One of the most gorgeously colored trees around here, Acer saccharum is known also as "Hard maple" or "Rock maple" in addition to its well-known common name. While it is much sought-after as furniture wood, the Sugar Maple is the source of that sweetest of the sweet, oh-so-delicious treat to eat, maple syrup. Each tree yields between five and sixty gallons of sap per year, and it takes thirty-two gallons of Sugar Maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup or four-and-a-half pounds of maple sugar. My ten-year-old says, "I want a box of maple sugar on my birthday." Seriously, he does. Though he's been inspired by the song, "Wells Fargo Wagon," which our chorus is currently singing.
After a month's hiatus, here is my next entry: Carya glabra, the "Pignut," "Smoothbark Hickory," or "Broom Hickory." There are many of these along our street, and I'm pretty sure I've got the right hickory, as it's leaves are not aromatic when crushed ("Mockernut" or "White Hickory") and it doesn't have shaggy bark (Shagbark, "Scalybark," or "Shellbark" Hickory). It mostly has five leaflets, but I saw one or two twigs with seven leaflets. Its wood has been has been used historically to make brooms, wagon wheels and loom picker sticks, and is still used for tool handles and skis.
Will have to go back out (do I dare? Ah-choo, ah-choo!) and see if I can get a more recent picture of the lovely crop of Ambrosia artemisiifolia currently blooming. Part of the aster family.
The leaves of Fagopyrum esculentum are beautifully arrow-shaped and emerald green. I brought a stem with a flowering head in to my kitchen windowsill, and got to see one of the flowers begin to turn to that familiar triangular buckwheat hull.
Polygonum Lapathifolium is part of the Buckwheat family. Something interesting about this plant is that its stems are jointed, and reminded me of bamboo a bit, espcially with the long thin leaves that occur near the flowers. Other names for this plant include Pale, Water, or Dock-Leaf Smartweed.
This tiny jewel of a flower was the only one still open in the area (the boundary between the backyard and the woods that abut them), and I was so pleased to find it. Unfortunately, either my camera does not have a setting for extreme close-ups or I just haven't found it yet. I've actually come across Solanum dulcamara before now, but the flowers ha
d already borne fruit, which made it harder for me to recognize. (How many red-berried plants can there be within walking distance of my house? Answer: perhaps too many to identify.) Part of the potato family, this climbing, vine-like wildflower is also called Purple Nightshade, and its berries are, in the words of Newcomb's Wildflower Guide, "somewhat poisonous."
This big fella had me stumped, due to where I found it. Cirsium vulgare is generally found along roadsides, in fields, and in waste places. And this thistle was all by its lonesome at the side of one of the dampest areas of a wooded path. Must be Marsh or Swamp Thistle, thought I. No, those have smooth, not thorny stems. And this one was definitely thorny, as you can see by the "rigid, yellow-tipped spines on the flower bracts" (Dwelley, 347). An interesting aspect to this particular plant is that its leaves do not look fully developed. Perhaps the sparsity of sunlight made the plant conserve where it could (i.e., less developed leaves) while still allowing the flower to bloom and the plant to reproduce? Will have to check.
Here, at last, is O.'s find: Monotropa uniflora, or Corpse Plant, as it is also known. I might have missed this one, thinking is was a fungus instead of a plant, and, indeed it is a saphrophytic plant, feeding on decaying organic matter. The flower nods at first, then turns upright in fruit,
and eventually turns black. It also turns black when picked (which I read but also saw when O. originally brought his discovery home, but forgot to photograph). The stems are scaly, and the entire plant is waxy. Part of the Heath Family. If you can see what surrounds the Indian Pipe in the lower photo, you'll know why O. now sports a nice rash on his chin.
Calystegia (Convolvulus) sepium jumped out at me on a walk with my younger son and dog this afternoon. It was all alone in (what else?) a hedge (for which the Latin word is sepes) that borders a path in our wilderness-surrounded neighborhood. I lifted M. up to see this lovely pink flower, and the response I got was, "Mmm, pretty. Can we go home now?" Older son O. has been avidly searching on his own in the woods, and has an exciting find I'll share as soon as we get a good picture (camera was on the wrong setting when I sent him back into the woods to photograph it, darn it).
Verbascum thaspus is an interesting plant with much history in its past. Since the down on the leaves and stem burns readily when dry, it was used both as a torch in ancient times and for lamp wicks before cotton was introduced, hence the nickname, "Candlewick Plant." Its shape also suggests a tall candle, so several other nicknames for this species have some variation of light in the name, such as "Hedge Taper" and "Our Lady's Candle."
er complaints of the lungs. Concoctions made from various parts of the plant were said to relieve as diverse symptoms as diarrhea, hemorrhoids, colic, migraine, splinters, asthma, frost bite, bruises, toothache, cramps, convulsions, gout, possession by evil spirits, and gray hair, among other things. I actually used mullein oil (bought at Whole Foods) to treat an earache or two in my family years ago, but didn't know of this herb's reputation for healing other ailments at the time.
The stalk appears during the second year of the plant's growth. The leaves, as they go up the stalk, get smaller. This fact, along with the leaves' arrangement on the stalk, allows rain to be funneled down to the base of the plant. Another way mullein survives--it can self-pollinate in the absence of friendly insect visits.
