native plants Archives - Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy

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Underfoot: DWARF CRESTED IRIS

May 21, 2023 Renee Carey

By Susan Sprout

Dwarf Crested Iris (Iris cristata) is a spring-blooming, native plant growing from Pennsylvania to Georgia and west to Oklahoma. A member of the Iridaceae or Iris Family, which is named for the Greek goddess of the rainbow, it is considered an herbaceous perennial. “Herbaceous” because its soft, green stem does not become woody and dies back after the growing season. “Perennial” because it has a life cycle longer than two years. These plants grow from underground rhizomes and keep spreading to form dense colonies. Listed as “Endangered” in Maryland and Pennsylvania, it is a wonderful plant to find growing wild or in a good friend’s wild garden, having been purchased from a native plant nursery several years before!

This bud is ready to open and reveal a Dwarf Crested Iris.

The pale blue to violet flowers, even white occasionally, may resemble those of the tall Bearded Iris, but low to the ground, only four to six inches tall or even a little taller under the right growing conditions. Their choice of natural growing conditions where they have been found growing seem rather eclectic – oak woodlands, rocky hillsides, mountain ledges, wooded ravines, near streambanks, well-drained slopes, rich humus, peaty acid soil, alkaline soil, partial sun to partial shade. See what I mean about eclectic? These little beauties appear to like living everywhere, but just not with too much of a good thing! They are heat-tolerant if our climate gets hotter here. Several resources cited that this iris is even deer-tolerant. Hmmm, and several did not.

Part of a naturalized patch of tiny iris beginning to bloom.

The lovely flowers of Dwarf Crested Iris bloom locally during April and May, usually with one per stalk. They are only about three inches wide. Three downward-curved sepals each have a yellowish-white band of hairs called a beard at their center from the middle to the base. That is the “crest” you find in its common name and the species name cristata. About six to eight weeks after flowering, a three-sided seed capsule will appear. It will take two to three years for seedlings to have stored enough energy in order to bloom. This iris seems to spread faster vegetatively with its rhizomes.

What we wait for each spring, the blue flower with its fancy crests.

It is spring planting time. Think about getting some of these little beauties. They would make great groundcover, perhaps in the shaded area of a rock garden or naturalizing under a tree somewhere on your property.

Interesting Facts, On the Blog

Underfoot: WILD CRANBERRIES

April 17, 2023 Renee Carey

By Susan Sprout

In the Pennsylvania Wilds, growing in my favorite bog are Cranberries! It may seem odd that I am writing about them “out of season,” since they become mostly red and ready for picking in the fall and for eating at Thanksgiving and Christmas times. Who thinks about fresh cranberries in the spring? I do!

Wild cranberry plants with leaves that will green up as spring proceeds

Originally they were known as “craneberries” because the shape of their male reproductive organs, or stamens, tended to resemble a crane’s beak. Wild cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) are native here as well as large areas of Canada and Northeastern United States, southward to Tennessee and North Carolina. Cultivars created from wild species are grown commercially in artificial ponds. The top five states in cranberry production are Massachusetts, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington.

Cranberries are members of the Heath Family, Ericaceae, along with locally known plants like huckleberries, teaberries, azaleas, laurels, and rhododendrons which all typically grow in acid soils. Cranberries seem to do well in acid soils in wet, peaty, seepy places – like my favorite bog! I visit there several times a year and have written blogs about five plants found growing in it. Never have I visited in March, until this year…and discovered red berries snuggled down in their brownish-purply, copper winter foliage. I tasted some of the berries left over from last fall and found they do not get any sweeter after freezing like rosehips do. Very tart or sour.

Cranberry plants nestled in with sphagnum and dewberry leaves

Why did I never notice them growing there before? I think they kind of blended in with the sphagnum mosses and dewberries trailing over the ground there. And they do trail, their wiry stems forming dense masses. Cranberries have small oval leaves growing along stems that spread horizontally for a bit, then curve upward. Their tiny flowers with four backward pointing petals open in late June to form a pinkish-white carpet, ready for pollination by bees, and to create fruit ready for picking in September through November. Also in late summer, new terminal buds begin to form for next year’s crop of berries. They will require a period of dormancy in order to successfully produce flowers and fruit. They must undergo a sufficient period of cold temperatures and short daylight hours called “chill hours” during the winter months in order to break dormancy and open in mid-summer of the next year to start the blooming process all over again. If you count the months, you will see that it takes them from fourteen to sixteen months to produce berries. Hopefully the geographical range where the optimal conditions occur will not shrink due to climate change!

