Category: Style

American Plum

A meander up the mountain two days ago. The Trilliums would be blooming. I found them, white turning to soft, delicate pink. Always special. But I noticed a small tree full of airy blooms way up there near where I usually turn around. Flowers I didn’t recognize. As is my custom I took photos and brought them back home and began the research. Just my thing. I always love a mystery. It didn’t take too much time and I had figured it out. The airy blooms are American Plum (Prunus americana).

The airy look of the blooms created by a pistil with a lengthy style, and many long stamens. Looking feathery and soft. Leaves are just beginning to peek out.

The American Plum is a small tree or shrub. It’s widespread and native to North America from Saskatchewan and Idaho south to New Mexico and east to Québec, Maine and Florida. If you look carefully in this photo, you’ll see it has many thorns, though not terribly sharp, thank goodness. I’m going to be watching as spring turns to summer hoping to see the plums that develop.

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.