Summer of 1993 - More Plants

 Today, I have a selection of more plants from the summer of 1993. Again, this is driven only by what I have pictures of. There are some pictures that I can only guess what the plant was. Forget using those! Remember, this was back when you had to have film and wait days to see if you got anything good. And I only had a moderately good camera at that time. It was better than an Instamatic, but I wasn't as careful as I might have been. Or perhaps I was trying to take pictures with one hand while holding Chips with the other. Who knows!?

Everyone loves water lilies. This is the common water lily, Nymphaea alba. It's native, as are all of the plants I'll show you today. It likes water at depths of 1-3 feet, so it was very happy in our constructed ponds.

Golden ragwort, now Pakera aurea (it used to be Senecio), is a lovely open woodland and meadow flower. One thing that is a lot of fun about this one is that the buds are purple, so it's a big "surprise" when the flowers turn out to be yellow. That also grows here.

Many of you will likely recognize this plant. It's common in rich woodland of Michigan. This is great Solomon's Seal, Polygonatum biflorum. You can see how the flowers hang in clusters of two, biflorum, under the leaves.

Don't forget Chips... he liked plants too, just usually when they provided nice shade.

This one is Golden Alexanders, Zizia aurea. It has a lot of lookalikes, so you have to pay attention to the leaves. The most common mis-identification is with Wild Parsnip. I have to keep looking them up to remember the difference myself. But the Alexanders have compound leaves with 5-7 oval leaflets. Like the other plants featured today, except for the water lilies, it will tolerate everything from wet meadows to woodlands.

My final plant for the day is one I've only ever seen that one summer. It doesn't grow in Michigan except for a couple of odd finds in the SW part of the state. Again, it will tolerate wet or normal soil, but it does like limestone, and is a transition plant from prairie to forest, like the savannahs that were being reestablished.

And, I didn't take its picture. I drew it. The reason I'm not a very good artist is that I don't have the patience. I only drew the flowers, not the leaves. But I know what it is anyway. There are only a couple of choices, and the truly rare one is far west of where I was. This is Shooting Star, Primula meadia (used to be Dodecatheon). I'd love to find more some day. It can grow to about 20 inches tall. I think this one was maybe 12-14 inches.

Tomorrow, I have some more flowers. I learned quite a few that summer that I don't have pictures of, but I have a couple of prairie plants.

In other news: I'm trying really hard to get the North Country Trail book ready to go to my advance fact-checking readers. I worked my brain to a mushy pulp today. I think it will be ready to send tomorrow.

See Alien Plants