Friends in Low Places

There are many plants I like, and many more I appreciate. The Gray-headed Coneflower, such a pretty symbol of the prairie. The stately, jagged Compass Plant, towering overhead on thick, fuzzy stems. I like marigolds in the garden, and my one variety of tomato that I grow from seeds year to year. I appreciate all the milkweed varieties for their role in Monarch life cycles, and the humble violet for its early cheer after long, bitter winters.

Pennsylvania Smartweed

But there are a couple of plants for which I feel a special affinity. They are the plants that always provide a little thrill whenever I encounter them in the wild, and I greet with a silent "Hello, friend." They are fairly common, humble plants and I have no explanation for the affection I feel beyond a faint image of them at the periphery of my youthful wanderings in nature. Some--if I'm being honest, many--would consider them base weeds, lacking gaudy flowers or attractive foliage, if they consider them at all.

The first I have already featured on this blog: the hardy Pineapple Weed (Matricaria discoidea), denizen of alleys and sun-baked roadsides, with its fringes of leaves topped with plain, pointed cones of disc florets.

The other is Smartweed, more specifically Pennsylvania Smartweed (Persicaria pensylvanica), sometimes referred to as a "noxious weed" of agricultural areas. With pretty clusters of tiny pink and white flowers, Pennsylvania Smartweed is a native that thrives in disturbed areas (much like the Pineapple Weed, though the Smartweed prefers more moisture).

It closely resembles the non-native Lady's Thumb (Persicaria maculata); both have similar flowers and stems with swollen nodes (their family name, Polygonaceae, meaning "many knees," refers to the resemblance of these nodes to knees), and the nodes are wrapped in a membrane called the ochrea. They both may also have a reddish spot on their leaves, from which Lady's Thumb derives its name. Pennsylvania Smartweed and Lady's Thumb can be distinguished by examining the ochrea: Lady's Thumb has a fringe of bristles around the top of the ochrea, which Pennsyvania Smartweed lacks.

I always think of the flowers of these plants as little closed balls, but a closer look reveals a more typical floral structure, with individual flowers opening in turn, being pollinated by a variety of pollinator friends, and then closing again around the developing shiny, dark seed. Though it is considered of little value to humans, Pennsylvania Smartweed provides a source of food for many birds, small mammals and even turtles.

I can't explain my affection for Smartweeds and Pineapple Weeds, beyond hazy nostalgia.  It could be the contrarian in me, determined to appreciate those things that are so often overlooked or even reviled as an offense to horticultural decency. Regardless, I consider them scrappy little friends, popping up here and there with a familiar silhouette among all the diversity the world has to offer.

Pennsylvania Smartweed's smooth-topped ochrea.

The bristle-topped ochrea of Lady's Thumb.

 

Greenway Noir

Every once in a while, a dame strolls out into the world with her camera set on monochrome, and, well, everything looks black and white. Or maybe gray. There's some gray, too.

The Greenway is a different world. Unrecognizable. All the cheery yellow rays of gray-headed coneflower and the lush green foliage of...everything...gone. Replaced with a moody array of black and gray, punctuated with frills of white.

The wetlands are a mottled mirror, gnarled black trees jutting out of the water to grasp at the sky with sinister intent. The once-chatty dickcissel falls silent and casts a skeptical eye upon the bipedal interloper. A rumpled song sparrow croons a desperate, lonesome melody incessantly atop its metal perch, twisting one way and another as in a heavy southern breeze.

Inches of clear, trickling water block the trail at several points, amphibious sentinels sounding their chirping alarm before abandoning their post to disappear into the waterlogged grass as I slosh past. A dark ribbon twists purposefully in the water, attempting to cross the trail. A leech.

A little fellow with comical ears pauses in chewing his dinner in the shadows for a stare before deciding I'm no threat. Red-winged blackbirds, normally ubiquitous and incessant in their noisemaking, have made themselves scarce.

