June Native Wildflowers II

Oh dear, a potential obstacle has developed that might affect my plans to leave areas of the yard unmown so that I can "cultivate" the native prairie forbs this year.  I was walking the back garden last night with Mrs. ProfessorRoush and the Primary Rabbit- and Snake-chaser, when Mrs. ProfessorRoush suddenly realized that I have been merely cutting paths through the back yard and was planning to allow most of the native prairie grass to grow for the summer.  She was, to put it mildly, neither impressed by my ecological correctness nor amused when I tried to change the subject by getting her to notice a new rose.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush seems to care less about the potential for beautiful prairie wildflowers than she does about increasing her potential for encountering snakes, mice, chiggers, ticks, and other natural creatures.  So, enjoy the pictures below, because I don't know how long I'm going to be able to let these plants bloom!



A yellow wildflower that is just now coming into bloom are my stalwart Black-eyed Susan's (Rudbeckia hirta) that self-seed through my back patio bed and over the prairie.  In fact, the pictured flower just opened and is the first of many to come this year.  I have a few of these every year, and they bloom dependably through July, but seem sometimes to get a little mildew and the stems and leaves are eaten occasionally by an unidentified insect pest. These cheery little guys seem to be more prevalent than normal this year.  I can understand the cause in the patio bed since I haven't yet mulched that bed this year, trying to encourage growth of the self-seeders, but I can't explain why they're increased on the prairie. 

The delicate, but drought-resistant, Missouri Evening Primrose (Oenothera macrocarpa) is always a welcome sight, as is the related white form of the Showy Evening Primrose (Oenothera speciosa).  These almost translucent flowers open at sunset and close by mid-morning, so the best time for viewing them is while dew still coats the grass.  They face upwards when they first open, allowing themselves to be pollinated by a night-flying moth, and then turn their faces downwards after pollination, hanging their heads in apparent embarrassment after the sex act has occurred.  I guess the flowers at the right were still virgins.

The not-so-delicate Buffalo Bur (Solanum rostratum) will grab you with it's prickly leaves and spiny calyces (burrs) if you aren't watching out carefully.  This nightshade family member, also known as "Kansas Thistle," thrives on disturbed ground and is extremely drought-resistant and an aggressive self-seeder.  At maturity, the main stem breaks off and the dry bush is blown around the prairie like a tumbleweed, scattering seed as it goes.



The strangely named Goat's Beard (Tragopogon dubius) is eaten by grazers and the mature seed-head resembles a giant dandelion showing a large white ball of plumed seeds.   The edible roots of Goat's Beard are reported to taste like parsnip or oysters (do those taste alike?) and the plant contains a milky latex sap that was chewed as gum by our prairie ancestors. 

 
 
 
 
 

 

Moth Mullein (Verbascum blattaria) is another oddly named prairie forb that comes in both white and yellow flowers.  We consider it a Kansas native, although the species is actually native to Eurasia.  The individual blooms are a natural artwork of color and form when examined closely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think I've identified most of these forbs correctly so far in the last two posts, but I lose some confidence on the myriad of small yellow composite-form flowers that inhabit the prairie.  One of those blooming right now is (I think) properly named Prairie Groundself (Packera plattensis).  If I've got the name of this one wrong, I'm sorry.   This one can be poisonous to cattle, but is rarely consumed in enough quantity to cause a clinical problem.

 

 

 

 

   

And somewhere out there amongst the prairie grass, the Killdeer eggs are still incubating in the Kansas sun:

 

Leafsnap!

We interrupt this special series of local Kansas wildfauna to bring you a special announcement.

The local Manhattan Mercury ran/copied an Associated Press article tonight about a new Ipad/Iphone app called "Leafsnap." Using this app on your Iphone or Ipad, you can snap a picture of the leaf from any tree, preferably against a white background, and it searches a growing library of leaf images created by the Smithsonian Institution and returns a likely species name and information on the tree's flowers, fruit, seeds, and bark.

River Birch

I had only a few minutes before darkness tonight, but downloaded the app and it correctly identified a redbud and a river birch.

Did I mention it also collects the GPS where you snapped the picture and creates a "collection" for each user? That the eventual idea is that the app will be used by people everywhere to map trees in their area? That in the future the plan is for anyone to be able to locate a unique tree species in their local area?  At present, the app is just set up for New York, Washington D.C., and the northeast, but it allowed me to create an identity and correctly labeled my location in Kansas.  I am now ProfessorRoush on Leafsnap.

