Blooming rain

Moth mullein

 

Rain and raindrops just won’t go away this week. Soaked is the operative word. Me, the dogs, the forest, everything.

Some plants around the mountain don’t seem to mind the lack of sun. Others close up tighter than me in my cabin, hiding away from those nasty raindrops and waiting for the sun to reappear.

One of the plants that is blooming despite the weather is the moth mullein, an immigrant that’s only been on these shores for about 300 years. It was first documented in Pennsylvania in 1818 and had reached Michigan by 1840. The flower also comes in a yellow shade, but I’ve never seen that one here. The biennial plant originated in north Africa and Eurasia and was apparently deliberately introduced here with the early settlers, as so many of our wildflowers that like meadow and forest edges seem to be. I wish I could find out more about that 1818 reference. Who brought it over?

The plant is used as an herbal remedy, apparently an effective one, for asthma and other respiratory disorders, so I can imagine some doctor or self-taught medicine person wanting it in what was then an almost non-existent arsenal of things that worked to heal people. Apparently an extract of the flowers is good for ear infections, too. I’m vaguely tempted to try it that way, but I probably won’t.

Colors of fall

 The sunlight this morning was especially nice, making even dry and withered plants look more golden than brownish.  In the bright light of midday, the mullein is more the color of a cigar.  The goldenrod still looks golden, though.  About the only flowers left are the tiny fleabanes that are nearly lost in the yellowing grasses.

 This isn’t a true fall color change. It’s more a drying of the forest from lack of rain. Perhaps that lack is forcing the leaves to change sooner than the temperature and hours of daylight would indicate.  I just hope some leaves are left to produce the prettier fall colors.

At the corner of summer

Common mullein

Summer is about to officially appear, arriving after the year’s longest day and shortest night. Roundtop already has the look of summer. The tiny first buds of spring are long gone. The summer flowers are beginning to appear. Common mullein is beginning to bloom, though the plants are still no more than 3 ft. tall, not yet reaching their full height of 4-5 ft.

The blooms appear slowly on the cone stalk, rising from the bottom to eventually reach the top of the cone. By the time the blooms reach the top, the stalk will be at its full height. I always thought it would be pretty spectacular if the entire cone was blooming at the same time, but mullein doesn’t work that way. Several rows bloom at the same time, but the lower rows are done by the time the blooms appear higher on the cone. So a few rows of small yellow flowers blooming at the same time is the way of this plant.

I saw my first snake of the summer on Sunday. It was a black snake, moving under a bush too quickly for me to even snap a photo with my phone camera. The chickens were nearby and either didn’t see it or didn’t care about it. I tried looking under the juniper bush, behind the juniper and around the juniper bush but never saw more than the back half of the snake. I’m guessing it was about a 4 ft. long snake, not one of the larger black snakes.

Generally, I don’t see many snakes here. I’ve seen water snakes, ribbon snakes, garter snakes and a milk snake, a few or several snakes a year. Black snakes are the most common. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a few copperheads are around, but I’ve never seen one here. I hope that continues, and especially I hope that continues during my sessions with the kids at camp. Last year a boy momentarily caught a brightly colored juvenile eastern water snake in his minnow net, and until it escaped and I got a good look at it (moving faster than any snake you could imagine), I wasn’t completely sure he hadn’t netted a copperhead. I was greatly relieved to see he had not.

Copperheads like rocky areas and wetland areas; a stone-covered stream bank would fall into their preferred habitat. When I’ve seen copperheads on hikes, they have been in rocky areas with no water nearby. But all land-based snakes will head down to streams in dry times, because that’s where dinner is likely to be found.

Late summer blooming

Common mullein

I’ve always liked mullein flowers. I don’t know why. Partly it has to do with the size of the stalk they are on. The plant in this photo is a good 5 ft. tall, and the flowering end is about a foot long. The flowers have a lovely scent, though you have to put your nose right up to the flowers in order to smell it—at least if you’re a human. Beware of bees around mullein. They apparently like that scent too.


Mullein is an introduced plant, though it’s been here as long as the first settlers and long enough for Native Americans to find herbal uses for it. Typically, it’s still referred to as a “weed” that inhabits “waste areas,” and that just sounds so derogatory and insulting to me. The flowers don’t all bloom at once, which probably limits its appeal somewhat. In today’s photo, I would say that more than an average number of the flowers are blooming at once on this plant. Sometimes I can only find 3-4 blooms on the stalk. The others are either not out yet or over with.

American goldfinch and indigo buntings don’t mind that the plant isn’t a native. They are happy to eat the seeds. Some insects are said to use the plants as a winter shelter, burrowing deep inside the brown stalks.

Around Roundtop, the blooms typically appear now, so it’s a late summer bloomer. And if you’re keeping track, a mullein in bloom is yet another sign that the summer season is past its midpoint.

Not again! (oh, yes)

When will it ever end? I’m starting to think there are few truly native plants around. Today’s photo is of the mullein, a common wild plant with many medicinal uses and cool common names. But, as I seem to discover All The Time, it is not a native plant.

Does that surprise you? It sure as heck surprised me, and I’m getting tired of it. I’m starting to wonder just what this landscape around here might have looked like before all these non-native plants were released. And those non-native plants are so sneaky, too. They are very good at finding a foothold and pretending they have always been here.

Take the mullein for instance. It’s got a whole host of common names that make it sound as though it has always been around—Quaker Rouge, for one. The Pennsylvania Dutch call it Wolla or Wolla Graut (they smoke it). Native Americans used it regularly, usually for congestion, which brings me to one of its most common names—lungwort. Supposedly, one way to use the plant is to take its fresh leaves, pour boiling water over them and then inhale the infusion. I think I’ll give that one a try myself, perhaps tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Of the plant’s many common names, my personal favorite is My Lady’s Flannel. Flannels were an older name for wash cloths and refers to the soft, velvety leaves of the plant.

So I think I’m going to make a mid-year resolution. I hereby resolve that I’m no longer going to post photos of non-native wild plants anymore. Gee, I hope that doesn’t mean I’ll have to give up posting photos. Stay tuned.