Time to Stop and Appreciate the Finer Things

'Hope for Humanity'

In the back of my mind, ProfessorRoush has a little nagging voice that keeps saying "you should post, it has been awhile," but I would not have thought that I wouldn't post during the entire month of August.   My, how it flew by!

I blame the unusual weather, more rain than usual, and temperatures that kept weeds growing and me mowing weekend after weekend.  I blame my unfortunate needs for cash, which keep me working long hours during the week, ticking down the clock of my life, time I can't replace no matter how valuable I think it is in the moment.  And I blame me, for not making the blog a bigger priority over eating, sleeping, target-shooting, reading, watching TV, or the hundreds of other distractions that occupy my time.   

Liatris spicata

But then a fall morning comes, like this morning, and it's cool (53ºF) and sunny, and I'm walking with Bella down the road at 7:10 a.m., and I remember that a beautiful world awaits, every single morning, if I only take time to look.

Time to look and stop to take a quick photo of 'Hope for Humanity', pictured at the top.  There has to indeed be some hope for a species that breeds and distributes a rose this beautiful.

Time to pause on the walk and relish the beauty of this clump of Liatris spicata, returning year after year to the roadside northeast of the house.  A "blazing star" of the highest magnitude (see what I did there?).

Time to appreciate that the Kansas state flower is the native Sunflower, thriving where the ground is disturbed by hoof or man, a roadside beacon to reflect the morning sunshine.

'Morden Sunrise'

Time to fawn over the delicately hued petals of this 'Morden Sunrise', a Parkland Canadian rose bred by Lynn Collicutt and Campbell Davidson in 1991.  I have one in front, 3 feet tall and now overshadowed by a "dwarf" lilac, and this second two-year-old in back.

'Comte de Chambord'

Time to stop and "smell the roses", in this case the Portland rose 'Comte de Chambord', a reliable bloomer and cane hardy to the toughest Kansas winters.  She looks fragile and virginal and perfect, but she's touch as nails. 

And time to appreciate all the beautiful and more mobile creatures who share the morning walks with Bella and I.  For the city folk reading this blog, the behavior of the left hand male bovine at the rear of the longhorn cow may look strange, but to an old farm-boy and veterinarian, it's anything but.  That cow had just hunched up and passed urine and he's checking to see (the "Flehmen response") if this particular cow is available for some morning "go-time".   Truly, there's nothing more natural on the prairie than a little lovin' at the first rays of the sun.  

I think we'll just leave this blog entry right here, in a light and educational moment, and not veer off into the weeds of biology trying to extend it.

Longhorns Ho!

Yesterday was an outside day in ProfessorRoush-land, work to be done, and some exploration in areas that I don't frequently explore.  I mowed and piddled in the garden to my heart's content, the second mowing of the year starting at 9:30 a.m. and then doing other chores until I looked up at last to see it near 5:00 p.m., the afternoon vanished seemingly in seconds.   Most of the work was prompted by the arrival this week of the Longhorn cattle that a friend (actually the son-in-law of a neighbor), summer pastures on our land and the neighbors pasture.  Aren't they beautiful?  ProfessorRoush likes having cows around, even skinny cows with big menacing horns, and they make a conversation piece for neighbors far and wide, creating a little traffic on the road from the townies coming to "Aw" and stare.  

The Longhorn appearance, however, prompts me annually to walk the far fence, the one that I DIDN'T rebuild when we purchased the land, my border line with the golf course.  It's an original, easily over 50 years old, maybe more like 80 years old, with Osage Orange posts that occasionally get caught in the burns, and I often need to hike up the back hill with a new T-post to shore it up.  The picture below is a view of my back garden and the house and grounds from the far hillside.  Yesterday, all was well with the fence and I opened the gate to let the cattle into my pond area.

White-Eyed Grass

Walking that fence line means I walk down through the prairie and cross the woods in the draw and come as close as I get in this area to shady woodland.   This time of year, that means looking at the flora of the prairie more closely.  The prairie is coming alive with its flowers, native Babtisia starting to bloom, and this White-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium campestre) blooming everywhere.   White-Eyed Grass is, of course, not a grass but a member of the lily family, a bulb, used by Native Americans to treat stomachache and hay fever.