We love our cranberries – rich in Vitamin C and antioxidants! Cranberries, according to NIH National Library of Medicine, can prevent tooth decay, gum disease, inhibit urinary tract infections, reduce inflammation in the body, maintain a healthy digestion system and decrease cholesterol levels. Check out The Cranberry Institute for more information about these powerful little fruits!

Interesting Facts, On the Blog

Underfoot: STRIPED MAPLE AKA MOOSEWOOD

October 31, 2022 Renee Carey

By, Susan Sprout

How beautiful the leaves are this fall! Our hills and mountains appear upholstered with green leaves during the growing season. Now with the lessening of sunlight due to shorter days, the leaves have begun shutting down their food production. As the amount of chlorophyll, the green color, slowly fades from the leaves, other pigments in them become visible – xanthophylls (yellows), carotenoids (oranges), and anthocyanins (reds to purples). Sometimes all the colors may be displayed in a single leaf!

At the edge of the woods, this Striped Maple is getting more sunlight.

Right now, Striped Maples (Acer pensylvanicum) are excellent examples of brilliant yellow. Small understory trees hardly getting above sixteen feet tall, they just shine out like beacons from the shadows under the taller mixed hardwoods where they like to grow. Look for the leaf shape as you walk or ride along the back roads. They differ from the common maple leaves because they are bigger, up to seven inches long as well as across, too. They are three-lobed instead of five-lobed…and the lobes point straight forward instead of out to the side. The pointed tips of the lobes are long and thin. With such a large leaf area, I’ll bet those points act like drip tips to help drain off the rain that beads up on them. The leaf base is rounded where its reddish stem and its three main veins meet together at the bottom. As an understory tree, the development of them is slow, but will accelerate when an opening with more light becomes available. Then they can grow up to thirty feet tall with trunks eight inches in diameter. Their range is from Nova Scotia to the North Georgia mountains and west to Michigan and Ohio. They grow in cool, rocky woods and seem to prefer slopes. At least, that’s where I saw most of the ones I was stalking for a photograph!

The striped part of the common name refers to the easily-identified outer layer of bark that is green with white vertical stripes when the tree is young. It darkens up with time to brown, but those stripes are still quite visible. Striped Maples may live for a hundred years. Indeed, they must be very hardy because they get chewed on a lot. Rabbits, deer, beaver, porcupine, and the caribou and moose populations of our more northerly neighbors, all browse on them at one time or another during the year. Some resources indicate that this type of maple can start to regain twigs and leaves as stump sprouts rather quickly, about two months, after being denuded and trimmed to the roots. Their roots which are shallow and wide-spreading, make the trees strongly competitive for soil moisture and nutrients. Our colonial ancestors fed green and dried leaves of this tree to their cattle in winter and would turn them out early in spring to graze on the newly growing foliage in the woods near their fields. Today, tests are underway to determine if there is a practical application for an active anti-tumor substance isolated from Striped Maples.

Interesting Facts, On the Blog

Underfoot: AMERICAN DITTANY

October 24, 2022 Renee Carey

By, Susan Sprout

American Dittany, Cunila origanoides, is a perennial plant in the Lamiaceae or Mint Family. “American” is attached to its common name because there are other plants native to Europe with the same name. The second part of its scientific name indicates that this plant resembles Oregano. Not too surprising, as quite a few of our cooking herbs are classified in the Mint Family as well. In fact, along with square stems and opposite leaves, aroma is one of the BIG family traits. Basil, Sweet Marjoram, Sage, Lemon Balm. Rosemary – to name just a few. There are lots – that are mostly native to other continents.

Check out the opposite and slightly serrated leaves of an upright plant.

