Garden

by

Solomon’s Seal

Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum variegatum) form colonies in open woodlands and shade gardens.

Like tiny pairs of bells, the flowers of Solomon’s Seal hang beneath arching branches, softening the landscape of open woodlands and shade gardens in May and June. Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum biflorum) is one of my favorite spring wildflowers. I was intrigued by the plant’s name when I first spotted it growing in the open deciduous woods at our cabin in East Central Minnesota.

How did it get its name? It refers to the rhizome, or underground stem, seen by few unless it’s dug up. (I’ve never seen it myself, but it is described as being rough and knobby.) 

When each year’s stem dies back, it creates a circular scar with markings that supposedly reminded observers of seals used by royalty in ancient times. Why it was named after King Solomon isn’t clear. A closely related plant, Polygonatum odoratum, is native to the Middle East. (We plant it in our gardens today.) Legend has it that the rhizome’s scars resembled Hebrew letters and reminded people of the seals used on royal documents. They named it after King Solomon to honor his wisdom and ability to heal.

Flower buds of Solomon’s seal will open into paired bells on slender maroon stalks.

Whether or not it’s a plant of legend, Solomon’s Seal is an important member of deciduous woodlands and shade gardens. In its native form, P. biflorum grows in Eastern North America from Saskatchewan to the Atlantic Ocean, south to Florida and west to Texas. Graceful, arching stalks and oval-to-lance-shaped leaves and berries are highlights. Leaf color is a bright lime-to-medium-green surface with whitish or pale green below. In May and June, long rows of delicate ivory-green flowers hang beneath the leaves and look like pairs of tiny bells. Bumblebees and many other species of native bees collect nectar and pollen from them. 

In autumn, leaf color softens from bright green to lemon yellow, gold and light brown.

In early autumn, green berries ripen to blue-black spheres beneath the leaves. The berries are toxic to humans, but are a delight for birds, especially members of the thrush family, such as American robins, bluebirds and veeries. (Our berries are always eaten while they’re still green!) Leaves morph from green to lemon yellow and gold before drying to brown.

Hairy Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum pubescens) is similar to P. biflorum, with the addition of fine, short hairs that grow along the underside of the leaf veins. It’s also slightly larger and has larger flowers than P. biflorum. Both grow well in shade/partial shade gardens. They prefer moist, rich soil, but will also tolerate dry conditions. Both varieties grow well in eastern North America, primarily in USDA and Canadian hardiness zones 3-8 and 3a-8b respectively. 

Indigenous peoples used Polygonatum in medicine and cooking. The rhizome was ground up and used as a poultice for wounds and bruises, and as an anti-inflammatory agent to treat a variety of respiratory, digestive and connective tissue problems. It was cooked and eaten similar to a potato and also was ground up to make flour.

Polygonatum odoratum, which is native to Eurasia, is a popular garden plant, especially P. odoratum variegatum. The leaves are egg-shaped, and variegated in icy green and ivory. When the shoots emerge and begin to unwrap in early spring, they are often streaked with pale pink, as are the early leaves.

The emerging tips of variegated Solomon’s seal are streaked with light pink.

In my partial sun/shade garden, I grow P. odoratum variegatum (USDA/Canada hardiness zones 3-9/3b-9a) with sweet woodruff, wild geranium, painted ferns, ghost ferns, Canada wild ginger and in one area of the garden, with a selection of variegated hosta.

Variegated Solomon’s seal grows well with ferns, wild Canada ginger and sweet woodruff in my shade garden.

Sources and Further Reading

Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden (This website features excellent photos of all parts of each plant.)

Missouri Department of Conservation

Sanders, Jack. (2014). The Secrets of Wildflowers: A Delightful Feast of Little-Known Facts, Folklore and History. Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, Pp. 80-82.

TN Nursery

Wisconsin Horticulture

 

by

Spring Blues

Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) grow under an ash tree in our backyard.

They appeared early this year. Fresh green tips of Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) pushed through bare, frost-free soil in February. When they began to bloom, a spring snowstorm buried them beneath a shimmering blanket. Though not a native wildflower, their Russian and Turkish origins outfit them well for the toughest of Minnesota winters. The melting snow watered them, spurring growth and bloom. I love their ultramarine blue radiance, a color infrequent among flowers. They attract many early native bees and honey bees to our urban garden when few other spring ephemerals are blooming.1 Our backyard hums with the gentle drone of bees — the first I’ve heard since last November. I’ve missed them.

1If you don’t have Siberian squill in your garden, it’s best not to plant them. A non-native, they can become invasive, especially near woodlands and other natural areas.

by

Common Snowdrops

Common snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) blossom early this winter.

Common snowdrops popped early this winter; the calendar said February, but the air felt like March. First, creamy teardrops dangled from blue-green stalks nestled in shredded hosta leaves and fallen spruce cones. The teardrops opened to pearly bells etched in spring green. They look fragile as they quiver in the wind, but these hardy bulbs, which are native to Northern Europe, parts of Asia and the Middle East, usually grow and bloom through snow cover and cold. Even with this year’s mild winter, these fresh blossoms are a joyful sight, a symbol of warming sun and soil.

Further Reading:

Wisconsin Horticulture

by

October’s Painted Lady

A painted lady’s (Vanessa cardui) underwing sports four eyespots and pink patches. It is nectaring on asters (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium).

Mild October days bring butterflies to our garden. We commonly see red admirals, painted ladies, commas and tortoiseshells, but in 2022, I’ve seen fewer numbers of butterflies all season. The only painted lady (Vanessa cardui) that I’ve spotted appeared in late October on a mild, sunny day (77°F/25°C). 

It spent hours nectaring on late-blooming asters in the company of many bees, and flew energetically around the garden every few minutes. While most of the native bees perished in a hard frost (24°F/-4°C) more than two weeks ago, a few hearty bumblebees survived, as did the honey bee colonies. Bees and butterfly got along well and were simply focused on collecting nectar for energy. As I gardened nearby, the gentle humming of the bees was soothing and complemented the rustling of falling scarlet-red maple leaves.

A painted lady’s upper wings carry black and orange markings with a few white spots near the wingtips.

Two days later, the painted lady disappeared from our garden on a warm wind heading south. I miss them during the long northern winter. Also known as the “thistle butterfly,” (because thistles are a favorite food source for both caterpillars and adults), painted ladies migrate to wintering grounds in the southern United States and Mexico to return in late spring.

Further Reading:

Weber, Larry. (2006). Butterflies of the North Woods. Duluth, Minnesota: Kollath & Stensaas Publishing.

Painted Ladies – Nature, Garden, Life

Painted Lady Butterfly – Wisconsin Horticulture

Cherish the (Butterfly) Ladies – UW-Milwaukee Field Station

by

Early Spring Native Flowers: Hepatica

This year, I look for spring close to home. I haven’t hiked in a nature preserve yet, and we’ve stayed home from our cabin. I miss those places, but I’m enjoying many simple delights right here, including a few native spring flowers. While bloodroot blooms fade, another spring native, hepatica, buds and opens.

Round-lobed hepatica (Hepatica nobilis) blooms range from white to purple in color.

Hepatica, liverleaf, or liverwort, is named for its leaves that are three-lobed and can be a brownish-bronze color (like the human liver) at winter’s end. Each spring, the fuzzy flower stalks push up through the old leaves to bloom in pastels ranging from white to purple. In Minnesota, hepatica can begin blooming anytime from early April into May — before the trees leaf out. Bees, early butterflies, beetles and flies pollinate the small flowers depending on how early they bloom. Fresh green leaves will grow up from beneath the flower stalks to remain until next spring.

Hepatica’s fuzzy flower stalks slowly unfurl to reveal the delicate flowers.

 

Hepatica leaves are three-lobed. The previous year’s leaves are often brownish-red or bronze and reminded earlier people of the human liver. (Hepatica is from the Greek word for liver.)

 

New green leaves grow beneath the flowers and will last all season.

In it’s natural setting, hepatica often grows under oak trees — that’s where I first spotted it peeping out among tattered brown leaves one warm April day at our cabin. (I purchased the hepatica in my garden at a local nursery.) It is a woodland wildflower that prefers full spring sun that becomes dappled sun as the trees leaf out. Two species are native to Minnesota — round-lobed and sharp-lobed — and are very similar in appearance. It’s also very well-behaved, so a gardener needn’t worry about hepatica overtaking the garden!

This week in the yard, besides the blooming hepatica, bloodroot leaves unfurled and increased in size as seed pods swelled. Many tiny native bees, and a not-so-tiny queen two-spotted bumble bee, pollinated the spring flowers. A wave of hermit thrushes ate insects and seeds in the backyard most of the week before continuing north to their nesting grounds. 

As the bloodroot blossoms (Sanguinaria canadensis) wilt, the leaves unfold and the seed pods begin to swell.

 

A queen bumble bee (Bombus bimaculatus) hovers above glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa luciliae) blossoms.

 

A hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus), one of the most ethereal songsters I’ve heard, rests on its journey to northern Minnesota and Canada.

Nesting sites are a hot commodity locally, too: A female mallard sits on her nest completely hidden in our neighbor’s daylily garden. Robins nest in arbor vitae behind the garage and cardinals nest in a neighbor’s small evergreen shrub. Each day, the cardinal pair visits our garden where the male gently feeds his mate. In a few weeks, the begging calls of this year’s first fledglings will fill the air. I look forward to seeing their plump, downy bodies following their parents around the garden!

 

 

by

Spring: Inconsistent as Usual

Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides), Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and crocus bloom before last week’s snowstorm.

Spring in Minnesota is as fitful as ever — in other words, it’s one of the few things that remains normal during the pandemic. A week ago, Saturday was sunny and 70 degrees. Honey bees explored the squill patch and the first bloodroot blossoms unfurled white and gold. Twelve hours later, a cold front settled over the state. More than five inches of heavy, wet snow buried the garden and coated every bud, twig and trunk. Fox sparrows scratched and dug under the garden hedge sending snow, leaves and dirt flying behind them. A chubby American robin plucked the few remaining crabapples from a small tree. When the air warmed above freezing midweek, a few flowers were wilted and tinged with brown, but those that still had a covering of snow perked right up.

Sticky snow transformed a greening world back to winter black and white.

Traces of snow linger in the shady, northern corners of the yard, but most areas look like spring again — for now. While almost all of Minnesota’s record-breaking April snowstorms have occurred mid-month or earlier, that’s not always been true. Remember that April 29-30 storm in 1984? It dumped 9.7 inches of snow on the Twin Cities to close out the month. It’s all part of a typical Minnesota spring. Here’s a look at what’s growing in the backyard now that the snow has melted.

Bright green moss and its spore capsules are a refreshing sight after the snow.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is one of the earliest spring wildflowers to bloom in Minnesota. Each flower is wrapped in a single leaf before opening.

A honey bee (Apis mellifera) in the Siberian squill is the first one I spotted this year.

A northern magnolia (Magnolia stellata) bud, slightly frostbitten, unfurls on a milder day.

Baby leaves and bud clusters of Canada cherry (Prunus virginiana).

by

Garden Bugs: Nifty or Nasty?

Like most of life, my garden is a mix of good and not so great: desirable plants and weeds, loamy soil and heavy clay, beneficial insects and annoying pests — and early August brought many types of insects to our garden. Here are just a few stand-outs.

Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica), an invasive species, are a type of scarab beetle that destroy many plant species in North America.

The biggest pest in our yard is the Japanese beetle, which skeletonizes the flowers and leaves of many plants. A few weeks ago they favored apple and crabapple trees, but I’ve also pulled them off of my rose, asters, day lilies and purple coneflowers. Now, they are shredding my hosta and anise hyssop blossoms. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the beetles are native to northern Japan and probably arrived in a shipment of iris bulbs in 1916. They have no natural predators, although some birds, such as starlings, robins, bluejays and sparrows will sometimes eat the adult beetles and the grubs, which live in lawns.

Yesterday I picked 46 beetles off of my royal standard hostas. I used to squish them, but that releases their pheromones, which attract more beetles. Now I pick them off by hand and drop them in a small pail of soapy water, which kills them quickly without releasing their pheromones. I don’t use an insecticide because so many beneficial insects would die from the chemicals.

The convergent lady beetle (Hippodamia convergens) is a North American native that feeds on aphids, whiteflies and other pests.

Not all ladybugs are red or orange. The tiny esteemed ladybug (Hyperaspis proba) is black with yellow spots.

Unlike the Japanese beetle, ladybugs, or ladybird beetles, especially those native to North America, are beneficial to gardens. More than 500 species of ladybugs have been identified in the United States. Mom taught us never to harm ladybugs because they eat aphids, a major garden pest. Our native ladybugs don’t bite, so if you feel a pinch and find it’s from a ladybug, it is likely to be an Asian ladybug, which do nip — mainly because they seek moisture and salt, or they feel threatened. Asian ladybugs were imported in the 1970s to help destroy predators in agricultural operations. I let them be when I find them because they destroy so many aphids and other pests. However, the native ladybugs are better suited to our gardens and plant species.

Aphids, that favorite food of ladybugs, are tiny, often wingless, and very plentiful. There are more than 300 species of aphids in Minnesota and they are found on all types of plants. Most aphids on a plant are females that reproduce asexually, without having to mate. They also give birth instead of laying eggs. The newborns are clones of their mother, so they, too, are female. (Environmental conditions sometimes cause females to produce both female and male offspring, which are genetically identical to the mother, except that males lack one sex chromosome.) They come in many different colors. I’ve seen green, black, red, and I have orange ones on some of my milkweed plants. When aphids suck a plant’s sap, it causes curling, yellowing and browning of the leaves. Aphids also secrete a sticky, sweet liquid called honeydew. Last summer, during a heavy infestation of aphids, my milkweed plants were dripping with honeydew and covered with ants, which are attracted to the sweet liquid. Even though I washed the milkweed with water from the garden hose daily, the plants were disfigured and messy.