Garlic Mustard

I also ran across this unusual plant, an invader of course.  Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a biennial weed that came from the Old World and escaped cultivation.  It isn't very prevalent on my prairie, requiring a bit of shade and moisture to thrive, but it seems to have found a spot here in the woods for it's temporary liking.

And speaking of invaders, while on my travels through the pasture, I also came across this unusual plant, seemingly beginning to spread in this area.   This is Purple-Leafed Honeysuckle, an escapee from my landscaping, which I made sure to come back and spray with herbicide yesterday.   I believe this clump was actually transplanted by the bulldozer that cleared it out from a bank where I placed the barn and pushed it into this area, but I surely don't want to see it begin to spread on it's own in the pasture

Poison Ivy

The woodland plant pictured here is, of course, not so desired in a woodland, but it's everywhere, hiding among others and waiting to cause pain and misery in some.  As shown here, among several similar plants, it effectively camouflages itself in early spring and then stands out in early Fall with bright red leaves to match the bright red blisters of the afflicted. Luckily, I'm immune to the toxic effects of  the urushiol in poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), but I know it causes misery in others.  "Leaves of three, let it be," say some, but I say "Leaves of three, I don't care."  It probably has some place in the ecosystem, a native to North America, so I leave it alone.

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Spiritual Prairie Union

 "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Psalm 19:1.  

If a gardener knows any scripture at all, it should be this phrase.  ProfessorRoush has been witness to the wisdom of this Psalm every morning this past two weeks as I drive past a gorgeous heavenly display of two common prairie forbs sharing the same space, purple Western Ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii) and white and green Snow-On-The-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata).   There are few times when I see such showy native plants so wild, yet so perfectly sited to contrast and enhance each other that I can only stand and marvel, jealous of the Gardener who arranged them in combination.

Western Ironweed

I took the picture above in the worst possible conditions for photography; sun setting behind the subject, light rain on the horizon, dusk settling into the valleys.   And yet the beauty of the prairie shines forth from this chance clumping, this union of the blooms of August each drawing in their late pollinators, offering last seasonal meals in exchange for stirred chromosomes, the dance of wildflower and insect continued in another year.

Snow-On-The-Mountain

Neither of the colorful perennials above are rare on the prairie.   Western Ironweed, so drought tolerant and tall in the heat of summer, is a common pasture weed on the Flint Hills and difficult to eliminate from my garden beds.  This member of the Asteraceae is shunned by cattle for its bitter taste, who thus help it to spread in overgrazed pastures, eliminating its competitors while letting it grow.  Snow-On-The Mountain, a poinsettia relative, is also found here in nearly every disturbed spot of ground, popping up randomly in my garden beds next to grasses and roses, and anywhere else it can find a bit of moisture and sunshine.  In contrast to the ironweed, this euphorbia pulls easily from the ground with bare hands, and although it's bitter, milky sap is said to be as irritating as poison ivy, I seem to be impervious to its toxic nature.

The ubiquity of these wildflowers might suggest that their serendipitous adjacency has occurred by mere statistical chance, but I refuse to tempt disaster by agreeing.  ProfessorRoush, not normally disposed to quote scripture, nonetheless feels here a higher design, a greater Hand in this natural combination.  Maybe you have to be here, at this spot, with the waning sunlight and smell of rain in the air to appreciate this moment.  Better yet the sight is simply spectacular every morning with fresh sunlight and cool breeze and living prairie all around as I drive to work.  All I know for sure is that these two plants, every day, brighten my morning, the gift of living made manifest as my day begins.  And I am thankful for it and for my life shared with the prairie.

Sensitive Brier

If I were a Native American child on the Kansas prairie, or perhaps if I were any current child who occupies these arid grassy deserts, my favorite plant might just be the Catclaw Sensitive Briar,  Mimosa quadrivalvis  L.  var. nuttallii  (DC. ), a low-lying perennial that is widespread over my native prairie plot.  It blooms in late May-June here, before the grass reaches high above it to blot out the sky, its pink puff-heads screaming for attention alongside the new shoots of bluestem and Indian grass, and its 4-foot long branches spreading through the prairie.  The yellow ends of mature flowers are the anthers.

