‘Tis the Seedy Season: Part I

Posted on 11/10/2019 by chick
This plant with the distinctive foliage and red stems has been avoiding identification for years. It grows in abundance in the woods near my house. When I first saw it, I thought it was wintergreen, so I picked a leaf and sniffed it, because I thought wintergreen would have a minty smell. Nope. So I decided it wasn’t wintergreen. I failed to get a picture of its flowers earlier in the year, but here, at least, is a picture of the seed capsules. They will turn brown as they mature. And I know now what this plant is. It’s called spotted wintergreen (or striped wintergreen), so I was not entirely wrong before. I was just confused, because the name “wintergreen” is shared by other plants. To get the minty smell, I would have to find American wintergreen (a.k.a. teaberry), an unrelated plant, which I have seen before in woods farther north, but not here.
This peculiar looking thing is the seed capsule of Indian pipe. Presumably it will just get browner and grosser looking (see next picture).
Indian Pipe Gone All Brown and Gross
These pointy-looking things used to be spotted knapweed flowers.
Remember the clematis? I thought it looked weird when I first saw it in September, but it got weirder and woollier as the year progressed.
In mid-October, it looked like a hybrid of a sheep and a shrub. A shreep!
This is how the rabbit’s-foot clover looked in mid-October when it was seeding. I petted it, because I had to know if it was as soft as it looked. It was! Rabbit’s foot clover is such a cute wildflower that it’s become one of my favorites.
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2 Responses to ‘Tis the Seedy Season: Part I

  1. Pingback: Local Plant Catalog | Blue-Footed Musings

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