Tiny soft-bodied aphids (Aphids nerii) suck plant juices from common milkweed. The white specks are moltings that are stuck in the honeydew.

 

This juvenile male eastern pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis) will attack any type of insect its own size or smaller, including others of the same species.

In contrast to the slow, rather clumsy flight of beetles, several species of dragonfly dart and swoop among the garden plants. Perched on a milkweed leaf, a green eastern pondhawk zips lightning-quick from its perch to capture a fly. Its powerful jaws quickly crush and consume its prey. Common in gardens, dragonflies eat mosquitoes, gnats, flies and other insects. Their shining colors add beauty to the garden.

Most meadowhawks (Sympetrum spp.) fly in late summer and autumn.

Monarchs, red admirals and other butterflies are frequent visitors to our garden — especially now when the milkweed is blooming and the plants are in their prime for feeding monarch larvae. These tiny caterpillars feed only on milkweed and I discovered two of them a week ago. Adult monarchs sail through the garden stopping to nectar on milkweed, Joe-Pye, garden phlox and purple coneflowers.

Monarch caterpillars hatch and grow only on milkweed plants.

Adult monarchs (Danaus plexippus) and many other butterfly species nectar on common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).

A red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) nectars on garden phlox (Phlox paniculata).

Red admirals are smaller and fly faster and more erratically than monarchs. A male finds a sunny spot and watches for a female to fly by. After mating, the female lays eggs on nettle plants. Adults nectar on milkweed, red clover, ripe fruit and tree sap. They are one of the few species that overwinter in Minnesota, often in a wood pile or mound of leaves.

The summer garden harbors so many interesting, and often beautiful, insects. Next time you’re working in your garden, or simply enjoying your yard, take a look at the diversity of these tiny creatures all around us. The majority of them are either beneficial or harmless. Nifty or nasty? You decide!

by

Winged Beauty

The numerous blue scalings along the wing border identify this as an eastern tiger swallowtail female (Papilio glaucus).

Just before supper on a hot August evening, the air is heavy with smoky haze from Canadian forest fires. I hear the constant whine of cicadas and smell the scents of garden phlox and royal standard hostas. In a corner of our garden a creature of great beauty nectars in the Joe-Pye; its striped wings open and almost glow against a background of green leaves and shades of pink. The deep blue spots lining its hind wings reveal it to be a female eastern tiger swallowtail. She’s oblivious to the numerous bumblebees that gather nectar and pollen around her. At one point a territorial monarch chases her from the Joe-Pye. (The monarch repeats its rounds through the yard many times an hour, and tries to oust “intruders” — especially other large butterflies.) The two dance a quick scuffle in the air and the “tiger” disappears over the neighbor’s fence for a few minutes. She soon returns to the Joe-Pye garden and continues to nectar.

Joe-Pye (Eutrochium maculatum) is a favorite source of nectar for eastern tiger swallowtails.

I like to recall such moments of warmth and beauty in January and February as I mark off the days on the calendar and wait for spring. I’ll think of the gentle humming of bumblebees, the lilting call of a goldfinch passing by, and the delicate, colorful wings of all of the butterflies that sail through the garden, especially the tiger swallowtail. I’ll remember that her progeny will overwinter in chrysalis form — attached to tree bark, a plant stem, or in leaf litter — snug and asleep under the snow. In May, they will hatch to continue their life cycle of beauty.

by

A Present Moment

A male eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) butterfly.

Our native monarda begins to bloom. One early-July afternoon, I read in the garden for a few minutes. It is so quiet with most of the neighborhood out-of-town for July vacations — I hear just the rustling of leaves and flowers in the breeze and a few mourning doves calling. A male eastern tiger swallowtail nectars in the monarda, and is so intensely focused on the blossoms that I walk right up to him with my camera. His wings are radiant yellow and unmarred, showing no signs of wear or age. The yellow glows when he dips into the shadows, and the scallops under his wings are vibrant orange and steely blue.

Underwings of an eastern tiger swallowtail on monarda or bergamot.

Though he ignores the company, three red admiral butterflies and several bumble bees busily nectar in nearby blossoms. They, too, are absorbed with collecting nectar and are oblivious of each other and of me.

Bumble bees (Bombus spp.) love the nectar of monarda blossoms.

Red admiral butterflies (Vanessa atalanta) visit gardens from April through October before migrating south.

This peaceful time on a warm summer afternoon is, for me, an active meditation on living in the present moment. It is a gift to share this time and space with such lovely creatures; to put aside frets and worries, to let go of the past and future; to just be in this one moment.