Sensitive Briar is a member of the bean family, the Fabaceae, the latter scientific nomenclature sounding not so much like it describes a squat languorous legume as a pretentious ancient Roman dynasty.  Perhaps Sensitive Briar has a right to be a bit pretentious.  It is very nutritious for livestock, who seek it out and overgraze it, making the presence of Sensitive Brier an important indicator of overall range condition.  Some sources refer to it as a "brier" rather than a "briar," and after some searching, I admit that I will have to accept continued mystery about the proper form of reference. Perhaps Thomas Nuttall, the 18th Century English botanist honored by the subspecies name, could enlighten me if his spirit were to pass by this part of the continent.

The "sensitive" part of the name comes from the plants response to touch, an action scientifically termed "thigmonasty", although I don't know why it would be considered nasty unless one considers the impertinence of the touchers.  It folds its leaves from open, like the photo at the left, to closed, as seen at the right with the merest touch of child or wind, and also at night.  Other common names for the plant, Bashful Brier or Shame Vine, also refer to this thigmonastic action.  Thus, its attractiveness to children, who seem fascinated when they discover or are shown this little moment of cross-species contact.  I wonder, if such moments were the first introduction of many children to the world of plants, would ecology and Gaia be more prominent throughout life in our subsequent actions and thoughts?

The "catclaw" of the common name refers to the later pods of these flowers, their prickly nature making them far less attractive to children later in the summer.  These do not seem to cling to clothing so much as they scratch at anything in their vicinity, particularly any delicate little bare legs of children playing hide-and-seek in the tall prairie grass.  I suppose, like most of nature, one must always take the good with the bad, the rose with its thorns, the Catclaw Sensitive Briar with its pods.

Bombus-ed BeeBalm

ProfessorRoush was "beeing" busy in search of bees this weekend.  After my last post, when I included a photograph showing a bumblebee on an 'Applejack' blossom, it occurred to me that although I have seen plenty of "bumblebees" around the yard this year, I haven't seen a single honeybee.  Nor could I find one this past Sunday as I specifically searched for them, albeit on a cloudy day with occasional sprinkles in the air.

Honeybees should surely be visiting nearby, because Monarda fistulosa, otherwise known as Wild Bergamot, is blooming all over the prairie.  I've written before of my garden Monardas, and the native prairie species lives up to its common name, "Beebalm," but the balm exuded by Monarda only seems to be attracting the American Bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus) this year.

Monarda fistulosa with Bombus pensylvanicus

Bombus pensylvanicus (Bombus, what a neat name for the ungainly genus comprising bumblebees!) was once the most prevalent bumblebee in the United States, but Wikipedia notes that it is recently declining in population.  Nationally, that may be true, but they seem to be as prevalent as ever in Kansas.  I'm not an insect expert by any means, but there are two species of bumblebees found in Kansas and I believe they're different enough that I've got this one correct.  Mostly black abdomen.  Check.  Black stripe behind wings.  Check, Check.  Certainly they were everywhere on my patch of native prairie today, feasting on the Wild Bergamot and the Asclepias tuberosa that is blooming everywhere.  The Monarda is such an ungainly, unkempt flower, that I think it matches the non-aerodynamic bumblebee.

'Jacob Cline' Monarda and Knautia macedonia

I haven't jumped onto the "glyphosate will destroy the world" train since the science says otherwise, and those of you who read this blog regularly know that I do believe in climate change but that I remain unconvinced that Man is primarily responsible for it (given the sure and certain evidence that it really was a lot warmer in 10000 B.C. than it is now and we just weren't around in enough numbers then to get the blame for it).   That all being said, I do worry a lot about the declining bee populations and I think Man probably has a lot to do with that one.  Whether it is disease or pesticide or habitat destruction, I have no idea, but on my little patch of prairie, I can tell you that the native Monarda clumps usually have a visiting bee, while the 'Jacob Cline' Monarda in my front landscaping hasn't a bee, bumble- or honey- in sight, everytime I've checked.  It seems that my preference for bright red flowers, and my happiness with the tough nature of the nearby Knautia macedonia, isn't shared by the bumblebees in my environment.  Perhaps I should turn over a new leaf...er...uh...flower, and encourage the Wild Bergamot to spread from the prairie to my landscaping.  When visitors complain about the insipid colors, I'll tell them simply that it looks delicious when viewed through a bee's eyes instead of those in a falsely-discriminating human.          

