Notes from the past 10 days

I was away last week for the bloomlist, but a few things have accumulated that I wanted to mention.

1. On July 4th, we took a picture of a "weed" in The Woods that Mary had identified a few years ago as Virginia Stickseed (Hackelia Virginiana). I wasn't sure this one above was the same plant because I only saw single flowers at the ends of short branches. It seems these branchings develop with age into longer branches of small flowers, as shown in GoBotany's picture below right.

Mary suggested that the spots on the leaves are powdery mildew, which a Wiki entry describes this way:

. . . one of the easier plant diseases to identify, as its symptoms are quite distinctive. Infected plants display white powdery spots on the leaves and stems. The lower leaves are the most affected, but the mildew can appear on any above-ground part of the plant. As the disease progresses, the spots get larger and denser as large numbers of asexual spores.

In any case, we didn't see any of this plant at all on Sunday the 14th, so maybe Teatown is pulling it.

2. I tried to unfold the contorted, seemingly diseased Yellow Loosestrife inflorescences that I mentioned in the July 4th post — see the picture — and found accumulations of cotton-like puffs pulling the leaves in towards the center of the plant. I can't identify the bugs, but according to Illinois Wildflowers, the ones that like to feast on this plant are the Sawfly, a Weevil, and the Poplar Vagabond Gall and the Polyphagous Foxglove aphids. Maybe someone can carry this investigation further . . .


3.  At Open Gate day on Sunday, we noticed a few other blooms, a couple of which might have been open on the 11th.  A single Purple Loosestrife showed up in the middle of the lake on the right side of the bridge walking onto the Island. There was False Nettle (Boehmeria cylindrica) on the edge of the lake just before the Mountain Laurel section and very possibly the Bartonia (Bartonia virginica) in the same area was starting to bloom — those florets are really small and hard to see if open. The same Sweetflag (Acorus calamus) seemed to be still in bloom in the little swamp, and in The Woods there was a small patch of Wild Leeks (Allium tricoccum) in amongst the May-apples outside the gatehouse.