July 6, 2025

Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa), sending up tall spires, 30 to 98 inches, each holding a single raceme that can be up to 20 inches in length.

Numerous snow white flowers with no petals, tightly and neatly arranged on each of the spires. Tiny flowers with long stamens surrounding a single stigma. Flowers with a fetid yet somehow sweet scent that entices flies, beetles, gnats, bees, butterflies, and wasps, providing them with both pollen and nectar.

An herbaceous perennial, from which sizable compound leaves emerge from an underground rhizome. Those leaves reach a height of 2 feet as the tall flower spire begins to emerge from that same rhizome.

These flower spires emerging from the forest floor make me think of spirits of early inhabitants of these mountains from thousands of years ago.