Sedges and Pussy-toes

Mead's Sedge (Carex meadii)

As he works around the garden, ProfessorRoush always keeps an eye on his areas of native prairie for unusual forbs and for the date of annual blooming of the early forbs.  Right now, while the prairie grass is still low from the spring mowing, I noticed two low-growing grasses shouting for attention.  Well, I thought I noticed two low-growing grasses.  ProfessorRoush was wrong again.   Repeat after me:  grasses are hollow, rushes are round, and sedges have edges.  Each belongs to a different taxonomic family, and even the most amateur botanist (like me) should strive to recognize that they are distinctly different, even more so than Chihuahua's and Great Danes.




The nice little yellow thing above is Mead's Sedge (Carex meadii), which seems to grow everywhere as an understory for prairie grasses.  When it is interspersed with the purple of ground plum (at right), the soft yellow and purple hues make the nicest little microcosm of spring pastels.  Mead's Sedge is a triangular-stemmed sedge named for Samuel Barnum Mead, (1798-1880), a U.S. botanist and physician.  It prefers limestone or chalky soils, which describes my ground in spades (sic).

Field Pussy Toes (Antennaria neglecta)

Every spring, I also see these little fluffy club-like heads pop up, another "grass" that I notice.  Well, this is actually Antennaria neglecta, also known as Field Pussy Toes (as listed at www.kswildflower.org), or Field Cat's Foot (as listed in my copy of Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers).  Of the common names, I think Field Pussy Toes is a much more interesting name, don't you?  Antennaria neglecta is a member of the family Asteraceae with the sunflowers.  I've seen this growing for years among the grass stems and assumed it was a grass, but when you look closer, the bases of these flowers are the white-gray-woolly leaves laying flat on the ground.  It grows in colonies and although it is dioecious (bears male or female flowers on separate plants), each colony is a clone and is either a male or female colony.  The photo at left depicts the male, or staminate, form for those who care about such niceties (yes, I peeked).

In Kansas, Field Pussy Toes have to be differentiated from Parlin's Pussy Toes (Antennaria parlinii).  The latter has leaves that are shinier and have less "hair."   While my Field Pussy-Toes live in environments suggested by their name (i.e. prairie fields), Parlin's Pussy Toes prefer rocky oak-hickory forests and glades.   For those who are interested in having Pussy Toes in their own gardens, Monrovia has a pink form, Antennaria dioica 'Rubra', available for sale.

As I've noted before, each year I try to remember to note the return of the early species to my prairie in my field guides, and for Field Pussy Toes, I've noted their first occurrence anywhere from March 25th to May 4th, with the earlier date from 2012 and the later from 2002.  Field Pussy Toes, like many other species on my prairie, seem to be pushing their growing/flowering period earlier, supporting the global-warming crowd.  On the other hand, I've got 3 dates written down for Mead's Sedge; 4/10/2000, 4/15/2003, and 4/10/2017, and its appearance is not apparently changing over time, supporting the climate-change deniers.  Who knows?  

K-State Adaptive/Native Plant Garden

I risk being accused of a new shallow approach to the intellectual content of this blog, and perhaps of  random promotional content and motivation, but while the iron is hot and before the weather turns hotter, I want to place another Manhattan attraction on the radar of those who may visit.  Appearing every day, approximately 364 times more frequently each year than the Manhattan Area Garden Tour, is the most excellent display at the K-State Gardens of the John E. Tillotson Sr. Adaptive/Native Plant Garden.



Those of you who are native plant enthusiasts should plan a whole trip around this garden because it is, in my experience, unequaled for the use of native prairie forbs in a garden design. Here columbines, milkweed, echinacea, butterfly milkweed, yucca, coreopsis, penstemon, prairie larkspur and evening primrose, all mix in glorious harmony and mature abundance.  The display is at its peak now, in early June.    

This view, down the long axis of the garden looking towards the old conservatory will give you an idea of the flowing masses of perennial forbs that make up the display garden.  Coreopsis in the foreground and Pale Purple Coneflower (Echinacea pallida) in the background provide the basis of a pastel palette for your pleasure.


I often find myself trying to take a peerless photo of a group of these echinacea in the fruitless pursuit of  photographic perfection.  It is most definitely an exercise in frustration for an amateur like myself, but there are lots of opportunities here to experiment with depth of field, framing, focus and shadows.  The hardest choice for me is always where the focus should be;  the plant in the center or the plant closest to the lens?   Sometimes, I capture a pretty nice image, only to realize that, on closeup, one of the flowers is damaged or blemished, marring the effect of the photo.  