I accidently became acquainted with American Dittany almost forty years ago as I tried cliff climbing near a creek. My boot slipped, and I grabbed the nearest rocky ledge. My reward was two fold: 1) I did not fall; 2) I was suddenly blessed with an amazing aroma from the plant growing nearest to my nose. Through all the following years of visiting that cliff and those plants, I have become aware of the decrease in their population. When I climb up to find them, I have to look and step really carefully in order to get photos. They now appear smaller than the reference books’ height of eight to sixteen inches. I missed their blooming time this year occurring from August to October. None of the plants I saw had their tiny, two-lipped purple flowers or the dried remains of them. Maybe they didn’t have the stored energy in their fibrous root system to reproduce.

American Dittany or Stone-mint or Frost-mint is native to this continent from New York to Florida and west to Texas and Illinois. It tends to grow in dry forests and in the thin soils of rock outcrops, especially where vegetation is sparse. The serrated, lance-shaped leaves, dotted with oil glands (the scent), are opposite and stalkless, flowering from their axils. The wiry stem is brown and appears woody. When rolled between my fingers, I can feel the bumps that make it “squared”. In some resources, American Dittany is dubbed as a “sub-shrub” which is a dwarf, woody plant. I have not yet witnessed the reason this plant received a common name of Frost-mint. Evidently, when the watery sap pushes out at the bottom of a stem that has been cracked open by a hard freeze, it freezes into ribbon-like projections around the base looking like “frost flowers”! I would love to get a photo of that! I may have to let that task to someone younger and more agile. At my age, I probably shouldn’t be climbing around on cliffs in the slipperiness of winter.

Sometimes I find more than plants – a message for all mankind!

On the Blog

Underfoot: SULPHUR POLYPORE

September 14, 2022 Renee Carey

By, Susan Sprout

Well, I’ve done it again – sneaked out of the Plant Kingdom and into the Kingdom of the Fungi!

And for a very good reason, too, just look at this fantastic group of Laetiporus sulphureus. Just call it Chicken of the Woods, Sulphur Shelf or Sulphur Polypore. It was a very colorful find on an extremely brownish and crunchy- dry hike to the top of Skyline Drive. And who wouldn’t want to hang out on the side of a dead tree overlooking this view, hmm? All of those overlapping, bright orange, fan-shaped caps range from smooth and suede-like to finely wrinkled with sulphur yellow margins and pores, not gills, underneath. Those pores, tiny little holes, dispense white spores, creating another generation of wood recyclers. The living, dead or decaying wood they grow on provides them with the nutrients to live and reproduce. The bright coloration will fade as these organisms age. The fresh flesh, thick and soft, will become tougher, not decaying like the mushrooms in your yard would.

Sulphur Polypores grow fruit bodies from spring to autumn. They range across the North American continent, east of the Rockies , providing good eats for beetles and deer.

On the Blog

Underfoot: WHITE VERVAIN

August 1, 2022 Renee Carey

By, Susan Sprout

A volunteer plant grew near my woodshed – unexpected, but not unappreciated! It appeared over a month ago. I had to wait for it to grow bigger before introducing it to you and getting the photos that would capture its unique physique! Our native White Vervain (Verbena urticifolia) is a member of the Verbena Family, along with about 3,000 other species, mostly from warmer climates. Teak is one of them, prized for its beautiful and durable wood. I have always admired White Vervain and was happy to find it growing nearby. These annual or perennial plants usually choose moist fields, meadows, thickets or waste ground. Well, nothing much grows there except pennyroyal, and there is a downspout nearby. I guess that works in its favor.

Young White Vervain plant. My husband held a rug behind it as contrast in order to show its short flower spikes at its top.

White Vervain plants are compact at their start. When their small, tight, flower spikes appear, the magic begins! Their very slender flower stems begin to stretch out in all directions. The buds on them move further and further apart from each other until they look like little bugs sitting on thin branches. The really tiny white flowers open willy-nilly, here and there, as they mature. I pulled off one of the pollinated flowers and rubbed it gently between my fingers to tease out the four nutlets inside that will create the next generation of plants there. The flower stalks definitely stand out as an identifying characteristic of White Vervain. But, the rest of the plant needs to be checked out, too. It can grow from two to five feet tall, has a hairy, square stem, and stiff, opposite leaves that are doubly-serrated and look like the blades on a steak knife. If you want to look for this plant, it should be flowering from July to September in Pennsylvania. Its close relative, Blue Vervain, can be found inhabiting similar habitats, but has stiff pencil-like spikes of small, blue flowers that appear in a “more organized” fashion resembling a candelabra!