Imagine the same tool for insects, wildflowers, roses, fish....

Imagine the possibilities.....

Find the app on your local Apple appstore, or see it at http://www.leafsnap.com./  It's free.  And I guarantee it will bring back the Cub Scout, Brownie, 4-Her, or freshman biology student in anyone!



(PS:  I wrote this entire blog on my Ipad for the first time.  Except for the picture, which I could not get to upload to blogger from the Ipad either directly or through Photobucket.  I'll work on it.)

Buffalograss II

Buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides) is described in the texts as a gray-green, fine-textured, warm-season grass.  Translation:  you're never going to get a dark green lawn out of this grass (so quit trying!) and it won't green up or start growing until the frosts end here in Kansas, usually around May 1st.   It is, of course, a major component of the short-grass prairie to my west and it thrives both south and north of the Flint Hills.  It is hardy from zones 3-9, and can be found growing naturally from Canada to Texas.

The native species grows 4-6 inches tall, with flowers that top the foliage slightly.  It is quite tolerant to drought and withstands some extensive repeated trampling by heavy quadripeds or bipeds. It is proclaimed as one of the "finest grasses for arid regions" in Greenlee's Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses. There are several breeding programs that are directed at decreasing the overall mature height and increasing the green-ness of this grass, in an effort to develop a perfect turfgrass that never needs mowing, but those goals are still just a far-off dream.  A major obstacle in the commercial acceptance of the grass is that this is a diecious species (with male and female plants), hence the formation of the flowers, and seeded varieties will always have the seedheads to mar (or improve depending upon your point of view) their appearance.  There are, however, female-only cultivars that can be established by vegetative plugs, sans flowers.  'Legacy' seems to have the lead in plug-grown varieties, while 'Bowie' is the up and comer for seeded types.*

Whether or not the flowerheads and subsequent seedheads offend your aesthetic senses tells a lot about the inner gardener in each of us.  Some gardeners will trim their buffalograss lawns at the first sign of a flower (usually these are old men with carefully trimmed topiary scattered around their gardens).  The same group will fertilize their buffalograss on a weekly basis in an effort to give it that "deep-green" look.  These people should not have started a buffalograss lawn in the first place.  At the other extreme are Birkenstock-wearing wild-eyed environmentalists (BWWEE) who think that the blue-green hue of the grass and the yellowish-brown seedheads were the carpet of the Garden of Eden, and who are prone to doff their clothes without warning and stretch out au natural on the sun-warmed buffalograss.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush tends towards the former and I must admit my sentiments lay towards the latter, so there is a bit of a marital clash on that point, thankfully limited to telling me to get off the lawn and go get some clothes on.  Lauren Springer-Ogden, touts buffalograss as a lawn in her book  The Undaunted Garden, and recommended placing small spring bulbs in the lawn to brighten up the beige appearance after winter.

A big advantage of a buffalobrass lawn, in my estimation, is that you can forever give up overseeding or patch-seeding.  Buffalograss spreads from rhizomes as you can see from the picture at the edge of my blacktop at the right, and it will fill in bare spots within a season if minimally cared for.  I've had large areas develop sparse grass in my buffalograss lawn, especially when I was learning to care for it, but they are easy to entice the grass to fill in with a minimum of treatment and fertilizer.

By the way, you may be wondering, is it "buffalograss" or "Buffalo Grass" or "buffalo grass?"  I don't care and the sources I've looked at all are different.  The latter two don't look right to me, so I'm sticking with buffalograss.  Just don't call it buffalograss to an Aussie, because they will think you're talking about St. Augustine grass.

Somewhere out there, this grass will continue to grow in acceptance despite the clamor of all those who want us to grow fungus-ridden Kentucky Bluegrass here in the arid Plains.  I'll never forget standing in line behind a priest several years ago at a very large and well-regarded local nursery in Topeka and listening to him ask a clerk about how to start a buffalograss lawn.  His thought was to decrease the mowing and care needed by the volunteers of the church, a worthy goal in my estimation.  The know-it-all clerk told him that it was too wet in Topeka to grow buffalograss(!) and what he really wanted was a K-31 fescue lawn and she proceeded to sell him a large bag of K-31.  And here I was behind him, just dying to blurt out that I had a buffalograss lawn, and a decent one in my eyes, just a scant 50 miles west.  I kept my own counsel, but a small part of me has always hoped that the clerk's soul shriveled up a bit at her act of buffalograss denial in front of the priest.  

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.