The honeybees were going crazy over this newly-opened Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) during the Garden Tour.  The whole area was alive with bees moving quickly from bloom to bloom, humming with excitement and loud enough to drown out the noise from nearby traffic.  Does anyone else wonder, while viewing closeup photos of bees, how they ever lift those pudgy bodies with such small delicate wings?








I assume this is a form of Showy Evening Primrose, (Oenothera speciosa), but I've never seen it quite so blazenly pink in the wild.  I don't know if it is a collected species or a commercial cultivar, but the delicate petals laugh in the face of the hottest sun.  According to Internet sources, some of the Showy Primrose that start out pure white age to pink, like these, while others stay the pure white that I associate with the wild species.


 


Years ago, walking around the K-State Garden, I noticed an enticing sweet scent that seemed to be coming from some 6 feet tall, large-leaved plants.  In an embarassing display of naivete and stupidity, I asked what they were, only to find out that they were Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), the same weeds I'd grown up with in Indiana and fought hand-to-hand in my father's garden and fields.  They are a perfect example of how blind we can be to the good qualities of a plant that pops up in the wrong place.  I had no idea Common Milkweed was fragrant, nor that it would grow so tall if left alone.


I'll leave you with the sight of these bronze wildcats (the K-State mascot, for those who were unaware), which languidly observe the garden visitors during the day and come alive to patrol the native garden at night.   Sited in Phase I of the garden, right next to busy Denison Avenue, you can tune out the traffic and suddenly you're out in the middle of the Flint Hills.  I know that some gardeners (yes, I'm talking to you, Benjamin Vogt) believe that such an ethos is the only way we should be gardening.  When I view the success of this design, here at the Kansas State University gardens, I can only agree and encourage everyone to drop by and leave with some new gardening ideas.

Purple Prairie-Clover Ponderings

ProfessorRoush has a whole set of native wildflower photos that I've been sitting on, but each time I attempt to collect my thoughts and present them to you, another wildflower blooms and steals my attentions.  This week, it has been Purple Prairie-Clover, Dalea purpurea, that has been littering my rain garden with color.

I'm writing the name hyphenated as "Purple Prairie-Clover," rather than "Purple Prairie Clover", because Wikipedia makes a big deal about it not being a "true" clover (genus Trifolium).  I suppose since Purple Prairie Clover is the common name, I can take any liberties I choose with it, so, really, who cares about the proper grammar here?  Since my go-to website for wildflower info, www.kswildflower.org, uses the hyphen however, then so shall I.

True clover or not, Purple Prairie-Clover is a perennial of the Fabaceae or Bean Family, which I'm especially happy to have in high numbers in the rain garden since it's a legume, fixing nitrogen for the grasses and forbs around it.  It seems to be increasing year after year in my back garden and I'm not surprised since it is high in protein and favored by livestock.  Previous to my invasion and siege on the prairie, this was most recently a grazed plot of land, so the Purple Prairie-Clover had probably been practically grazed out over the years.  The past week, the density of the plant is such that the prairie is dotted with purple and I enjoy the blossoms the most in the morning with dew hanging from them.  The bees are also happy about its presence here.

Dalea candida

There is a White Prairie-Clover, Dalea candida, but those are less prevalent in my prairie and I'm just as happy.  Dalea candida suffers from a problem shared by many white flowers; as it ages, the white turns to brown and just looks plain ugly.  Purple Prairie-Clover, by contrast, only fades to light purple-pink before the petals drop cleanly.  Both species are very drought resistant because of those thin, tough-skinned leaves, and the 6 foot long taproots that reach deep into the soil.

Ever the professor, I was interested to learn that Dalea purpurea contains pawhuskins A, B, and C, and petalostemumol.  The pawhuskins possess affinity for the opioid receptors and pawhuskin A, the most potent of the three, acts as an antagonist of mu, kappa, and sigma opioid receptors.  Probably that's just more useless information to clog my brain, but if I ever get accidentally covered in poppy sap during my garden excursions, I hope I remember to just grab some Purple Prairie-Clover and chew it as the antidote.  Need that as a mnemonic?  Just remember "ProfessorRoush Postulates Purple Prairie-Clover Possibly Prevents Poppy Poisoning."

