Late summer wildflowers are coming on strong across Iowa. During the past three weeks, I’ve seen the first flowers of 2017 on brown-eyed Susan, common evening primrose, goldenrod, ironweed, cutleaf coneflower, common sneezeweed, white snakeroot, yellow jewelweed, and even New England aster, which usually appears later and continues to produce flowers until the first frost.

Today’s featured plant is nearing the end of its blooming period for the year. Winged loosestrife (Lythrum alatum) can be found in a variety of wet habitats, such as “moist black soil prairies, marshes, fens, borders of lakes and ponds, areas along rivers and drainage ditches, and low-lying ground along railroads.” Sometimes called winged lythrum, this species is native to most of North America from the Rocky Mountains to the east coast.

I took all of the enclosed photos between late June and late July on lower ground in the prairie restoration area along the Windsor Heights trail, behind the Iowa Department of Natural Resources building on Hickman Road.

Note: winged loosestrife can be confused with purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), which is “now ranked among the most highly problematic invasive species in North America.” At the end of this post I’ve included two pictures of purple loosestrife. If this attractive plant is growing on your property, I recommend pulling it up.

Sharing Eileen Miller’s photographs is always a treat, especially when she has captured wildflowers I’ve never seen. Common arrowhead, also known as broad-leaf arrowhead or duckroot, can be found across most of the U.S. and Canada.

Of the more than 150 native plants featured for Iowa wildflower Wednesday since 2012, only a few species have separate male and female flowers: bur cucumber, early meadow rue, and purple meadow rue. Thanks to Eileen, we can add arrowhead to that short list today. She wrote all of the text below.

July is a fantastic month for wildflower-spotting in Iowa. In addition to the many plants I mentioned in last week’s post, within the past few days I have seen the first blossoms of 2017 on common evening primrose, blue vervain, and cutleaf coneflower. Near the Windsor Heights trail, I also found two species I don’t recall seeing in past years: monkey flower and catnip. I hope to feature them on an upcoming Wednesday, along with Culver’s root and Joe Pye weed, which are also blooming now in many natural areas.

I took most of the pictures enclosed below in late May at Tipton Prairie in Greene County. Prairie phlox (Phlox pilosa) typically blooms in the late spring or early summer in Iowa. If you see flowers resembling it during July or August, you are probably looking at a cultivar adapted from this species.

Native to much of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains, this plant is also known as downy phlox or fragrant phlox. Its favored habitats “include moist to mesic black soil prairies, rocky open forests, Bur Oak savannas, sandy Black Oak savannas, limestone glades, thickets, abandoned fields, and prairie remnants along railroads.”

According to the Minnesota Wildflowers website, prairie phlox “does well in a garden, in sunny, sandy soil.” The flowers attract a wide variety of pollinators and sometimes ruby-throated hummingbirds. In Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie, Sylvan Runkel and Dean Roosa wrote, “The Meskwaki made a tea of the leaves and used it as a wash for treating eczema. The same sort of tea was drunk to cure eczema and to purify the blood at the same time. Also, the root was used with several other unspecified plants as part of a love potion.”

Summer wildflowers are coming on strong now. On native or restored prairies, you may find cup plants or compass plants in bloom, along with yellow coneflowers, purple coneflowers, rattlesnake master, blazing star, black-eyed Susan, partridge pea, and several kinds of milkweed, including common, swamp, butterfly, or whorled. Along wooded trails, the purple, star-shaped blossoms of American bellflower are a frequent sight.

This week’s featured plant typically starts blooming in the late spring; in most parts of Iowa, the flowers are gone by July. Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis) is also known as meadow anemone, round-leaf thimbleweed, or windflower. This member of the buttercup family is native to most of North America, except for states in the deep South or west of the Rocky Mountains. It can thrive in a range of usually wet habitats, such as “moist prairies, sedge meadows, openings in floodplain woodlands, woodland borders, banks of streams, and swampy areas.” I took some of the enclosed pictures along bike trails in Des Moines and Clive and others on lower ground at the Tipton Prairie in Greene County.

According to the Minnesota Wildflowers website, Canada anemone “can form sizable colonies via spreading rhizomes.” The Friends of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden site advises, “In the home garden it can make a good ground cover beneath trees and shrubs but in a restricted setting it needs control due to its spreading habit. For full flowering potential, it needs a mostly sunny area.” Likewise, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s site notes that this plant “can become quite aggressive in too favorable conditions.”

Although today’s featured plant is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains, I’d never seen Prairie redroot (Ceanothus herbaceus) before my first visit to Tipton Prairie in Greene County. Sometimes known as narrow-leaved New Jersey tea, inland New Jersey tea, Jersey tea, or simply redroot, this species thrives in relatively dry habitats, especially “upland woods, prairies, barrens.”

I took all of the enclosed pictures at Tipton Prairie, a never-plowed, four-acre “unique remnant,” during the last week of May. Prairie redroot flowers “about a month earlier” than its relative, New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus). I’ve been told that in Iowa, New Jersey tea plants rarely bloom before June, while redroot typically blooms in May.

Fun fact: Ceanothus species “can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere.”

