This week's bloomlist for Wildflower Island is at the end of the post, and Bonnie's pictures
can be found HERE. Peterson names are used for consistency wherever possible, and comments
and clarifications are welcome in the comments section.
Revised a bit below in the discussion of the Cutgrass.
Down the path through The Woods to the gatehouse a tall Common Burdock (Arctium minus), more beautiful the closer you look at it. The Illinois Wildflower webpage says it's a "low-growing rosette of basal leaves during the first year" that becomes 3–6 feet tall the second year. That's where we start with this plant. The pink part of the flower is a mass of disk florets, and unlike daisies and other composites, there aren't any ray florets. White stiles with bifurcated tips protrude from the florets, and the spiny green bulges beneath all that are actually bracts. Their tips are all hooked, which Bonnie was able to catch in the enlarged photo.
Also in The Woods today was the first Tall Bellflower(Campanula americana) we've seen in a long time, if ever. (I've never seen one actually, but I haven't been at this as long as some of the others guides.) It was left of the path just as you enter The Woods from the upper parking lot.
What's neat about this is again the style, which bends downward and away from the flower head ("S-shaped in open flowers," according to Missouri). The stigma has 3 lobes at the tip. Missouri has excellent close-up shots of this plant, including a "vegetative rosette" at the base of the plant (see right), which I unfortunately didn't know to look for today.The taxonomy seems a little unsettled. Wiki says that USDA and some others think the correct name for this is Campanulastrum americanum, but the last paragraph of the Illinois Wildflowers description indicates two separate species.
The unidentified grass at the Bird Blind for the past couple of weeks (below) is mixed in with Rice Cutgrass (Leersia oryzoides), whose whose leaves are really scratchy and you'd never want to walk through a patch of these unprotected.
You can just about make out the scratchy edges of Cutgrass leaves in the blown-up part of Bonnie's picture above. I don't think the unidentified grass is really "in bloom" yet, as there aren't any white stigmas emerging from the florets, but it's good to keep an eye on it.In Illinois's picture on the right, you can see a hairy node on the stem and some more of that serration on the edge of the leaf.
We just noticed that Peterson lists two kinds of Purple Loosestrife, Lythrum salicaria and L. virgatum. Ours looks like the former, because all the plants we could get close to today were downy and had sessile leaves wide at the base. Virgatum is smooth, and the leaves are narrower at the base. Yet another thing to look for when you think this is getting easier.
Many of the tiny-flowered plants have now started to bloom, like Clearweed, Dodder, and Halberd-leaved Tearthumb.
And speaking of tiny flowers, there's a few remaining blooms on the Bedstraw at no. 13, which I believe is Rough Bedstraw (Galium asprellum). Earlier this month we thought we had Fragrant Bedstraw in that spot because the plant felt smooth to the touch. The stem and edges of the leaves of the Rough Bedstraw are scratchy, as in the close-up of Bonnie's picture below. But not many flowers today.
Delightful on the Island today were some new American Bur-reeds, which we thought were done for the season. I don't remember them popping up a second time after an initial flowering period of several weeks. Maybe it has more to do with the water level in the lake than the temperature or humidity in the air.Duckweed (genus Lemna) in veritable carpets today. Its nutritional merits described so well at this link.
And saving the best for last, we loved that the Plumleaf Azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum) hung in there for us after all its relations decided it was time to get on with things for the year.
___________________________________________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment