Native to eastern North America – Page 2

Meteorological Spring

Ah, the change of seasons. How I love the change. How boring it would be if we only had one season. And now the beginning of meteorological spring. Soon flowers will be bursting forth with a cacophony of color. What a change from the impressive, black and white/pen and ink drawing, landscape of winter.

One of the first, a very early wildflower, Twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla), is native to eastern North America. It is a plant that I must remind myself to hunt for. It emerges, buds ready to open, well before I’m used to finding wildflowers blooming.

Here in the mountains of central Virginia, that crucial time is late March into early April. Each flower only lasts for a very few days, so searching at the right time is important.

As the flowers enjoy their few days, the leaves hold back, not to come into their own until the show is done for the blooms.

Then it becomes evident why this plant has the name, Twinleaf, with its appearance of butterfly wings or angel wings, a pair of leaves joined at the stem.

Then comes the seedpod which starts out with the look of a goblet and as it matures it takes on the appearance of a comicstrip character with a mouthful of seeds.

The Twinleaf has seeds that ants are attracted to. These seeds are carried by the ants to their nests, because they have a fatty appendages, called elaiosomes, which the ants feed to their larvae. In the process, the seeds remain intact and are discarded, where they often take root. This process, which is surprisingly common is called myrmecochory. And who would have thought – ant farmers!

Crimson in a Black and White Landscape

Late May into June they go from tiny bud to minuscule flower.

A flower and lots of buds of Winterberry (Ilex verticillata). A deciduous species of Holly native to eastern North America in the United States and southeastern Canada.

And now in WINTER a big splash of color. Crimson berries that attract oodles of birds like Bluebirds, Hermit Thrushes, Robins, Catbirds, and Cedar Waxwings. Brilliant color in a black and white, pen and ink landscape.

The PawPaw Patch

PawPaw (Asimina triloba). An understory small tree or large bush. Native to eastern North America. There are patches of them here and there up here in the mountains. And for a few years I had three or four individual PawPaw trees growing in my yard. Ones that I had planted. I was thoroughly enjoying them. One had even bloomed for me. Then came the clippers. Not intentional clippers but they clipped nonetheless. All the PawPaw trees got cut down. Ack!

Since then I’ve planted three new, tiny, PawPaw trees. Two have survived. But I’ve had a surprise. Where the clippers did their accidental thing, where the trees were cut down, they are coming up again, from root suckers that under normal circumstances form colonies or thickets.

The reason for my fascination with PawPaws? They’re the host plant of one of my favorite butterflies, the Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus). Plant them and these butterflies will come.

And all is well in the PawPaw Patch.

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