It is a clinical, documentary world, everything reduced to structure and contrast. The warmth bled out with the colors. When the camera roll switches back to full color it is magical; it is like stepping into Oz.

Look Around

So much of our life is spent in autofocus, running on autopilot. We spend most days in a routine of working, relaxing (hopefully), and sleeping, and it can be easy to zone out from our surroundings. Seeing the same buildings, trees, streets day after day causes them to fade into the background, so we only take notice of novelties (the branch that fell after a storm, or the new paint job on a tall wooden fence).

This autofocus can prevent us from truly living in our environment. Sometimes we need to take a moment and focus manually on the world around us. Stop and listen, really listen, to the cardinal singing in your yard. Listen to the one singing down the block. You may notice a different style from one cardinal to the other, where before you heard only "bird."

Stop and look closely at the flowers on the Greenway. There are thousands of gray-headed coneflowers blooming right now, so many they are easy to skim past. But look--this one's disc florets have barely begun to bloom, and that one over there is nearly finished. This one has a tiny bee hard at work, its entire body dusted with fine yellow particles. Would you imagine a coneflower has that much pollen on its plain little rounded flowerhead?

And there--that one has a teeny, almost translucent katydid nymph perched elegantly atop it, mid-meal with bits of pollen stuck to its threadlike antennae and tiny mandibles.And look at that! I have no idea what that fellow is, but he's striking, with deep black wings and an almost muscular-looking hind leg.

So many purple coneflowers! But look at that one--weird! It has ray florets growing straight up out of its center, where all the other coneflowers have plain little disc florets, with the rays only circling the edges. What causes that?

But don't forget to look up occasionally too, lest you miss the possum lumbering across the sidewalk, or the sandhill crane winging its way silently overhead. Tread softly to creep up on all the frogs hanging out by the Great Snail Crossing before they leap away with angry peeps. Watch for snakes on the trail, and then laugh at yourself for jumping every time you see a sinuous twig on the pavement.

How lucky we are to be able to share this world, with so many tiny lives carrying on eating, sleeping, reproducing, day in and day out. Every bird, every insect, every plant we see is trying to live its life the same way as you and me. Some are successful, many aren't. It is worth our time to get to know them and their struggles.

Take a Closer Look

The number of times I have stopped and hunkered down to get a closer look at an interesting spot on the trail only to discover it is poop is...discouraging. Is that a toad on the sidewalk? Maybe a moth of some kind? A snail? Nope, it's poop. All poop.

So you can imagine my delight at hunkering down on the trail to inspect a little dark lump no bigger than my fingertip and discovering, not poop, but a tiny frog. We eyed each other, blinking in the bright morning sun, enjoying the rough warmth of the pavement before going our separate ways.

I sometimes suspect I am the butt of a cosmic joke, rewarding me with the occasional frog in order to trick me into examining poop on a regular basis. If I were a more intrepid naturalist, I would embrace the opportunity and try to identify its source as enthusiastically as I try to learn the neighborhood bugs and flowers. But alas, I cannot bring myself to that. Yet I will continue to inspect the occasional shapely lump on the sidewalk without shame (though I will probably check to make sure I am alone on the trail first).

And again, on the same sojourn, the inspection paid off. This time, I was on the ground taking pictures of teeny grasshopper nymphs, sweeping my hand along the grass to flush them from their hideouts, when I nearly put my hand on a dark gray and white smudge of bird dropping on a leaf.

The initial disgusted recoil gave way to surprise. Something about the symmetry of the color, or the placement of it, caused me to take a closer look.That wasn't bird poo, but rather a moth that cleverly mimics the unappealing droppings. I was easily fooled from inches away; I could imagine how birds or other predators would be similarly deceived. Closer inspection reveals a rather charming little moth, with elegant long antennae and a soft white body, the hind end of the wings a mottled brown like burnt marshmallow.

Eucosma giganteana

So whether it is a bit of scat that somehow resembles a frog, or a moth that resembles bird droppings, it pays to take a second look.