Baptisia Musings

Baptisia australis

One of the most common and visible flowers on the spring and early summer Flint Hills prairie are the Baptisia sp, otherwise known as the wild indigos.  If you look at the picture of one of my hillsides at the bottom of this blog entry, taken just two days ago, you can get an idea how common they are.   I watch for them every year, heralds of spring on the prairie and my own personal seasonal time-clock for the onset of warmer temperatures.  I've noted the Blue Wild Indigo, Baptisia australis, as early as April 26 (in 2004) and as late as May 20 (2013) over the years.  This year, I saw my first on 5/10/2020.   As I've noted before, I'm not sure what all my "first sightings" mean in relationship to climate change. 

Baptisia bracteata

True indigos, from which indigo dye is derived, are a different genus (Indigofera tinctoria) and are not native to the prairie, but the Blue Wild Indigo is so named because it's sap turns purple on exposure to air.  Another very common false indigo is the Plains Wild Indigo, Baptisia bracteata, which is earlier to flower and lower to the ground than its blue cousin.  Where B. australis stands tall and stiffly resistant to the prairie winds, B. bracteata is seen hugging the ground, creamy and bright against the ground.

Baptisia var ProfessorRoush

My real Baptisia interest this year was in the color variations that I happen across on my prairie walks, and in particular, the return of this pretty pink Baptisia, which I first noticed in the same spot last year.  I marked the spot to see if it returned true to color this year and here it is again, pretty and pink on the prairie.  This year, I'm going to try to collect seeds from it and hope that I can grow them and propagate this color.  I doubt I can become rich off of introducing a pink Baptisia to the market, but B. australis var. ProfessorRoush doesn't sound half bad, does it?

Baptisia alba

Finding one unusual Baptisia, of course, initiated a quest for others.  This beautiful white Baptisia alba grows not far from the pink one in my backyard and I've also marked its location for seed collection.  There's just no substitute for pure white in the way it can stand out from the emerald green prairie, is there?

Unknown NOTBaptisia

I thought I'd hit the Baptisia jackpot with this pink and yellow flowering plant on a neighbor's acreage and I got all excited about its subtle shadings, but on a second look, I don't think this is a Baptisia.  A vetch, perhaps, or some other member of the Bean family, but there are so very many legumy-things on the prairie that I can't keep up.  Alas, I'll have to count on B. australis var ProfessorRoush to lend my name to gardening prosperity.  And I'll end here, wallowing in my delusions of Baptisia grandeur here in the Flint Hills on this blessed Memorial Day.  Stay healthy, everyone!

Nesting Sunday

Last Sunday, ProfessorRoush was really wanting to rest and read, but the outside weather was so temperate (55ºF) and sunny that I just couldn't make myself stay put indoors.  I also knew that if I stalled cleaning out the bluebird houses any longer, it would only lead to the task being critical later when the temperatures were 20ºF and a blizzard was forming.  If you're responsible for a trail, you can't just let it go.  The bluebird houses need occasional repair and removing the old nests decreases parasite and disease incidence.  And I needed a walk, so the Bluebird Trail was calling out to me from the brown prairie. "Come out, Come out.  I need your care."  Perhaps, ProfessorRoush was just, himself, nesting for winter.



I always gain a nice warm fuzzy feeling as I find all those nests where happy little bluebirds and various other species have raised a family under my roof(s).  When you are walking a trail of houses, you can easily tell the ones that hold bluebird nests because their nests are thin and haphazardly constructed, usually of soft prairie grass, as pictured in the top photo.  Other birds, usually wrens, sometimes nest in my boxes, and those nests are formed of coarser twigs like the one at the left.  They are also loaded much higher, sometimes stuffing the box to the top except for the opening entrance.   This year, of my 19 self-designed, NABS-approved nesting boxes scattered over the edges of 20 acres with another 80 acres around them, I counted 10 bluebird nests, 6 wren nests, and 3 empties.  The empties were all houses laying on the ground where the donkeys had rubbed them off the posts.  Donkeys seem to have something against random bird houses around their pastures. 

Walking the perimeter of my land is always educational as well.  I was surprised to notice this small nest within a dried up Babtisia australis (Blue Wild Indigo) floating around the pasture.  These prairie legumes bloom early in spring and normally grow perhaps 2.5 feet tall and round alone or in clumps over the prairie.  In the fall, they dry up, break off, and blow all over the prairie like tumbleweeds, clogging fences and flower beds and becoming perfect tinder for prairie fires.  I've never known that they might serve as shrub hosts for low nesting birds, but here is the proof, a deep little cup formed within what was once thick green foliage. 




You can see, in the closeup at left, the careful construction and perfect form of the nest.  It seems a little big for hummingbird, but whatever was here was a pretty small little guy/girl.  I would put odds on it being a Dickcissel nest, since that species is ubiquitous on the prairie and nests on the ground or in low prairie shrubs.  Whoever the architect was, I hope it was a safe home, because birds and the prairie are meant to be together.