And, yes, this whole blog entry was written just to lead to that last sentence.

Gayfeather Guilt

Days later, the guilt of my actions still haunt me.

Last weekend, I was preparing to put up the bush-hog for the winter, having recently mowed down an invading army of sumac and volunteer cedars and other noxious weeds of the Kansas prairie.  Every winter I switch the bush-hog for the road grading blade (in preparation for the occasional rare snow), and every spring I switch it back in preparation for the fall pasture mowing, which I time after the milkweeds and other desirable wildflowers have dispersed seed.

This year, I was contemplating my nicely mowed pasture in contrast to the overgrown roadside of my neighbor across from it and I offered to mow his roadside before putting the mower away.  I mowed up, and down, concentrating carefully on the slanted sides to avoid tipping the tractor.  On the repeat center run, however, I stopped cold at the sight of this clump of gayfeather brightly accenting the White Sage around it.  I believe it  to be Dotted Gayfeather (Liatris punctata) due to its short stature and location on the dry prairie.  What a beautiful sight!

It was, as you can easily see, a magnet for yellow sulphur butterflies, probably Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice) butterflies to be exact, although I could easily be mistaken given my poor butterfly identification skills.   Immediately, I faced a dilemma.  Proceed ahead a few more feet and this perennial clump wouldn't be setting seed this year nor would other butterflies be able to stock up on energy from its nectar.  Mow around it, as I would do and have done in my own pasture, and risk having my neighbor think I was nuts.

I mowed on, a flippant choice at the time forced by self-image and social norms.  As the Knight of the Crusades said in the third Indiana Jones movie, however, I "chose poorly".  I've now faced a week of guilt over it, a sure sign from my conscience that I chose the wrong path.  I really hope these butterflies made it across the fence line to another fertile clump, another precious waystation on their winged journey.  My karma has taken a hit that will need some careful and conscious effort over the next few months to mend.  Excuse me while I go collect some gayfeather seed to start several other clumps in my pasture.

Native Rain Garden

Cobaea Penstemon

ProfessorRoush is feeling a little vindicated this summer at the prairie revival occurring in his back yard.  As faithful readers know, three years ago I stopped mowing most of the gentle slope between my back patio and the main garden beds, an area I had mowed for 10 straight summers.  I began to let the prairie heal itself, only mowing once a year in late winter. This action has caused no small amount of angst in the household, since Mrs. ProfessorRoush envisions the house and garden as surrounded by a carefully manicured lawn, and she protests loudly and regularly that she wishes that I would just mow those areas.  Unfortunately for her, Mrs. ProfessorRoush married me, a gardener whose urges towards order and socially-acceptable gardening practices are always willing to play second fiddle to my innate laziness and personal distaste of any work that can't be also be classified as fun.  In defense of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, she has offered to mow the lawn for me, a nice gesture that I declined for fear that she'd scalp the entire horizon.

 

Black-Sampson Echinacea

Mowing the lawn has never, ever been my idea of fun, although NOT mowing has provided me no end of merriment.  For instance, there was the day when the local Prairie Garden club came to view my roses.  These pro-natural-gardening women were horrified at the mere idea that Mrs. ProfessorRoush felt that the Penstemon cobaea pictured above should be mowed along with the grass.  In fact, their reactions were similar to those of another strong Kansas woman, Carrie Nation, when she was presented with the opening of a new brewery.  I was worried for a minute that they would storm the house and stone Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  One after another, visitors to my garden support my decision to allow the garden to grow au natural.   I recognize that asking other gardeners for their opinions on the value of native plantings is a bit like asking Republicans if they favor tax cuts, but perhaps Mrs. ProfessorRoush won't make the connection and then import a group of rampant suburban Stepford Wives to outvote my supporters.

In the droughts of the last two years, I often wondered if I'd have grass, let alone flowers, in this area, but this year a wave of penstemon developed in one area and, several weeks later, the Black-Sampson Echinacea (Echinacea angustifolia) were blooming hither and yon over another area at the same time as the Catclaw Sensitive Briar (Mimosa quadrivalvis) was blooming.  Not a bad succession of flowers, if I do say so myself.  Most recently, the Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea) has begun to decorate the prairie from horizon to horizon.  I can't wait to see what comes after that.  Obviously, I'm hoping that these native flowers spread over the years and provide me with a free garden full of entertainment.