Large plant with expanded flower spikes reaching out in all directions.

Medicinally, Vervains are astringent, or drying, and have been used for millennia crushed up and applied externally to wounds, poison ivy sores and other skin complaints.

On the Blog

Underfoot: PURPLE-FLOWERING RASPBERRY

July 25, 2022 Renee Carey

By, Susan Sprout

Purple-flowering Raspberry’s scientific name is Rubus odoratus. Its genus name is from Latin for “bramble”, defined as a prickly, scrambling shrub or vine of the Rose Family. But, its arching and sprawling branches have reddish-brown hairs that are sticky to touch instead of prickly to touch! This perennial plant is native to eastern North America. Its gorgeous rose-purple flowers that are about two inches wide made it a desired target of plant gathers from England in the 1770’s. It was taken there as an ornamental and has since naturalized as many plants from there have done here!

Purple-flowering Raspberry with five-pointed leaves

The leaves of this shrub resemble maple leaves with a heart-shaped base and three or five triangle lobes. The whole plant can reach to six feet tall. On a ledge or a shaded cliff where they seem to prefer growing, it is hard to get a true measure of their height. Their five-petaled flowers, pollinated by bees and insects, then create a large, flat berry made up of many little druplets. They bloom from May to August and set fruit from July to September depending on local conditions. I have found many adjectives describing the characteristics of these red berries: dry, tart, acid, bland, seedy, fuzzy to touch and on the tongue! Well, songbirds and game birds will eat them. Small mammals, too. The seeds are great for sowing in order to return native plants to an area and the roots work well at stabilizing banks. Many members of the Rubus genus, eighteen grow PA, have been used medicinally because their leaves are highly astringent and helped treat dysentery and diarrhea as well as skin ailments like sores and boils.

Check out the hairy flower buds and the white, unripened fruit.

On the Blog

Underfoot: EARLY SAXIFRAGE

May 13, 2022 Renee Carey

By, Susan Sprout

On spring hikes near shaded banks of shale rocks, I like to look for Early Saxifrage, a member of the Saxifrage family. Its appearance in the crevices of rocks helps me remember the unusual name of Saxifrage. It comes from Latin saxum (rock) and frangere (to break) – ” rock breaker”. Because of this, early herbalists used it for treating kidney stones and bladder gravel. I suspect nature’s freeze/thaw cycle should get most of the credit for breaking up most of the cliff rocks around here!

This interesting plant starts blooming when only three inches tall and continues an upward surge until it’s a foot high. Sometimes growing in patches, they wave back and forth in the breeze, especially after their tight flower clusters begin to loosen up and push apart. They appear rather top heavy. I had difficulty getting them to stand still for a group picture. Their stems are straight…and hairy! That’s actually a useful identification point. You don’t even need a magnifier. Some say it is to hinder ground insects from crawling up get nectar. Bees and other flying insects may offer better prospects for cross-pollination.

Saxifrage leaves are oval-shaped with scalloped edges that form a basal rosette. They don’t grow up the flower stem. The white flowers are about one-quarter inch wide. The plant has deeply penetrating taproots with wiry root systems. After fertilization, a one-inch fruit capsule forms and turns from green to lavender or purple, and then splits to release the tiny black seeds. Early Saxifrage is native to eastern and central North America and grows from Ontario to Georgia as a perennial. There are more than 580 species in the Saxifrage Family worldwide which occur mainly in cooler regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

White flowers with yellow stamens circling the center

On the Blog

Underfoot: Skunk Cabbage

April 11, 2022 Renee Carey

By, Susan Sprout

To all warm-blooded mammals reading this article – You undergo a process called “thermogenesis” to create your own body heat. Did you know that Skunk Cabbage is one of the few plant species that does this as well? Tramping along streams in very early spring, especially while snow and frost are still noticeable, you can see the purple and green mottled blossoms of Skunk Cabbage emerging from the cold, hard ground. They are able to because they use some of the carbohydrates they made last year, and stored in their foot-long, six-inch wide central root, to produce the heat energy they use to melt their way upward through the snow and out into the cold air. Their internal furnace can reach up to 60 degrees inside their four to six inch spathe or hooded cover that surrounds the club-shaped flower cluster or spadix. You may remember seeing the word “spathe” in an earlier article describing Green Dragon which is, along with Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Skunk Cabbage, a member of the Arum Family.

Skunk Cabbage is a wetland plant that grows near swamps, marshes, and in wet woodlands. It takes five to seven years before a young plant can blossom. In spring, it flowers before its bright green leaves come up and unfurl. Then these plants really become obvious because their big leaves can grow from fifteen to twenty-one inches long and twelve to fifteen inches wide! While walking along Big Run, I found about fifty blossoms starting to emerge. They were in all stages of growth, and some were beginning to leaf out.

When I pulled the edges of the spathe apart to look inside at the flowers, bunches of gnats and flies came zooming out. They were pollinators attracted by the warm air and stinky, putrescent odor. The name “skunk” is well-deserved in a plant with chemicals like skatole and cadaverine in its tissues to attract pollinators. Not many animals eat the roots, leaves or flowers either except bears in spring (They’ll eat anything.) and snapping turtles – because of the intense burning caused by calcium oxylate crystals found in their tissues. Slugs and snails help break down the dead plant when it dies back and goes dormant in the late summer.

Hooded spathe surrounding the flower cluster or spadix

This is not a “cabbage” you should eat, although people have eaten it in the past after boiling three times and drying. Its leaves have been used medicinally for skin problems – ulcers, wounds, blisters. Fresh leaves can also cause blisters, too. I found one reference of root usage in 1708 for treating “suppurating tumors”.

This is a pretty hardy plant. but it does not bounce back well from the deforestation and water level changes that accompany clear cutting, agriculture, and development.

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Underfoot: Ah, Sweet Mystery!

December 20, 2021 Renee Carey

By, Susan Sprout

I love trees, especially this time of year, when leafless. They stand out so stark and sturdy against the sky. Sometimes, as a game, I try to identify trees by their silhouettes as we pass them by in the car. I look for hints of seeds, cones, leftover flower spikes, branch configuration.

There was no drive-by the day my cousin and I found this lovely mystery tree as we hiked Chad’s Trail at Glacial Pools. The sky was just perfect, a blue backdrop interrupted by wisps of cirrus clouds. We had to check the clues.

Clue #1 Little cone-like strobiles that hold samaras or double-winged seeds, oblong, 3/4 to 1 1/2 inches long, brownish, disintegrating.

Strobiles will gradually give way to the wind for dispersal

Clue #2 The bark – shiny, dark and smooth, not papery and peeling. Many horizontal lines crossing the trunk – lenticels – corky pores through the bark that provide direct air exchange with the tree’s internal tissues.

Clue #3 The twigs – dark brown, slender, hairless. Snap a twig and sniff the broken end. Ah, the odor of wintergreen!

Perfect! Sweet Birch, Black Birch, Cherry Birch, Betula lenta.

Sweet Birch, a native to Eastern North America, ranges from Canada to the mountains of Georgia and Alabama. A USDA Forest Survey indicates that it is most abundant in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania. It is one of the species that has replaced American Chestnut where it used to grow. Considered a pioneer species, it tends to grow quickly when young and can grow from stump sprouts if the main trunk is cut or dies. The shiny, smooth bark will become rough and in vertical flat plates as it ages and will continue a pattern of split, peel, and replace throughout the rest of its life which could be up to two hundred years! You can find them growing in cool, moist uplands with hardwoods and conifers. They like the moist , well-drained soil of stream banks as well as dry, rocky soil of ledges.

It used to take one hundred saplings and trees to manufacture just one quart of Birch oil, also called oil of wintergreen. Now chemically produced methyl salicylate is used to flavor things like medicines, candy and ice cream. Plus, you don’t have to tap the trees anymore to make Birch Beer. I like chewing on a twig as I hike along to allay my thirst. Ha. I just like the flavor!