Green Gold

News flash!  Stop the presses!  ProfessorRoush has won the gardener's lottery! 

Sunday, I noticed that my southern neighbor was out doing chores, so I walked down the road to greet him with idle chatter.  He was out removing the dried remnants of native Baptisia australis (Wild False Indigo) from his western fence line. Baptisia blow around like tumbleweeds out here on the prairie and then act to catch snow drifts and help pull down fences.  During a 20 minute conversation, that mainly consisted of cursing the damned Baptisia, another neighbor came driving up in the way of country folk, whose neighborhood meetings are often spontaneous roadside conclaves convened to discuss the weather and current state of the Kansas State Wildcats football team.

This latter neighbor, however, had an agenda.  She wanted to ask me if I'd like to be the beneficiary of weekly reoccurring five gallon tubs of purest manure from her horses.  Would I???  Quickly picking my jaw up off of the gravel, and putting aside any qualms about who I'd have to kill for her in trade for the manure, I accepted on the spot and without reservations, doing a little dance of joy in my soul.

I'd been wondering, in my treeless landscape, how to make up for the compost generated annually from the 50 or so bags of leaves that another friend had previously supplied.  That, now former, friend had listened too well to my advice about starting her own compost pile and, thusly realizing the value of what she had been giving away, had chosen to cut off my pre-compost supply. 

It seems, however, that what the Garden Gods taketh away, they giveth back, in plentiful greenish nodules of purest gold.  I finally stopped to take the photo above after I had already emptied half the tub around some rose plants and realized that I should stop to commemorate the occasion.  From this day forth, every Saturday will find me picking up another five gallon bin of odoriferous splendor, and spreading it to the hungry roses.  My garden is now a happy place, and destined to remain so until the first rainy Spring day when Mrs. ProfessorRoush opens the windows and learns what I've been up to.

June Native Wildflowers I

In yesterday's blog, I related that most of my yard is native prairie that I mow regularly, usually in portions on a every other week rotation.   This year, I'm trying to leave certain areas unmown, primarily so that I can enjoy the prairie forbs that pop up in those areas.  The flowers aren't as dense-packed as you might see on a calendar photograph, but there are enough of them to enjoy.    Many of my intentionally neglected areas are strips on the hillsides that will serve a dual purpose (other than for my aesthetic satisfaction)  as rain gardens to slow down and clean some of the runoff from heavy rains.  And of course, the unmown areas offer a third, selfish advantage;  they decrease my dreaded mowing time.

I decided to show you some of the June wildflowers blooming in these areas because of my initial excitement over a patch of Purple Poppy Mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) right next to the circle (okay, teardrop) driveway.  I've been mowing around it for several years while the Poppy Mallow blooms, then cutting it off again a month or so later because the blooming ceases in about a month and because a month is all I get before Mrs. ProfessorRoush starts to complain about the disheveled mess and forces me to cut it.  We are not entirely in marital agreement on our appreciation of the "natural" state of lawn.

The Purple Poppy Mallow blooms brightly and gloriously for quite some time during the summer and loves the hot dry summers of Kansas.  The blooms close each evening and don't open up till late morning, so if you take a picture or pass by a group in early morning, like the one on the left, it just looks like a patch of overgrown weeds and you might look at it and side with Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Three hours later, this is a river of bright purple, a floriferous masterpiece, and nobody would have the heart to mow it off.  

Another forb that has been blooming in the prairie for several weeks now is the Blue Wild Indigo (Baptisia australis).   This one also comes in a light cream form (a different species, Plains Wild Indigo or Baptisia bracteata ) that usually blooms first and has already spent their beauty this year.  I enjoy the dark, black rattle-ly seedpods that form on the dried up stems of these plants, but saw my neighbor chopping off the blooming false indigo this weekend because he doesn't like the seedpods.  There's no accounting for taste, but at least he has a better appreciation for the fact that the sap of this plant turns purple when exposed to air. 

Throughout my garden beds, one native prairie plant that I recognize as a seedling and allow to self-seed wherever it wants is the Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa).  I've been amazed how often they pop up in a perfect place for display and that's good because they are nearly impossible to transplant anyway due to deep taproots.  These orange beauties have just begun to bloom and they will brighten up their areas for 6 weeks.  I now have 10 different self-seeded butterfly magnets in my garden.  They are all tough as nails, impervious to wind and weather and insects, and as drought-tolerant as you'd ever want.

Hidden in the prairie grasses, if you look hard for it, will be light-pink-purple bristly flowers of the Catclaw Sensitive Briar (Mimosa nuttallii).  What looks like flowers are actually the overpowering pink stamens towering above the tiny flowers.  Touch the stamens and they fold up into a small ball instantly.  Catclaw is an important indicator of prairie health as it disappears in overgrazed areas.

I've got loads of wildflowers to show you, so look for posts II and III later this week;  I think we'll do the yellows, and then the whites on different days.