Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

After the first serious frost, a green woodland shrub suddenly turns bright red. Its colors beg to be brought home to brighten a dry bouquet on the windowsill.

But wait! Leaves of three! And no thorns on the stem! Isn’t that just the definition of poison ivy?

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

Flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata) is a plant I feel connected to, because I discovered it on my land before I’d ever heard of it. Had to go home and look through my books to find out what it was. (This was before there were phone apps to ID the flowers.)

I learned it was a native wildflower of eastern North America. Some people call it “baby’s breath of the prairie,” because many tiny white blossoms form an airy, branching spray resembling the baby’s breath flowers that florists use as filler in bouquets.

I found flowering spurge mingling with tall grasses in a fence line. Each blossom was smaller than the tip of my little finger and stunningly white. I had to have it in my garden, and I resolved to check back later for seeds.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post in late August on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

On a September morning, I rediscovered a plant that I was looking for in summer but never spotted. It’s not rare. However, it’s so inconspicuous that it can go unnoticed.

It is Seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia), a native prairie wildflower that grows by the shore of my pond. I didn’t plant it, and I doubt that anyone ever did. It found that spot on its own, some time after the pond was dug, and colonized the bank.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post in late August on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

My garden has been a golden extravaganza this summer. Masses of Partridge Peas (Chamaecrista fasciculata) planted themselves with the seeds that fell from last year’s plants. For a couple of months, they have bloomed with enthusiasm and with no help from me.

And they’ve been mobbed with bumblebees.

The Partridge Pea patch 

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

I reached down to touch the yellowing fruit. I only noticed it because the leaves it was hiding under were withering away.

At my touch, the fruit dropped into my hand. It was soft.

So the Mayapples were ripe.

A month or two ago I had seen quite a few fruits hidden beneath the Mayapple leaves.

Now they were gone.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

Down the grassy slope from my house, in June a great tangle of wild roses suddenly blooms with hundreds of flowers. They billow in every tint from deep raspberry through pale pink to nearly white.

It is the Climbing Rose (Rosa setigera), one of Iowa’s several wild roses. According to botanists, it is considered uncommon in Iowa. I’m rather pleased to find that it grows on my land.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post in April on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

Sunshine lit up the forest floor. Overhead, tall walnut and oak trees had no leaves yet. A white trout lily (Erythronium albidum) stood alone, just above the sparse new grass. Its petals arched in arabesques, as if lifting the flower above the earth.

Some accident of placement or ancestry, of light and moisture, had singled out this one to bloom today. Nearby, the other trout lilies were still asleep on pink stems, their buds drooping.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post in September on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

On the first full day of fall, the Blue sage (Salvia azurea) of my garden is in full bloom. Flower spikes are head high. Some are deep blue, others paler. The ones I love best are the color of an Iowa summer sky.

Down in the heart of each flower, the petals narrow and form a well. Inside, a drop of nectar pools. It is ready for a visitor, someone whose flight is powered by sugar, someone who will pollinate the blossom.

Usually it’s a bumblebee who comes. It lands on the ruffled platform of the lower petal and pushes its head into the flower, probing for sweetness with its tongue.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post in July on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

Winged Loosestrife (Lythrum alatum) is a slender waif. It grows up surrounded by bigger, taller plants. I didn’t discover it until we had been neighbors for almost twenty years.

I found it in a natural opening in the woods at the bottom of a hill. It’s near an intermittent creek, surrounded by trees. I named that spot the Pocket Prairie. To explore it, I mowed a trail through it.

The ground is often wet there. That may be why trees haven’t invaded. It is home to wildflowers that I don’t find up top, where the ground is drier. It’s a magical feeling to enter. This Pocket Prairie is where I discovered a native Iowa wildflower named Winged Loosestrife.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

On September 9 I watched a Ruby-throated Hummingbird visit the purple blossoms of Rough Blazing Star (Liatris aspera). For a couple of seconds she hovers at bill’s length from the flowers, then moves slightly up or around the stalk. I couldn’t see her tongue, but I knew she was using it to slurp out the nectar.

