Door to Nature

Crab Spider on Queen Anne’s Lace blossom. Photo by Roy Lukes.

A lady asked me, following our recent DCIST meeting (Door County Invasives Species Team), for advice regarding native versus alien species of St. Johnswort plants. The absolute “seas” of weedy yellow plants throughout much of the county in early August, including many along some of the shores, were of the alien and invasive Common St. Johnsworts, (Hypericum perforatum). The correct pronunciation of Hypericum (an ancient Greek name), as listed in Gray’s Manual of Botany, is “hy-per-EYE-cum). The common name, perforatum (per-fo-RAY-tum), was well chosen because, holding one of the tiny leaves up to the bright sky (not at the sun!) and using a hand lens, you will observe in the leaf dozens of tiny pin holes too small to be seen by the naked eye.

There is a native St. Johnswort plant, growing along some of the more rocky Lake Michigan shores in the county. It is one of my most favorite of all native woody shrubs, the Shrubby St. Johnswort, Hypericum Kalmianum (kal-me-A-num), named in honor of the great Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm. My friend wanted to be sure she wouldn’t accidentally pull some good native plants. By far the most abundant of the wild plants adding such pleasing color to the Door County landscape now and well into September and October, are, with few exceptions, aliens which were accidentally or purposefully brought to North America from distant lands during the past 500+ years.

Chicory flower. Photo by Roy Lukes.

Abraham Lincoln said in effect that God must love the common people. He made so many of them. Perhaps this same general thought can be applied to the weeds, especially those of late summer and early fall, producing acre after acre of dazzling expanses. Some of the most conspicuous and beautiful include the Chicory, Spotted Knapweed and Queen Anne’s Lace.

No species of wildflower, alien invader that it may be, brings more questions during this season than the delicate light purple weed with the wiry gray-green stems and narrow leaves, the Spotted Knapweed, Centaurea maculosa, occasionally nicknamed “Door County Heather.” Its relatives found in cultivated gardens today include the Bachelor’s Button, Corn Flower and Dusty Miller. Old timers claim that this successful weed has not been in northeastern Wisconsin more than around 60 years. It appears to do exceptionally well in dry limey soil which abounds in this region.

Queen Anne’s Lace showing maroon decoy center. Photo by Roy Lukes.

Areas in the West, such as Montana, are aggressively fighting this plant at considerable cost for fear that it will take over valuable ranch land as well as big game habitat including that of the Elk. Like most members of its large tribe, these wiry plants seem to do best and blossom most profusely when crowded in sunny sites. They thrive in dry, gravelly, disturbed soil where there is a lack of competition from other plants. Provide the weed seeds with these three factors, sun, disturbed soil and lack of competition and you’ll have lots of hardy flowery company.

The “Queen” surely reigns supreme over ditches and neglected fields and fencerows. The world’s experts in the manufacture of lace may reside in Belgium or Italy but the real queen of the lace-maker’s art graces practically every roadside, waste place and dry unused field in eastern United States. A queen’s title was too good for many farmers who lowered the name to wild carrot, bird’s nest weed or devil’s plague.

Charlotte Lukes with roadside Ragweed plant in full boom. Photo by Roy Lukes.

Much of its success can be traced to the simple fact that it is a biennial capable of producing upwards of 7,000 to 8,000 seeds per large plant of nine or 10 flower heads. The seeds usually germinate in late summer and fall. Next year a small rosette of feathery carrot-like leaves and a rather thin fleshy root develop as the barely noticeable first-year plant grows. This strong starchy taproot easily survives the winter and will mature the following August into the magnificent flowering plant.

Many of the mature composite blossoms have a dark purple sterile central floret which, according to some botanists, serves as a decoy luring insects to land on the umbrella-like flower inadvertently transferring pollen from a neighboring plant. Look at enough of these handsome white flowers and surely you will find a white or light yellow predatory crab or flower spider patiently sitting very close to the purple decoy floret, as though it knew precisely where incoming insects will most likely land and, unexpectedly, provide the ambush spider with its next meal.

Spotted Knapweed. Photo by Roy Lukes.

A weedy wildflower whose delicate light blue color clashes with the lavender-purple of the Spotted Knapweed is the Chicory, sometimes called the Succory or Blue Sailors. Backlighted by the early morning sun along the edges of many roadsides, its delicate heavenly blue petals shout for attention. These one-inch bright ray flowers are born in the axils of leaves of the upper part of these perennials having a large, deep, fleshy taproot. The blossoms are most conspicuous during the morning and are usually closed for the day by noon. These plants seldom survive in cultivated fields but thrive in the foot or two space adjacent to the roadbeds which receive much scraping and seed-scattering from the snow plows each winter. This same rather battered zone also receives a lot of seed planting of Ragweed.

Learn the bad plants of the landscape along with the good. Many are beautiful, can be freely picked and are interesting to photograph and study. Even though most are aliens, as were our ancestors who very likely brought the weeds with them, they too are here to stay and we might just as well make the best of them.