Abundance Season

Puddock Hill Journal #68: Now is the time when herbaceous plants race to secure their future.

This time of year in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, one gets the impression that herbaceous plants are racing to secure their future. So far this summer at Puddock Hill, we’ve had just enough dry spells to make me nervous and just enough rain to intermittently relieve my worry. Regardless of what I feel, most of the landscape looks lush.

From the driveway facing toward the small pond and east woods, we currently see a palette of greens:

The trees in the background, moving right to left, are native pawpaw, black walnut, tuliptree, and red maple. In front of the pawpaws, though only possible to see if you zoom in, pink flowers of native fall phlox (Phlox paniculata) have begun to bloom. Along the front edge of the pond grow native (I think) shrub willows. Other native or benign flowers that would require a close-up to see include Queen Anne’s lace, jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba), swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), daisy fleabane (Erigeron spp.), and tall tickseed (Coreopsis tripteris). The most dominant herbaceous plants are various goldenrods (Solidago spp.) and asters, neither of which have yet bloomed in the wet meadow. (It’s worth noting, though not the point of this essay, that five years ago invasive trees and vines choked this whole area.)

Last weekend, I was out with the string trimmer near the front left of the above picture and decided to snap a closer photo to illustrate the sheer abundance of plant life we see in places where we mostly allow nature to take its own course:

What do you see? It’s hard to discern individual plants in this happy mess, but at a quick glance while out there I identified native Virginia knotweed (Persicaria virginiana), swamp agrimony (Agrimonia gryposepala), dogbane Apocynum), jewelweed, Carolina horsenettle (Solanum carolinense), and wrinkleleaf goldenrod (Solidago rugosa). A better horticulturalist than I would probably find a few others, so this isn’t even an exhaustive list. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that this isn’t a pure native paradise either. If you take a close look, you may also notice invasive multiflora rose, Bradford pear, and Japanese honeysuckle, as well as non-native Chinese chestnut seeded by a mature tree nearby.

I don’t think there’s any porcelainberry or mile-a-minute vine in this photo, but that’s only because the purpose of my visit to the wet meadow that day was a seek-and-destroy mission against those two invaders, and I took the picture after completing my task.

In some sense, high summer is the most important time to flag native plants and fight invasives. Since so many natives look alike before flowering (and, to be fair, many non-native plants can also resemble natives), the blooms of summer help me identify natives and avoid inadvertently cutting them down. For example, great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) had completely escaped my notice this summer until I saw one in bloom the other day. Now I’m spotting this plant in many other places, even with buds yet to open.

Equally important, many invasives are racing to set fruit at this time. This includes the aforementioned honeysuckle, mile-a-minute, and porcelainberry—banes of my existence. Japanese stiltgrass, too, has begun to come on strong and must be pulled (in beds) or cut down (everywhere else) before seeds form in late summer.

So, while both the good guys and the bad guys of the garden race to secure their future, as backyard stewards we are in our own race to manage what we want to see in the landscape.

Admittedly, the race is exhausting at times, especially for one who abjures herbicides. I just bought an electric push mower so I can more efficiently hit flat places where stiltgrass or mugwort are coming on strong, but some natives growing among them will undoubtedly fall to the blade, which can be disheartening for those of us fighting the impulse to turn everything into lawn. Before going on the attack, I wait—when I can—for natives such as white avens and Virginia knotweed to set seed, the hope being that they will have a better chance of competing with invasives in future years.

This is more than a fantasy. For example, I found this patch of Virginia knotweed growing aggressively in the east woods:

Sometimes, as I’ve discussed in other posts, when all seems lost we must go scorched earth. We’ve had to do that twice this summer on half of the big pond embankment. But being more selective on the other half has rewarded us with not only the usual plethora of goldenrod but also beautiful native Allegheny monkeyflower (Mimulus ringens) and a vigorous stand of native primrose (Oenothera spp.).

A happy reminder that this race is worth joining.

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This giant stump provides a sad reminder of the old red oak that fell on the back lawn and took out half our patio garden:

Fruit hangs heavy on a large native bitternut or pignut hickory (Carya spp.) near the north property line:

A native common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) visits the flowers of native Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) by the garden shed:

A non-native but spectacular hydrangea (if anyone knows the variety, please tell me) makes a BIG statement by the front steps:

This plant appears to be a cultivar of brown-eyed Susan (“Prairie glow”) that took up residence in the wet meadow: