Lesser Celandine continues its rapid conquest of the stream valley in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon. A large patch is a beautiful sight and an ecological disaster, but for now let us just concentrate on the beautiful sight.
For a fuller description, see Ficaria Verna at the Flora Pittsburghensis reference site.
Not a common plant around here, but locally abundant. The shockingly blue flowers and palmate leaves are distinctive: nothing else remotely like these Larkspurs is blooming in early spring. These plants were part of a large colony in the woods near Mayview State Hospital, where they were blooming in April. The pictures were taken on film in the year 2000, and sat forgotten in a box of slides until recently.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
DELPHÍNIUM [Tourn] L. LARKSPUR. Sepals 5, irregular, petal-like ; the upper one prolonged into a spur at the base. Petals 4 (rarely only 2, united into one), irregular, the upper pair continued backward into long spurs which are inclosed in the spur of the calyx, the lower pair with short claws. Pistils 1-5, forming many-seeded pods in fruit. — Leaves palmately divided or cut. Flowers in terminal racemes. (Name from Delphin, in allusion to the shape of the flower, which is sometimes not unlike the classical figures of the dolphin.)
D. tricórne Michx. (DWARF L.) Root a tuberous cluster; stem simple, 1.5-9 dm. high; leaves deeply 5-parted, their divisions unequally 3-5-cleft; the lobes linear, acutish; raceme few-flowered, loose; flowers bright blue, sometimes white, occasionally numerous; spur straightish, ascending; pods strongly diverging. — W. Pa. to Minn., Neb., and southw. Apr., May.
Formerly known as Ranunculus ficaria, Lesser Celandine is a European import that is rapidly colonizing our stream valleys. Only seven years ago we wrote that it was “not very common around here except in a few stream valleys,” but since then it has popped up a number of other places where it was previously unknown. These particular flowers were blooming in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, where the plant was not to be found in 2015, but has since established some sizeable clumps and is rapidly becoming a notable feature of the early-spring flora.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
RANÚNCULUS [Tourn.] L. CROWFOOT. BUTTERCUP. Annuals or perennials; stem-leaves alternate. Flowers solitary or somewhat corymbed, yellow, rarely white. (Sepals and petals rarely only 3, the latter often more than 5. Stamens occasionally few.) — (A Latin name for a little frog; applied by Pliny to these plants, the aquatic species growing where frogs abound.)
§ 1. FICÀRIA Boiss. Roots tuberous-thickened; sepals 3; petals about 8, yellow, with a free scale over the honey gland.
R. ficària L. (LESSER CELANDINE.) Glabrous and somewhat succulent; leaves basal on long stoutish petioles, ovate, rounded, deeply cordate, subcrenate; flowers scapose, 2 cm. in diameter. (Ficaria Karst.) — Wet places, occasional; Mass. to D. C. Apr., May. (Introd. from Eurasia.)
A garden ornamental that has made its escape into the wild, this vine has not yet become an invasive pest here, but is fairly common now in vacant lots and other unexpected places in the city. It covers itself with little white flowers (usually four-parted, but with a fair number of five-parted variants) in late summer, with occasional blooming branches up to frost. These plants were growing wild on a bank in Beechview, where they were blooming in early September.
A close relative of Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa), this plant has smaller round tufts of white flowers. But its most striking feature is these berries, white with black pupil-like spots. Doll’s Eyes is certainly a descriptive name, but perhaps Insane Muppet Eyes would be even more descriptive. (The bright magenta stem adds a certain something.) This plant grew in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, where it was fruiting in late August.
Do not eat the berries. They want to kill you. Can’t you see it in their eyes? Another name for this plant is “White Baneberry,” and you should take the “bane” part seriously.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
ACTAÈA L. BANEBERRY, COHOSH. Sepals 4 or 6, falling off when the flower expands. Petals 4-10, small, flat, spatulate, on slender claws. Stamens numerous, with slender white filaments. Pistil single; stigma sessile, depressed, 2-lobed. Seeds smooth, flattened, and packed horizontally in 2 rows. — Perennials, with ample 2-3-ternately compound termina! raceme of white flowers. (From aktea, actaea, ancient names of the Elder, transferred by Linnaeus.)
A. álba (L.) Mill. (WHITE B.) Leaflets more incised and sharply toothed [than those of A. rubra]; raceme ellipsoid; petals slender, mostly truncate at the end, appearing to be transformed stamens; pedicels thickened in fruit, as large as the peduncle and red, the globular-ovoid berries white. — Rich woods, flowering a week or two later than the other [which flowers in April and May], and more common westward and southward.
