Honeylocust

Honeylocust
Gleditsia triacanthos

Another month down and two to go. I chose a spooky tree for Halloween, although some would vote for the White Oak in the winter with its big old branches sticking out at 90 degree angles like so many arms raised. Honeylocust is spooky enough with all of its spines poised to impale you.

Honeylocust is an impressive tree! I am very curious about the evolutionary need for the spines. Some plants have prickers and other pointy appendages, but this tree just goes crazy with them. Given that they take resources from the tree to create, there must be an advantage to having them. If the advantage is great, then why don't other trees have them? The reason to have them would seem to be to keep critters from having access to the trunk. At this point in time it's hard to think of an animal that would have a deleterious affect on the plant, at least an affect that is solved by spines; but was there an animal in the past, perhaps even a dinosaur, that loved the bark, or that climbed the tree to eat the leaves?

If anyone knows, or has ideas about, this mystery animal, please comment.  We're dying to know!


The pods are quite long

A typical summer branch

Some of the leaves are once-compound, some are twice-compound



Ouch!

Stinging Nettle

Stinging Nettle

Urtica dioica

Every kid who has ever walked through a woods or field with shorts on knows how to identify Stinging Nettle.  It can practically bring you to your knees!  I don't have any personal experience, but it has been said that if you rub Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) on it, the stinging will stop immediately.  If not, just wait about five minutes and the pain will go away.

On the other hand, young nettle shoots are edible.  One time I took my young nephew camping and he had the grand experience of walking through a nettle patch, at which point he hated nettles.  After that, I collected some shoots and we had them during dinner, whereupon he decided that nettles were good and bad.  I guess that's true for a lot of things.

Another thing that it's good for is as a host plant for a number of butterfly caterpillars.  The Red Admiral owes its livelihood to Stinging Nettle, as do Commas, Question Marks, and all sorts of moths and other insects.

Stinging Nettle is one of those plants that the taxonomists got a hold of and now it's practically impossible to know which species you have.  I just call them all nettle and let it go at that.



Stinging nettle has tiny little flowers that hand down in bunches underneath the leaves

Serrated leaves

Spotted Sandmat

Spotted Sandmat

Chamaesyce maculate

This is one of those plants that grows in cracks on your sidewalk.  It looks the same as about any other one.  If you're just dying to figure out which species is which, this one has red spots on the leaves.

People often lament the introduction of species to an area.  However, in this case we have created a new environment ... sidewalks ... which the native plants don't know what to do with.  So plants that are adapted to that sort of environment, perhaps seaside plants or desert/rocky plants, fill in this new niche.  You can't stop biodiversity!



The stems are red

4-petaled flower

hairy stem

red spot on leaf

Eastern Daisy Fleabane

Eastern Daisy Fleabane
Erigeron annuus

Some people regard this native plant as weedy since it tends to grow wherever it wants to. It is quite common all over the place, particularly in more open areas. It's not particularly lovely but, being native, it fits in with the local ecology and is a first colonizer of disturbed areas.

I didn't find much about it's edibility or medicinal properties, but it has been studied extensively for a variety of reasons, including use for remediation of heavy metal mine tailings.

The leaves do not clasp the stem, as does Philadelphia Fleabane

Philadelphia Fleabane

Philadelphia Fleabane

Erigeron philadelphicus

So, of all the plants to choose from, Philadelphia has adopted a Fleabane, a Panicgrass, and a Blackberry.  Geez, why didn't they choose something a little prettier or flashy?  At least New York has a nice looking Aster and a Fern among other things.  For that matter, why did they decide to endorse cream cheese and a sandwich made of old beef and cheese whiz?  I've never been to Philadelphia, but I hear it's nice.  They just need better PR.

The difference between Philadelphia Fleabane and Daisy Fleabane is that the leaves clasp the stem for Philadelphia Fleabane

The flowers look pretty much the same as Daisy Fleabane

Common Evening Primrose

Common Evening Primrose
Oenothera biennis

There are more poems about the Evening Primrose than any other plant I've looked into. Here's a nice one by 19th century poet, John Clare.

When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew;
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty it possesses;
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks out with open eye,
Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,
It faints and withers and is gone.

                            

Giant Sunflower

Giant Sunflower
Helianthus giganteus

This plant is also known as Tall Sunflower, which seems like a better name to me. While being taller than the average sunflower, it never struck me as "Giant". I've seen garden sunflowers taller than Giant Sunflowers. Several of the Silphiums; Compassplant, Cupplant, Prairie Dock, are also larger plants. I suppose the early taxonomists were impressed by this plant and decided to call it giganteus.

