A Winter Buffet

Indiangrass

Sometimes when I'm walking on the Greenway I imagine I'm a bird, and speculate on how I would fill my belly in these long, bug-free winter months. 

I remember the flowers during the summer, bright colors a-flutter with bees and butterflies dining on pollen and nectar. All the frenzied activity of those sunny days leading up to...this. Brown, desiccated sticks topped with plain seed heads. Occasionally a stubborn, withered leaf or two clings after all its companions have long since fallen to the crunchy jumble hidden beneath a thin blanket of snow.

 

Little Bluestem

But those seed heads are a lifeline for the goldfinches and chickadees living on the Greenway. The barren swaths of suburbia offer little to our intrepid feathered friends.  The lawns of nearby subdivisions are a Siberian waste, devoid of food or shelter, save for a few small trees and shrubs.Here and there small garden patches may offer a bit of sustenance; these, however, are designed primarily for people's pleasure.

Tall Coreopsis (photo taken at F.W. Kent Park)

The Sycamore Greenway, like the prairies of old, is--well, not quite a veritable buffet. I suspect the flavor and variety on offer in the winter is more along the lines of a Depression-era breadline. It will keep you alive during the lean times, but it probably won't be as satisfying and pleasurable as can be found in the halcyon days of summer. 

As always, I am partial to the Gray-headed Coneflower. Their matchstick-heads crumble with satisfying ease into long, flat seeds. Tall coreopsis seems a popular choice; its close-packed seed heads often prove empty upon close inspection. Same with Cup Plant, its ragged remnants of cupped leaves clasping the blackened stem, and Prairie Dock, with huge, dappled basal leaves resembling a shed lizard skin resting on the ground far below the picked-over seed heads. 

Prairie Dock leaf

The fluffier seeds--cattail, field thistle--seem less favored, although I have observed another fluffy-seeded flower not common on the Greenway, Blazing star (Liatris sp.) being long since picked-clean at other locations. Asters seeds, too, seem to go quickly, leaving empty, star-shaped heads on branching stems low near the ground. 

Another of my favorites, Illinois bundleflower, takes a bit more effort, enclosing its shiny chestnut-colored seeds in flat pods that form a charming spherical rosette, each a small sculpture against the dreary sameness of winter. I imagine these to be a heartier meal than the flimsy, non-leguminous seeds, though that is probably down to my strong pro-bean stance more than any evidence I have seen.

Illinois Bundleflower

And not to ignore the grasses! Indiangrass, Big bluestem, and Little bluestem all carry nutritious seeds on their swaying stems. To my eye, they seem insignificant, but for a hungry junco in midwinter they may be a lifesaver.