Wildflower Week Continues

NYC Wildflower Week continues: I took part in the fantastic tour of the Native Flora Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden yesterday. Curator Uli Lorimer, here showing us the whole mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum, was an extraordinary guide to his own domain. Grab any chance you get to have this expert show you around the place, you will learn much. Detail of the mayappple flower (and developing fruit), which is found underneath the plant’s large leaves. It’s an understory specialist; there’s a patch in the Midwood I always like checking in with this time of year. Lorimer noted that the fruit was edible when ripe, but not particularly tasty. The rest of the plant, however, is toxic.A groundsel of many names; in the botanical lingo it’s Packera aurea.

Not pictured, but the bloodroot was intriguing: the rhizome of this plant seeps a blood-colored liquid. This color was used as a dye by Native Americans. Its seeds are transported by ants, who like the sweet coating, or bribe, the seeds offer. Crafty seeds.Yellow lady-slipper, Cypripedium calceolus var. pubescens (or, for an alternate name, note the taxonomic controversy). These were caged, like the nearby pink lady-slippers, to keep out rabbits. Rare, these; outside the precincts of a vigilant naturalists, they are nibbled by deer, paved over by Moloch, and poached by evil little shits. Foolishly, since transplants won’t grow.
Lorimer explains how some bee species buzz-pollinate flowers, vibrating the anthers so that they loosen pollen. His example is an eastern shooting star, Dodecatheon meadia.
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This is the time of year to visit the Native Flora Garden as often as you can. Things are constantly changing, and the intimate and complex relationships between plants, soil, weather, insects and other animals, is a drama daily unfolding. Sure, you can have your Cherry Esplanade, ranked like some coked-out squadron of debauched debutants in pink crinolines, if that’s your thing, but give me the NFG any day. It celebrates its centenary this year. It’s the oldest part of the BBG and has the Garden’s oldest tree: a squat, thick-boled, mossy-backed, blasted-limbed black cherry. It is something out of the Old Forest, from the banks of the Withywindle.