Natives Now

The prairie is full of native flowers blooming in early June.  Just a walk around the perimeter of my mowed area allowed me to capture all these.  ProfessorRoush is going to keep the gab to a minimum today, although I'll still identify each for you.  And while I do, be thinking....what characteristic do all these plants have in common?  There will be a quiz at the end.

This photo is of the low-growing Catclaw Sensitive Briar (Mimosa quadrivalvis), a member of the Fabaceae (or Bean family), so named because of the prickly pods that catch exposed ankles as you walk by, and for the delicate leaflets that fold when touched.  It has a long bloom period and can be seen blooming over most of May and June.

Of similar color, the Illinois Tickclover (Desmodium illinoense) is another Fabaceae, taller and more sparsely represented on my spot of prairie.  Late in the summer, the mature seedpods of this plant cling to my pants and hitchhike wherever I walk, often causing me to sit and pick at my pant-legs for a long time before they get washed. 

As I think about it, these native Black-Sampson Echinacea (Echinacea angustifolia) also display a similar muted pink-purple hue during their bloom.   The blooms quickly become bedraggled by wind and local insects.

These Echinacea are abundant in my area, and are favorites of local butterflies, bees, and finches.

I've posted a photo before of the Fringe-Leaf Ruellia (Ruellia humilis), but didn't write much about it.  It grows freely, low to the ground, in both the mowed areas of the yard and in the taller native prairie.  I have it stuck in my head that Ruellia is a violet of some type and I have to correct myself each time I see and identify it.

There are many forms of Asteraceae, composite flowers of the Sunflower family, that bloom and attract native insects and birds on the prairie. Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus) is one of those, 2-3 feet tall and easily visible among the grasses. It does not, contrary to myth, repel fleas from man nor from beast.

Another Asteraceae member presently blooming are the Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta).  This gray-green, hairy-leafed plant doesn't compete well with prairie grasses, but it sprouts willingly on disturbed ground.   If I showed you a picture of my vegetable garden right now, you'd think I was growing it preferentially there (which I do, since I don't weed it out unless it is adjacent to a tomato, zucchini, or other intentional planting.  

I could, and should, show you photos a few dozen clumps of Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa).  This unmatched bright-orange color uniquely stands out in the grasses and I encourage it to grow and seed wherever it chooses on the prairie or even in my garden beds.

One thing about Asclepias, it draws butterflies and bees from everywhere.  I really should start learning to identify bees and wasps so that I can recognize and encourage either of these visitors to my prairie.

Click on this picture to expand it and you'll see both a butterfly and a bee on the upper left of this single spray.  I'm not sure, but the butterfly here is perhaps a Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos), common in my area.

The prairie is awash right now with clumps of Wild Alfalfa (Pediomelum tenuiflorum), providing some blue tones to contrast with the yellows and whites.  If you view the flowers up close, you can see why this plant is placed in the Bean family.

Last, but not least for a gardener who is always looking for roses, I'll show you a closeup of Rosa arkansana, the Prairie Wild Rose.  R. arkansana is a low-growing, once blooming, winter-hardy rose that has been used in the breeding programs of Ag Canada.  It is everywhere on the prairie, food for insects and animals alike.

And now, what characteristic do all these have in common?  Along with also-currently-blooming but unpictured Lead Plant (Amorpha canescens), Waxy-Leaf Thistle (Cirsium undulatum), White Prairie Clover (Dalea candida) and Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea) and Woolly Verbena (Verbena stricta)?   All of these are drought resistant natives, stoic in the face of the fickle prairie rains.   They hold a hidden message of hope for the gardener; "for best results, choose drought-resistant perennials and shrubs!!!!"

Rosa Arkansana

I was giving a talk on hardy roses to a local gardening club recently and one of the members asked me if there were any native roses in Kansas.  To my knowledge, there are two;  invasive and colonizing R. multiflora, and prairie stalwart R. arkansana.

R. arkansana is, in fact, also known as the Prairie Rose and it is native to a large portion of central North America, from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains, and north to Canada.  This once-yearly bloomer ranges in height from one to three feet, although on the native tall-grass prairie of the Flint Hills I seldom see it above the foot mark.  There are 5 heart-shaped petals on this single, medium pink rose, and the center is covered with numerous bright yellow stamens.   According to the Kansas Wildflower site, it has roots that may go down more than 20 feet into the prairie subsoil and it is very drought-resistant.  The species name, arkansana, refers to the Arkansas River of Colorado, not the State of Arkansas.  It is the state flower, however, not of Colorado or Arkansas, but of North Dakota and Iowa.  Very confusing, isn't it?

If it has become evident that no individual identity is sacred or private on the Internet, it is even more evident for our plants.  I knew that this native rose was one of those used in the breeding of the AgCanada Parkland series roses, but during my search for information about R. arkansana, I found a 1976 article about breeding with R. arkansana written by none other than H. H. Marshall of the Morden Research Station.  I've now learned that R. arkansana is a tetraploid, containing 28 chromosomes, and so it is compatible to breed with most of our modern Hybrid Teas and Floribundas, although there are strong interspecies sterility barriers between R. arkansana and cultivated roses and so the F1 generation hybrids are hard to come by.  R. arkansana provides its hardiness to the offspring and it lends an extended blooming period due to adaptations that allow it to bloom after grazing or spring prairie fires.  It is also tolerant of the dry and moderately alkaline soils of the prairie.  To get the initial interspecies crosses, the Canadian program discovered that a few modern roses, such as Floribunda 'Donald Prior', would accept R. arkansana pollen.  The AgCanada releases 'Cuthbert Grant' and 'Adelaide Hoodless' were two of the later generation crosses that had 'Assiniboine' (a first generation cross of 'Donald Prior' and R. arkansana) as an ancestor.  Now I understand why 'Adelaide Hoodless' is essentially a once-blooming rose with a very long (over 6 weeks of bloom) season.  I also have learned that the bright red pigment of 'Adelaide Hoodless' looks a little different from other roses because it carries the pigment "Peonin", absent in most modern hybrids but inherited from R. arkansana.

I know that I've been rambling on about my Native Prairie Rose, but I would be remiss if I did not add in a link to an unbelievable fountain of Internet knowledge, the CybeRose & Bulbs site.  I don't know who is behind it, but I can already tell I'm going to lose hours and hours there. This site that contained the H. H. Marshall article is a treasury of  information on rose breeding and roses, many of them from the American Rose or its Annual and written by the giants of our rose-breeding past;  Basye, Buck, Hansen, Lammerts, Harkness, and de Vries among many others.  There is even a recopy of Luther Burbanks 1914 article, Burbank on the Rose, and  a 1976 article by a then-little-known-breeder, Mr. William J. Radler, titled Blackspot Resistant Roses.  And there is an extensive pictorial catalogue of roses.  Abandon all sense of time, those of ye who enter.