White Snakeroot blossoms September 9, 2008
Walking the shady paths in our wild garden is a very different experience now than it was last spring. Gone are many of the ephemerals such as spring beauties, trillium, and Dutchman’s britches, and although we can still find the leaves of the bellwort, hepatica, and lady slipper, they are overwhelmed by the rampant growth of Virginia creeper, bedstraw and a myriad of weeds.
Virginia creeper, or woodbine, often becomes a standout at this time of the year, as its leaves usually turn a bright pink in the shade, while those in the sun can become a brilliant scarlet. It is a woody vine that will carpet the ground but seems more at home climbing a tree with its forked tendrils tipped with small adhesive pads. Its flowers are clustered and inconspicuous, and mature into small hard purplish-black berries that are an important winter food for birds, but contain oxalic acid that is poisonous to humans and other mammals. Oxalate crystals are also present in the sap, and can cause a skin rash on unwary passers-by. The five leaflets that make up the large leaves of the creeper have toothed margins that make it easy to distinguish from poison ivy that has three leaflets with smooth edges.
Bedstraw is an annual whose bristly leaves are arranged in whorls containing 6 to 8 leaves around square stems. Its stems are weak but prolific and form mats across the tops of any nearby plants. Spines at the base of leaves allow bedstraw to cling to objects including your hands should you try to pull it. There are about 60 species of bedstraw in North America, some of which were brought to this country by early settlers who dried it and used it for a bedding material for themselves and their cattle. Its tiny four-petaled flowers are usually white but may be yellow or purple: otherwise, the various species are quite similar. Another plant that puts on quite a show in early September is the white snakeroot, more properly called a throughwort. Its heart-shaped, sharply toothed leaves can recognize this two-to-three foot plant on long, slender leaf stalks, and its many small white flowers. Throughwort has flat clusters of blossoms atop each stem made up of tiny simple flowers are only about 1/8 of an inch wide and very fuzzy looking.
Of all the world's flowering plants, the three families with the most species are the orchid, grass, and composite groups. The composite family is probably most familiar and includes the throughwort, as well as all sunflowers, goldenrods, asters, thistles, and hundreds more. The unique thing about all these plants is that they have miniaturized and simplified each of their flowers, and then crowded a number on their ends next to one another so that they look like just one blossom. Moreover, in that blossom you are usually seeing two kinds of flowers – disks and rays. Disk flowers are found in the center and are usually very tiny, thin, vertical, often hairy, and tightly packed, while the ray flowers surround them and typically have only one long, narrow, arched petal. Some composite flowers have heads composed of only ray flowers, as in dandelion. Others have heads made up of only disk flowers, as in throughworts, thistles, and burdock. Still others have heads composed of both disk and ray flowers, with disk flowers in the center while enlarged ray flowers function as petals around the edge. Species in this group include sunflowers, daisies and asters.
When I looked carefully beneath the overgrowth, I was able to discover a number of different kinds of fruit. Many have been gobbled up by mice or hungry deer or whatever, but the colors of those that remain made them stand out against all the green. The largest was the bright yellow mayapple, a berry about the size of a wild plum. This plant is quite poisonous although Native Americans have used it sparingly in their medicines for centuries, but when the fruit is fully ripe it loses its poisons, has a fragrant odor, and makes a delicious jam.
Nearby I found a thick stalk with a cluster of bright orange berries that marks the site of a Jack-in-the-pulpit plant, and arching over it the wilted stalks that are the remains of Solomon’s seals. These still have pairs of blue berries hanging at each node, in contrast to the racemes of bright red fruits that hang from the ends of the Solomon’s plume. Blue cohosh is also displaying a few blue berries that the wildlife has so far missed. Finally, I found one stalk of white berries on short red stems that are distinctive of the baneberry. These are commonly called “doll’s eyes” but only those of us old enough to have had dolls whose closeable eyes were round orbs affixed inside their heads will understand that name.
I was dismayed to see so many invasive weeds in the wild garden – common and giant ragweed, all sorts of burs, various unwelcome grasses – but our early summer rains were instrumental in propagating them in unprecedented numbers and we will be spending many hours from now until next spring’s show trying to eliminate them. Anyone who tells you that wild gardens are less work than other types has not experienced the enthusiasm with which all sorts of plants grow in ours. Still, watching the progression of flowers through the season is well worth the effort involved, and providing a good home for those more rare species is a great joy.