Tag Archives: ranunculaceae

“It Sounds Seussian”

Posted on by
Reply

My friend P wrote that when I posted a picture of purple-headed sneezeweed (Helenium flexuosum) on social media. I included a few pictures in my August 7 post here, but want to share a few more. It’s such a photogenic flower!  That’s a pearl crescent (Phyciodes tharos) sitting on the flower head.

Here are a few more pictures from my August ramblings on the banks of the Potomac.

 

 

fogfruit, aka frogfruit (Phyla lanceolata; Verbenaceae)

 

 

 

 

blue vervain (Verbena hastata; Verbenaceae)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

riverbank goldenrod (Solidago racemosa; Asteraceae)

 

 

 

tall meadow rue (staminate flowers; Thalictrum pubescens; Ranunculaceae)

 

 

Just Couldn’t Help Myself

Posted on by
Reply

Monday dawned sunny and cool, beautiful weather for wildflower hunting. Despite my resolution to stay put during this health crisis, I decided it might be worth trying Rachel Carson Conservation Park. It was a good call – for most of the time I was there, I had the place to myself.

That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that it’s too early in the season for some of the flowers I wanted to see. But there were other things blooming, like round-lobed hepatica (Anemone americana; Ranunculaceae).The flower colors can vary from white through pale blue to a deep, almost purple blue, and sometimes even pink.

The white-flowering hepatica [right] looks a lot like another member of the same family, Thalictrum thalictroides, or rue anemone [below]. The leaves are entirely different, though. Rue anemone flowers are almost always pure white, but sometimes they can be a little pink, with reddish leaves.

If There’s One, Maybe There Are More

Posted on by
3

Some of our spring ephemerals are large and showy, like Virginia bluebells. Some are smaller yet also showy, like trout lily. But many are quite small, and not showy at all, unless you see them up close and en masse.

That’s the case with round-lobe hepatica (Anemone americana, formerly Hepatica nobilis var. obtusa; Ranunculaceae).

Last Thursday, I walked over to the area where I photographed a single clump of these flowers a month ago. All by themselves like this, they really stand out. That’s not usually the case, though. These little charmers love to hide in the leaf litter.

this is an unusually open location (click to enlarge and see the flowers)

I’d heard rumors that there were more to be found in that area, so I spent a long time walking slowly and looking for anything colorful. As my eyes acclimated I started seeing them – first one, then another and another. In an area where I thought there was only one plant, there were a dozen.

Check out the variation in color. I did minimal processing of these photos in order to preserve the range of color, from dark blue to pure white.

All these plants were putting up just a few flowers. The clump pictured in the first three photos is unusually large and robust, and showier since it’s growing in an open area.

In this photo to the right you can see a few leaves below the white blossoms. Round-lobe hepatica is hibernal, meaning the leaves grow in the summer and stay through autumn and winter, dying back in the spring as the plant blooms.

The flowers pictured below are a very pale blue.

Round-lobe hepatica is one of the first plants to bloom in the spring; it can be found in most of Maryland except for part of the coastal plain. Look for it now on wooded slopes where the soil is relatively dry.(I’ll get back to the whole native/alien thing soon, really.)

Waking Up

Posted on by
5

Monday, March 5 – took a quick walk on the Cabin John Trail. Most of the green forbs were aliens, though the new foliage of a few ephemerals was coming up.

There was one small clump of round-lobe hepatica (Anemone americana; Ranunculaceae) with a few buds opening. It’s early, but not too early, for this species to be flowering.

And a few clumps of Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica; Boraginaceae), one of which was starting to bloom. This is quite early, but with the ephemerals I often see one or two blooming on either end of the bell curve. Peak bloom for bluebells is probably at least three weeks away.

 

King of the Meadow

Posted on by
1

Tuesday, June 20: a disappointing start to the day’s botanizing. The river was finally low enough to allow me to get out to my favorite bedrock terrace, but very little was actually blooming there, except an invasive alien St. John’s wort and, bizarrely, this goldenrod. Um…. it’s still June, y’all!

From there I went in search of basil balm; I found the plants, but nope, not blooming yet.

And then, walking along the towpath, I spotted this. Convenient, considering what I wrote six weeks ago: “On my to-do list for later this year is to find a stand of these and examine them more closely.”

 

 

This is Thalictrum pubescens (Ranunculaceae), commonly known as tall meadow rue or king of the meadow. It’s easily identified in Maryland, as it’s the only Thalictrum here whose stamens stand upright (other bisexual Thalictrums have drooping stamens).

It has a typical Thalictrum compound leaf.

 

 

 

 

Notice how each little subleaflet has three lobes.

 

 

 

Tall meadow rue is polygamo-dioecious: each plant bears either male or female flowers, except for some plants which bear both male and bisexual flowers. This is a male flower [right], consisting only of sepals and stamens (no petals). Typically there are four or five sepals, and many stamens.

Many of these [left] are bisexual flowers, with both stamens and pistils. Typically there will be anywhere from four to fifteen pistils.

 

 

 

Tall meadow rue grows mostly in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, and in some parts of the South and Mid-West. It’s threatened in Indiana. The Maryland Biodiversity Project has records for it in every county except Washington and Somerset. Look for it growing in wet areas, in sun or shade. Along the banks of the C&O Canal, for example.