Most adult males had already migrated out of Iowa by that time. Females and the young of the year linger a while longer. They zip around seeking flower sugar, which they will put away in the form of hummingbird fat. They must store calories to power their long migratory flight south, right across the Gulf of Mexico and on into Central America.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

When I planted its seeds, I’d never met Large-flowered Beardtongue (Penstemon grandiflorus) in real life. All I knew was that it was a primeval wildflower. I wanted to see what it was like, once upon a time, back when this land was a tallgrass prairie.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

My first look at Wild geraniums (Geranium maculatum) was on a vertical cliff, which forms the far bank of Crow Creek, near my home.

Pink-purple flowers leaned out over the stream, lavish among mosses, ferns, and other wildflowers.

I didn’t know what they were.

Note from Laura Belin: Bleeding Heartland’s Iowa wildflower Wednesday series is going on winter hiatus and will return sometime in the spring of 2025. You can find all past posts focusing on specific plants here, and posts featuring many wildflowers found in one natural area here.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

I hear explosions from the kitchen. Snappy sounds, like popcorn popping. 

However, these are not popcorn. They are Wild Petunia (Ruellia humilis) seeds ricocheting against the inside of a brown paper bag.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

Rising above the dead leaves and grasses, a golden wand swept upward in the woods. It could easily be overlooked. It made me think of some slender animal, unfamiliar, perhaps mythical, standing on its hind legs to look in wonder at where it had found itself.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

If I indulge my fantasy, I imagine asters as sentient beings, each with its own personality. If that were the case, then Willow Asters (Symphyotrichum praealtum) would be aristocrats, with their subtle lavender petals, slender leaves, and graceful poses.

If she were a lady, she would host gracious, elegant parties by a lake. Suitors would long for her attention.

There are indeed beings who visit her every hour of the day. She is always attended by bees, butterflies, and myriad other insects.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

Walking a damp trail at the woods edge, I’m surrounded by flowers. Pink and purple clusters of blossoms dangle from low branches and brush my face.

This is Groundnut (Apios americana), a native flowering vine of North America. It creates a magical feeling, like a lovers’ bower in a fantasy.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

Mid-summer, yellow flowers start dominating the grassy field. But then prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya) shoots up sizzling rose-purple shafts of color, like big fuzzy light sabers, and steals the show.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

So small and hiding. You could walk right past them. But look down into the long grasses, and you’ll see their tiny blue faces looking up at you.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

Ohio Spiderworts (Tradescantia ohiensis) wake me up when I look out the window. Although only a few flowers are open at a time, the bright golden anthers play against their color-opposite purple petals. My eyes shimmer.

It’s a morning-only vision. Around noon the flowers close up tight. As if to say, “Come back tomorrow.” For the rest of the day, spiderworts are simply green, easy to overlook.

But next sunrise, a fresh crop of purple-petaled blossoms opens. From the center of each flower, slender columns reach up. These are the reproductive parts of the flowers.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

On stems up to 12 feet tall, the yellow blossoms of Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum) tower over other wildflowers. Down below, the roots reach into the earth as deep as 16 feet.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, a Substack newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

When the first people walked on the tall grass prairie of North America, they found Baldwin’s Ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii). It can grow almost anywhere the sun shines, including on dry, rocky soil. It’s important for feeding butterflies, moths and especially native bees.

The blooming top looks like a natural bouquet of about a dozen flowers plus some buds that haven’t opened yet. Each one of what looks like individual flowers is actually a smaller bouquet, made up of 20-or-so tiny florets. (Floret = little flower.)

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on Birdwatching Dot Com.

Last week I found a big black ant rushing across my kitchen counter. Tightly clenched in its jaws was a Prairie Trillium seed, which was attached to a cream-colored swoop. The ant kept darting under the edges of objects. I tried to get it into view so I could get a picture. But the ant was too quick and agile for me.

I prodded at the seed with a toothpick, but the ant would not let go. We battled this way for a minute. I tried not to harm the ant, but clearly I was causing it aggravation. Ultimately it dropped the seed and disappeared into a crack at the edge of the sink. At least now I could study the seed.