One of our earliest woodland flowers, this plant earns its common name by decorating acres of forest. A close look at the flowers reveals bright pink stamens and pink veins on the petals.
For a more thorough description, see the Claytonia virginica reference page.
Weird little flowers that pop out of the ground almost pre-bloomed, while the leaves are still forming themselves.
After a while, the plants start to lose their color and the leaves start to unfold, and the plants look more like ordinary denizens of the temperate woods.
For more pictures, see the Caulophyllum thalictroides reference page.
The brightly colored fruits are what you notice about Bittersweet. Two species of Celastrus, a native one (Celastrus scandens) and this invasive Asian import, are found wild in our area, but the invader has become much more common. It has rounder leaves than the native species, and the native bears its fruits in dangling clusters, whereas Oriental Bittersweet holds its fruits straight out from the stem. These vines were fruiting along the Montour Trail in Moon Township.
For a description of the species, see the Celastrus orbiculatus reference page.
The species name usitatissimum literally means that this is the most commonly used species of flax, and so it is—the source of real linen and flaxseed oil, as well as the source of the purest blue in the cottage garden. It has established itself as an occasional volunteer, especially in areas where it might have been grown commercially at one time: these plants were growing at the edge of a cornfield in Findlay Township.
The flower heads look like tiny marigolds, but the seeds are what you are most likely to notice. They catch in your clothes (or in an animal’s fur, but they almost seem designed for human-made fabrics) and take a ride to some other location that, with any luck, will be hospitable to Bidens bipinnata. These plants were growing against a fence in Beechview.
For a description of the species, see the Bidens bipinnata reference page.
