather all week, a lot of the hangers on have let go, and in their place there are only seed-heads.  Among those things that are now totally absent:

• purple coneflower (peak bloom early July, but some of those things hang on forever)
• wild bergamot (peak bloom also late June'early July, but a few lasted)
• mountain mint
• blazing stars (even the rough ones are pretty much gone)
• ironweed
• yellow coneflower
• cup plant

So now, the prairie is dominated mainly by grasses and DYCs, especially goldenrod.  A lot of goldenrod this time of year!  A few NE asters (DPCs?) add a little purple color to the mostly yellow hues.

Here's one exception... I just this weekend noticed this boneset in bloom.  Either it really just started (Several Eupatorium species do bloom late!) or I missed it for all the other things going on! 

Another Dreary Day

(ironweed seeds, bergamot seeds, m. mint seeds, compass plant leaves)
The prairie is getting browner and seedier. (Though not drier. It is, again, raining and in the 40's! Yea!) I, like a little kid, love the seeds of milkweed, pictured above. It's not the flying and spreading that draws me to them, but rather how they look like fish scales when the pod has popped open but the seeds haven't yet escaped.
Despite the less-than-hospitable weather, there are still some creepy-crawlies about. In addition to these beetles, I also found a sluggish but moving grasshopper, and a very active jumping spider.

Minty Fresh (and Ribbit II)

This Nature Nerd is quite stressed out. With working full time, grad school stuff, feverishly preserving enough food to last the winter and avoid waste at this time of bounty, plus all those other little details that happen in life -- not to mention trying to do some enjoyable stuff once in a while... Stress. Actually, the most relaxing times of the day are when I am teaching, which is when I take most of the photos for, and do all of the drawings in, this blog. Students were quite excited to find this large bullfrog -- several times larger than yesterday's featured frog -- and deemed him very photo-worthy. So here he is!

Blooms of the Past Few Days

The flowers of most grasses are tiny and barely merit notice from most people, but they are beautiful. They hang down like dangly earrings, and swing precariously in the wind. It looks as though, if you touched them, they would fall to the ground, but they don't. They are wind pollinated, thus their subtlety and movement. Here, the deep purple flowers of prairie cordgrass -- a spartina species with razors for leaves -- hang from its future seedheads.


Cattails have formed the corn dog-esque seed bombs for which they are commonly named.
This Michigan lily is a rare and beautiful prairie plant. Its head bent over as though it were studying the ground, these flowers literally spill their sexual parts out for the world to see.
Close-up of a blazing star, with a little beetle peeking out.
Mountain mint began to flower, its irregularly shaped blooms small and subtle. They have purple dots and are really quite lovely if you notice them on your way past. Which is a big "if".
OK, I know this is a totally blurry picture, but I was excited to have this monarch on my butterflyweed. I am hoping she laid eggs and I will get a caterpillar. (And then I can possibly find the chrysalis!)

Also blooming: marsh plantain and meadowsweet, a native spirea that has quite lovely pale pink flowers (but I still don't like spirea).