Purple Prairie Clover

The prairie grasses themselves go on forever here, happily growing with any water that falls with intermittent storms or hoarding the water they capture more regularly from the morning dews.  Entire urban landscape departments are focused on creating and maintaining "rain gardens" to help decrease runoff and conserve natural rainfall, but all I have to do is stop mowing the grass on my slopes to see the ground begin to soak up every drop.  I've got the rain garden to end all rain gardens here. This year the grass is already twice as tall as in either of the past two years, and it threatens to hide the main garden from my sight for the month of August, a good month to ignore the weeds in the rose beds and stay indoors anyway.  By September, I'll be somewhere off admiring my late blooming Sumac, but will someone please send out a backyard search party for Mrs. ProfessorRoush if she disappears?  She's afraid the grass will grow so tall, she might get lost in it, or worse, find a snake.  Either occurrence would be unfortunate for my health.  

June Not-Wildflowers

I hope you've been enjoying the series of prairie wildflowers I've added to the blog in the past week or so.  However, I would be remiss if I didn't also illustrate that the wildflowers aren't the only blooms or color on the prairie right now.  Some of the prairie grasses also bloom at this time and there are always forbs with some nice foliage contrast:

These long spires are the flowers of the appropriately-named "June Grass" (Koeleria macrantha).  June Grass is a perennial in the Poas family and grows 18-24 inches tall, pushing these green-white heads above the surrounding Bluestem and Indian Grass during this month, but then they'll be overshadowed later by those taller grasses. Named for a German botanist of the 18th century, Ludwig Koeler, June Grass grows in sporadic tufts over the native prairie grass and blends in with the airy white inflorescence's of PrairieYarrow and Philadelphia Fleabane. 

Another brownly-blooming denizen of the prairie right now is Texas Bluegrass (Poa arachnifera).  This dioecious grass chooses whatever sex of flower it wants to display and gets right down to it in the early summer.  The species name refers to the long white hairs of the spikelets which are said to resemble a spider web.  I don't see the resemblance, myself.

Unfortunately or fortunately, my surrounding prairie is blessed with a nice silvery-foliaged sage that I could also argue should be viewed as a prolific weed.  White Sage (Artemsia ludoviciana) is everywhere, both over the prairie and in my mown prairie lawn, where it stands out with a definite weedy look. I once cultivated a clump in my front landscaping where I thought it would make a nice 2-3 foot foliage contrast plant, only to realize that it spreads quickly by rhizomes and is fairly invasive. The flowers are also not very noticeable in the border, so my advice is to just keep this one on the prairie.  I'm still pulling it up from among the Monarda and roses.  It is also known as sagewort or wormwood, both alternative common names that are closer to the true nature of the plant.  Native Americans used the aromatic leaves of this plant for everything from toilet paper to underarm deodorant to mosquito repellent, so maybe the best use of the plant is to keep pulling it up anyway.

But enough of prairie plants without flowers.  I know that some of you must have been wondering why I hadn't posted pictures of the native prairie echinaceas, but the truth is that they hadn't bloomed until just the past couple of days.  If I have identified the species correctly, this is Black-Sampson Echinacea (Echinacea angustifolia).  I'm not a botanist but the other Echinacea in the area, Echinacea pallida, has longer petals and is a little paler-pink to my eyes.  Everyone knows about the pain-reducing compounds in Echinacea,  including the Native Americans who used the plant to treat toothaches, burns and sore throats, but what you may not know is that Echinacea is the Greek word for "hedgehog", transferred to the genus here because of the spiny bracts of the flowers.   The taproot of this drought-resistant plant can grow down 5 to 8 feet, so you can forget about transplanting this one from the prairie into your garden.

For the time being, that's about the end of the June-blooming wildflowers here on the prairie, although I noticed that the prairie thistles are just starting to open up.  When they get rolling, I'll come back with their stickery display.  But tomorrow, a special treat for all you native wildflower lovers before Garden Musings moves back on Sunday to my cultivated garden for blogging material!  For one thing, I think it's high time that I told the truth about Sally Holmes so I'm dying to get to that already-conceived post.