Category: Stigma

Black Cohosh

A wonderful sight in late June early July. Blooms of Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) when there are few other flowers blooming in the woods.

Black Cohosh is a herbaceous perennial native to eastern North America. Quite plentiful here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rising above their leaves on tall stems to six or eight feet. Those clusters of flowers on their tall stems make me think of spirits of long ago residents of these mountains. Spirits from the past, back again to look over their land, their roots. Watching to see that we care for their mountains with love and wisdom.

Right now, in late April, leaves of Black Cohosh have reached up from their underground rhizomes. Extending to a height of two or two and a half feet. Leaves waiting. Waiting for tall stems to form.

Tall stems that in turn form racemes. (A raceme is a flower cluster with the separate flowers attached by short equal stalks at equal distances along a central stem.) The stems can grow to be six or seven feet tall, and the portion of it that is the raceme, can be about twenty inches.

Flowers without petals, without sepals. Many long stamens surrounding a stigma, all snow white. The flowers have a unique unpleasant aroma that attracts flies, gnats, beetles, bees and some butterflies. Both the Spring Azure Butterfly and the Appalachian Azure Butterfly rely on Black Cohosh as its larval host.

I’m looking forward summer and greeting these visions of the past.

Cutleaf Toothwort

A spring ephemeral, a perennial native to eastern North America. Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata).

The “toothwort” of its name is thanks to the appearance of its rhizome.

The Cutleaf Toothwort likes woods with mesic soils covered with lots of leaf litter. This certainly must be the description of the woods where I live. Many of these plants greet the spring each year up here, including a few spots where colonies have formed.

Buds protected by four pale green sepals open to reveal four barely pale pink petals. At the center of each flower is a style with a sphere topped stigma which are surrounded by stamens with green filaments of varying lengths topped by yellow anthers.

Many different pollinators visit these blooms. Fruit of the Toothwort is a slender pod about an inch long containing a single row of tiny seeds.

When the invasive, Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), starts growing in the area of a population of Cutleaf Toothwort its numbers soon decline. A good reason to fight those invasives.

Wood Poppy Revisited

I’ve written about Wood Poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) before but I enjoy the native flower with its happy yellow so much I’d like to tell you more about it.

The deeply lobed green-blue leaves of Wood Poppy are poking up from the surface of the soil here in the Blue Ridge now, as the month of March approaches its midpoint.

By the beginning of April, I expect I’ll be seeing some woolly buds ready to reveal their four golden petals.

As the flower opens the two pale green sepals that protect the bud soon fall away.

The flowers of Wood Poppy provide pollen but not nectar to their visitors. Those flowers have many stamens that are topped with rich yellow anthers surrounding a pistil, style and stigma.

After insect or self pollination a seed capsule is formed which eventually hangs below the leaves.

Many seeds are released from the capsule. Seeds which are distributed in a process called mymecocory, or in simpler terms, seed dispersal by ants. These seeds have nutrient rich appendages called elaisomes. Ants collect the seeds so that their larvae can be fed the elaisomes and the remains of the seeds are tossed away in the ant colony’s “trash room.”

That trash room in an underground ant colony is the perfect place to start growing seeds. Of course the ants aren’t aware of it, but they are perfect little ant farmers. Starting a new cycle of Wood Poppies.