Daisy Fleabane: Does It Get Rid of Fleas?
Well, no. Unfortunately this is a classic case of false advertising. This plant, called daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus), is neither a daisy nor the bane of fleas. It’s a nice little meadow flower–one of the few native plants that can elbow its way in between more aggressive non-native clovers and daylilies along roads and byways. It isn’t the same as a daisy, and it isn’t an aster, although they’re all related–all those plants with a fringe of white rays around a yellow center are cousins in the enormous Aster family. Regular daisies (ox-eye daisies, as...
Read MoreFourth of July
Some floral fireworks for Independence Day. The slow explosion of day lilies opening, unfurling petals and fading away, each flower having a 12-hour lifespan. Day lily. Hemerocallis, which comes from ancient Greek words meaning beautiful day. Day lilies are suddenly all over the place in early July. They start to line the roadsides as though waiting for the Fourth of July parades. Why the name day lily? If you look on any day lily stalk, you’ll see half-a-dozen buds, each one slightly bigger than the next. With a punctuality that’s pretty amazing, they will open precisely 24 hours apart. So...
Read MoreIs Poison Ivy Shiny?
True or false? You can always spot poison ivy because it’s shiny. True, sometimes, especially in spring. False, most of the time.
Read MoreHappy National Pollinator Week!
Seriously. It’s National Pollinator Week, June 16 – 22, 2014. It’s a national…well, not exactly a holiday–a national time to stop and think about it. Of course they have National Everything Week–not a day goes by but it’s National Something Day or Week or Month. National Women’s History Month (we only have enough history to fill up one month). National Jazz Appreciation Month. There’s National Pig Day (March 1, put it on your calendar for next year). National Ice Cream Month, a worthy cause indeed, officially designated in 1984 by Ronald...
Read MoreDandelion Seeds: Prickly Fluffballs
Dandelion are a little like porcupines. Each dandelion seed is a dry, hard, brown speck an eighth of an inch long, known in botanical terms as an “achene.” They’re stuck into the puffy top of the dandelion flower head, like pins stuck into a pincushion, or quills that are loosely attached to a porcupine’s skin. Tiny barbs zig-zag along each edge of the seed. One puff of air, and the seed pulls loose from the plant and heads off into space. The wind blows the little fluffy parachutes for thousands of miles, over rivers and oceans and mountain ranges–or over the...
Read MoreGood Lawn
I saw a sight this morning that froze my blood. There was a toddler, a hapless infant, sitting on a lawn. Not even a blanket underneath him, mind you—the poor child was sitting right on the grass. Made my blood run cold. Why? Because it was a bad lawn. It was nothing but blades of grass. Close-cropped and bristly as a Marine’s haircut. Not a weed to be seen, not a leaf of clover, not a dandelion, not a plantain leaf. Nothing but grass. So what? That’s what a lawn is supposed to be, right? I suppose so. But it doesn’t stay that way naturally. Weeds like dandelion, clover and plantain are...
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