Month: October 2023

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Common Milkweed, Hidden Beauty

Gusty winds tease common milkweed seeds from their pods.

Its beauty isn’t on the outside. Common milkweed (Asclepias Syriaca), despite its attractiveness to monarch butterflies, isn’t the showiest of plants. Its large, smooth leaves and warty pods lack the delicacy of many native plants. Milkweed’s beauty is hidden within its pods.

Tiny green pods arise from fertilized pink, aromatic flowers.

Over the summer, small, perfumed pink flowers are fertilized and form tiny green pods or follicles. As they ripen, they grow to three-to-five inches in length. Inside, oval-shaped flat, brown seeds tethered to white, satiny strands designed for wind dispersal are arranged around a central column. Each is neatly tucked into a crevice on a membrane attached to the top and bottom of the pod.

Oval-shaped seeds attached to satiny strands are neatly arranged around a central column.

Wind fluffs the silky fibers into parachutes to disperse the seeds.

When the seeds mature, the pods dry and crack open. As wind enters the split pods, the silky strands unfurl and balloon into parachutes. One by one the seeds spin out of the pod like shimmering wind-borne dancers that glow in the autumn sunlight. I love to watch them sail — sometimes floating on a gentle breeze, sometimes scurrying on gusty winds. The empty pod is pretty too: Cream-to-gold colored and smooth inside, except for the center membrane, which is grooved to anchor individual seeds.

The empty pod is satiny smooth except for the grooved central column where the seeds were attached.

These lovely seeds used to be rare in Twin Cities urban areas, but now many residents grow one or more of 14 native milkweed species in their yard and boulevard gardens to attract monarchs and other butterflies.¹

Milkweed plants are the sole host plant for monarch butterflies.

¹When handling milkweed, it’s best to wear gloves and eye protection. The plant’s milky latex sap can cause eye and skin irritation on contact. According to several sources, the sap is slightly toxic to humans if eaten in large amounts. Animals are also affected by it, but most avoid the plant. This substance helps to make monarch butterfly caterpillars unpalatable to birds.

Sources and Further Reading

Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden Common Name Plant List

Milkweeds of Iowa and Minnesota (Xerxes.org)

Minnesota Milkweeds for Monarchs

Monarch Joint Venture

Spreading Milkweed, not Myths

 

 

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Autumn’s Bountiful Berries

Last May, blossoms delicate in form and scent ornamented woodlands and trails. Their luminous beauty lured early bees and butterflies to pollinate them. All summer the tiny ovaries slowly swelled. Fragile blossoms morphed into bright green beads, whose soft curves plumped and ripened to globes of rose, fiery red, purple, frosty blue and pearly white. Sun, heat, rain and pollinators concocted a gift lovely to look at and brimming with energy — a feast for birds and mammals throughout autumn and winter. Here’s a small sampling of nature’s autumn gifts:

Migrating songbirds, as well as turkeys and grouse, favor the white berry-like drupes of gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa).

Wild plum trees (Prunus americana) provide food for mammals, such as deer, raccoons and foxes. Songbirds, turkeys and other birds will also eat them.

Pale dogwood berries (Cornus obliqua) are high in fat content and are eaten by songbirds and mammals, such as chipmunks, white-footed mice and squirrels.

Highbush cranberry (Viburnum opulus spp.) is not a true cranberry. According to the USDA’s plant guide, the fruit often isn’t eaten until late winter. Repeated thawing and freezing makes it more palatable.

Though carrion flowers (Smilax sp.) smell rotten, their berries do not, and are winter food for songbirds and a few mammals, such as Virginia opossum and raccoons.

False Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosa) fruit are often pink with red spots, but also can be solid red. They are eaten by woodland birds, such as the veery, and by white-footed mice.

Sources:

Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden Common Name Plant List

Illinois Wildflowers

Minnesota Wildflowers