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August 1997
Early wildflowers, so lovely in the winter-bare forests, promise spring
is coming. The late-blooming
wildflowers are also beautiful and
they provide nectar for late-emerging butterflies, moths, and other insects.
The insects attracted to the
blossoms provide food for spiders. When
left standing after the seeds form, they are a banquet for birds as summer rolls
into autumn. In the first snowfalls
each year, I enjoy watching goldfinches tearing the seeds from the seed heads of
asters and goldenrod. The weight of
the birds causes the long stalks to bob up and down.
It is a humorous sight, no matter the seriousness of the search for food.
Some late wildflowers, such as asters, must wait to bloom because they
are dependent on daylight for development.
We often think the more sun the better, but asters bloom later in the
season just because they must have shorter days for their flower buds to form,
such as 14 hours of daylight, and no more.
This is well after the summer solstice in June.
Once the buds have formed, the decreasing amount of sunlight causes the
buds to bloom. I always marvel at
these colorful flowers in September and October, when my gardens are giving up
the ghost.
Susan Hayward, Steward of the Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary in Lewiston, is a
local expert on wildflowers. Through
volunteers like Susan, the Stanton Bird Club, owners of the Sanctuary, offers
schools and the public educational programs on such topics as wildflowers.
I asked Susan about her love
of wildflowers. A fascination with
tiny details is the very small door though which she enters a world of wonder.
To identify wildflowers, to distinguish among
the varieties of a particular species, can often only be accomplished
through a lens. Imagine the challenges of identification when, for example, in
Androscoggin County there occur 17 varieties of asters and
15 varieties of goldenrod. The attentiveness necessary to identification
develops into a personal relationship with the plants.
You come to recognize them as you would recognize a friend.
All flowers have one purpose: to
produce seed to continue the species. Each
species, however, accomplishes this in a unique way.
To succeed, species adapted to different conditions, and so found their
niche in life. Ragweed and
goldenrod illustrate these different adaptations.
Understanding how they produce seed has increased my appreciation of the
beauty of the goldenrod, because I know now that it does not cause late summer
allergies. Only about 2
percent of the pollen in the air is goldenrod.
Most of the pollen present in the air at that time of year is ragweed.
Ragweed is wind-pollinated, so its pollen is dry and light.
Since insects play no role in ragweed pollination, its flowers aren’t
bright or showy. Goldenrod pollen is carried by insects from flower to flower. The blossoms are brightly colored to attract insects, and the
pollen is sticky so it will stay on the insects.
Many of the wildflowers here in Maine were brought by European settlers
who cultivated them for food or medicinal purposes, such as yarrow, mullein and
Queen Anne’s lace. They escaped
from the colonial gardens into the wild. An
exception to this is evening primrose, a North American native which found its
way to Europe. Black-eyed
Susan was originally an American midwestern plant which has spread eastward and
is now common in Maine. It is quite
likely that black-eyed Susan seeds came east from the midwest in hay bales, or
perhaps caught in the cloven hooves of cattle.
Human history is entwined in the natural history of plants.
Late-blooming wildflowers in particular make wonderful dried flower
bouquets. I may cut a few stalks to
use indoors in this decorative fashion, but most of the wildflowers and the
garden flowers I leave standing for my “winter garden.”
The texture of the stalks, dried leaves and seed heads add interest to
the winter landscape. Birds eat the
seeds and are fun to watch. The
caps of snow which stick to the plants have a poetry of their own.
Dr. Larry Nadeau, on the Board of Directors of the Stanton Bird Club,
once suggested that I let the edges of my yard go “wild” by not mowing.
In a few years, mallow, fox glove, celandine, hawkweed, jewelweed,
evening primrose, and milkweed
have volunteered from seed carried in by the wind or by birds.
The mixture of wild and cultivated plants gives character to the yard,
and increases the attractions for butterflies, moths, bees and birds.
There is a sequel to the phoebe episode in my June column. A few days after we discovered four young phoebes, they disappeared from the nest. A conversation with the very observant girl next door revealed that they became prey to a neighborhood cat. It must have also killed one of the adult pair, because for several days following the disappearance of the young, only one phoebe was calling in the morning. On the fourth day, I listened for a half hour as the phoebe sat in the maple tree next to the garage, calling and calling. There was no answer, and I haven’t heard a phoebe call since.
By Nancy Coverstone (ncstone@umext.maine.edu), University of Maine Extension Educator in Androscoggin and Sagadahoc Counties
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