Native Plants

My Love is Like a Red, Red…

~ shoreacres ~ 61 Comments

 

Milkweed!  Red milkweed, that is: Asclepias rubra. Despite its common name, the flowers usually are shades of pink, giving rise to a second common name: tall pink bog milkweed. On a recent visit to the Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve, most plants appeared pink rather than red, but these isolated examples of deeply saturated color seemed to meet Singhurst and Hutchins’s description of “dull red.”

Red Milkweed grows in pitcher plant bogs, seeps, and wet pine savannas from New Jersey south to Florida and west to Texas. As much as four feet tall, its terminal umbels are easily spotted above its companion plants.

Red milkweed ~ Asclepias rubra
Tall pink bog milkweed ~ also Asclepias rubra

Like other milkweed species, A. rubra already has been busy forming its attractive follicles, or seed pods. This sleek, smooth example, nearly four inches long, may have riped and released its seeds since my visit.

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Big Thicket, Little Thicket

~ shoreacres ~ 57 Comments

 

One of the most fascinating aspects of the area of Texas known as the Big Thicket is the manner in which longleaf pines, multiple species of ferns, carnivorous plants, and sun-loving wildflowers mix and mingle together, forming a marvelous backdrop for the variety of native orchids also found there.

Above, a grass pink orchid (Calopogon tuberosus) contrasts with the trunk of an enormous long-leaf pine (Pinus palustris).  

Here, a grass pink is framed by ferns. While I’ve not yet learned to identify the several Big Thicket fern species with certainty, I believe these to be common bracken ferns (Pteridium aquilinum).

Finally, these beauties are framed within a cluster of branches that appear to have been burned. Fire is an important tool for maintaining longleaf pine uplands and wetland pine savannas, but pitcher plants and other orchid companions also respond well to periodic fires, growing back profusely from the nutrient-enhanced soil that remains after the flames have done their work.

Here, the orchids have taken advantage of those nutrients and increased sunlight to rise up in  a little thicket of their own: a perfect metaphor for Big Thicket life.

 

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What a Difference a Week Makes

~ shoreacres ~ 69 Comments
Fewflower milkweed, April 26

Nestled among the ferns lining the boardwalk at the Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve, this pretty orange milkweed fairly glowed. Initially, its color tempted me to think I’d found butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), but the purplish cast to the flower’s center, the single stem, and thin leaves suggested otherwise.

In fact, I’d come across fewflower milkweed, Asclepias lanceolata. A species native to coastal plains of the United States from New Jersey to Florida to southeastern Texas, its bright, reddish-orange flowers frequently appear in marshes, or wet pine barrens characterized by well-draining sandy or loamy soil. A host plant for monarch, queen, and soldier butterfly larvae, A. lanceolata also provides nectar for adult butterflies and insects.

Tall, with lance-shaped leaves opposite one another on the stem, the plant  branches near the top into one to three umbels.  Each contains an average of only seven flowers, giving the milkweed its common name: fewflower. When I returned to the preserve a week after finding the plant with partially opened flowers, nearly all in its three umbels had opened, making its few flowers very impressive, indeed.

The same fewflower milkweed on May 3

 

Comments always are welcome.
Extra credit if you already know which song gave rise to the title.