Giant Sunflowers grow in wetter places, not in the water but in moist soils. They tend to grow in groups, perhaps all one plant. The stems are reddish and if you look at the back side of the flower, you'll see that the bracts are long and pointy.

Tall plants



Reddish stems

Long, pointy bracts

Long, thin, slightly toothed leaves

Woodland Sunflower

Woodland Sunflower
Helianthus divaricatus

There are a lot of sunflower species in Indiana, and more that look like sunflowers. The way to distinguish this one is the opposite leaves which have a wide base and no stem, or perhaps a very short stem.



 

Harvestlice

Harvestlice
Agrimonia parviflora

Most field guides call this Small-flowered Agrimony or Swamp Agrimony or something other than Harvestlice. I'm not sure where the name Harvestlice came from. I googled my brains out and couldn't find anything about the origin of the name.

There are four species of Agrimonia in Indiana. The way to identify this is by the number of leaflets on a leaf. It has more than the rest, between 9-15 bigger ones and smaller leaflets in between. It tends to be found in wetter places than the other agrimonies.



 

Common Sunflower

Common Sunflower
Helianthus annuus

The Common Sunflower is an interesting plant. It is thought to be native to the western U.S., but has been cultivated by the American Indians and is now ubiquitous all across the U.S. and does escape although doesn't seem to persist in the wilds of northeast Indiana.

So, it's sort of a native, but unknown exactly where and how long. It's easy to distinguish from other sunflowers by its large, heart-shaped leaves.

American Water-willow

American Water-willow
Justicia americana

Alphabetically speaking, this is the first plant in the first family in the list of plants of Indiana - Acanthaceae - American Water-willow. So, as I started plowing my way through the plants, this one was first on my list and therefore I got quite excited when I came across it while canoeing along the edge of Crooked Lake on the border of Whitley and Noble counties in northeast Indiana.

It's a very common plant, just hard to get to and not very showy unless you get up close. From a distance, which is how you usually see them, it looks like a bunch of small white dots among the green vegetation. Up close, the beauty of this flower is apparent with the dark purple markings on the throat of the flower.



Grows in colonies along the shoreline of lakes and streams

Individual plants are hard to pick out within the dense colonies

Leaves are long, thin, untoothed and have practically no stem

Swamp Loosestrife

Swamp Loosestrife
Decodon verticillatus

This is a plant of the water. It is found actually growing in the water in swamps and along pond and lake edges. It's easiest to find by canoe.

It's a large plant with long arching stems. It seems to be reaching up over the surrounding vegetation to spread it's leaves to the sun.



Leaves grow in whorls of three or four

Grows right in the water along with pond lilies and pickerelweed

The long arching stems grow over the surrounding plants

The stem is 4-6 angled

Wild Yam

Wild Yam
Dioscorea villosa

This was a surprise to me. I could not figure it out, but the folks at IN-Plants knew right away that this was Wild Yam. This is in the same genus as the yams that people eat in Africa and other countries throughout the world. It is not the same genus, or even the same family, as the sweet potato which is sometimes called yam.

I never knew that yams grew natively in Indiana. I guess I never thought about it. This particular species is not eaten, its root is bitter and somewhat poisonous if not prepared correctly.




The angular fruits are distinctive looking

Leaves are heart-shaped at the base and long-pointed at the tip

Spotted Water Hemlock

Spotted Water Hemlock
Cicuta maculata

According to the USDA:

Water hemlock is the most violently toxic plant that grows in North America. Only a small amount of the toxic substance in the plant is needed to produce poisoning in livestock or in humans. The toxin cicutoxin, acting directly on the central nervous system, is a violent convulsant. Clinical signs of poisoning occur when a threshold dose is reached after which grand mal seizures and death occur.

This plant has now changed from another boring Apiaceae into something quite interesting. In fact the Iroquois called it suicide root. This was the method of choice for committing suicide. Then, as now, it was hard to understand why others committed suicide. Their reasoning was that the plant grows in the head of the victim, until it is actually taken, then it comes up later and grows from the grave.

This plant can be dangerous to livestock if they're in a situation where they have access to the roots and ingest them. It's been know to kill people who have mistaken it for something edible, such as Wild Carrot (Daucus carota). My rule of thumb is to not eat anything that looks like a poisonous plant. So far I'm alive.



The leaves are twice pinnate - the divided leaflets are themselves divided



This plant is found mostly in wet spots

The stem is mottled with purple