Thanks to Lora Conrad for sharing these gorgeous pictures. -promoted by desmoinesdem

One summer about 15 years ago, I was walking a path at the Pioneer Ridge Nature Center near Ottumwa and saw among the green plants one stunningly bright, tiny pink flower. Finding out what it was took years! It was not listed in any of the wildflower reference books I had at the time. After seeing more of the tiny bright flowers over the years and then obtaining internet access to wildflower databases, my efforts produced a name and its origins. The brilliant little Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) is indeed wild, naturalized and, according to uswildflowers.com, is found sprinkled about in 47 of the 50 states—but it is not native to North America. It’s from Europe and is fairly common in western and central Europe but in decline in England.

Its name came from a case of mistaken identity by a 17th century botanist who described another Dianthus that was common around Deptford, England at the time.

For years, I thought today’s featured plant was a European invader, but cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum) is native to most of the U.S. and Canada.

Sometimes known as common cowparsnip, these plants are easy to spot in the late spring and early summer, in part because of their large clusters of small white flowers. They also tend to be taller than anything growing nearby. (By the late summer, other woodland plants may reach similar heights.) Cow parsnip “can be found in both high quality natural areas and disturbed habitats,” but I’ve mostly seen them in the woods. I took most of these pictures near trails in Des Moines and Clive in early June.

Cow parsnip is “the native counterpart to the highly invasive non-native Giant Hogweed.” It grows taller than the non-native wild parsnip, which has yellow flowers and should be avoided unless you want to experience a horrible blistering rash.

Today’s featured plant was a new addition to my “life list” during a recent visit to Tipton Prairie in Greene County. Yellow star grass (Hypoxis hirsuta), sometimes known as common goldstar, is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. I’d seen pictures of the small yellow flowers in books and on the Iowa Wildflower Report Facebook group, but I don’t think I had ever seen one in person until one of my companions called me over to a slope near the highest point of the four-acre prairie.

I’m excited to publish another series of photographs by Eileen Miller, who has contributed about a dozen spectacular editions of Iowa wildflower Wednesday over the years. For her first guest post here in 2017, she chose to feature Alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) in the family Saxifragaceae, which she describes as “an intriguing native, perennial wildflower of tall grass prairies.”

Eileen took all of the photographs enclosed below in April at Tipton Prairie, a 4-acre virgin prairie in Greene County. I took the picture at the top of this post during my first-ever visit to Tipton Prairie last month.

June is a perfect time to be out in nature, but a couple of cautionary notes: be sure to put on insect repellent if you go looking for wildflowers in Iowa woods, prairies, or meadows. Also, watch where you step, because 2017 seems to be a banner year for a few dangerous plants: poison ivy, poison hemlock, and wild parsnip. I don’t know whether the mild winter or the timing of the spring rains were responsible.

After last week’s rare and spectacular featured plant (Shooting star), Iowa wildflower Wednesday returns today to the lowly and commonplace. Aunt Lucy (Ellisia nyctelea), also known as Waterpod, is native to most of the U.S. and Canada. Like wild chervil, it doesn’t stand out among other plants that bloom around the same time, so you might not notice its flowers or fruit. The Illinois Wildflowers site says of this plant,

Aunt Lucy is an oddball member of the Waterleaf family. It is not very showy and often omitted from many wildflower guides. Aunt Lucy occurs in two quite different habitats: deciduous woodlands and disturbed areas where the ground is bare or lightly mulched. In the former habitat, it is one of our native spring wildflowers, while in the latter habitat it is a minor weed of nurseries and bare open ground in cities.

I took most of the pictures enclosed below near my home in Windsor Heights. Lora Conrad, a talented photographer and wildflower enthusiast, kindly gave me permission to post a few of her pictures, taken near the Des Moines River in Van Buren County.

Until this month, I had never seen today’s featured wildflowers “in real life.” Shooting star (Dodecatheon meadia) is as eye-catching as last week’s wild chervil is unobtrusive. Also known as prairie shooting star or pride of Ohio, the plant is native to more than 20 states east of the Rocky Mountains, but it is rarely seen outside “high-quality habitats” including prairies, upland forests, and fens.

The Illinois Wildflowers and Minnesota Wildflowers websites have botanically accurate descriptions of shooting star foliage, flowers, and seed capsules. I took all of the enclosed pictures at Rochester Cemetery in Cedar County in early May. This never-plowed patch of prairie is well worth a special trip or at least a short detour if you’re traveling along nearby I-80.

This week’s featured plant is so easily overlooked that I failed to notice its flowers in my own yard for more than ten years. But once I learned to recognize wild chervil (Chaerophyllum procumbens), it seemed to pop up everywhere.

This “somewhat weedy” member of the carrot or parsley family is native to much of North America. Wild chervil is not spectacular like its relative Golden Alexanders, or even as eye-catching as Sweet Cicely, both of which bloom around the same time in the spring.

I took all of the enclosed pictures in Windsor Heights within the past few weeks.

I’ve rarely featured flowering trees for this series. I’m making an exception today for Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra), which is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. The tree is sometimes known as horse chestnut, buckeye, American buckeye, or stinking buckeye because its leaves give off “a strong fetid odor when crushed.”

The blossoms of Ohio buckeye are distinctive, and once you learn to recognize them, you’ll know where to come back in the fall to collect the round, smooth seeds.

Elizabeth Garst once told me that during one of her grandfather Roswell Garst‘s visits to the Soviet Union, his Russian host gave him a buckeye for good luck. He was surprised to learn some Americans follow the same tradition. According to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s website, “Pioneers carried a buckeye seed in their pockets to ward off rheumatism.” Wood from the tree was often used to carve children’s cradles or artificial limbs, “because it is light, easily worked, and resists splitting.”

I enclose below some pictures of buckeye trees now flowering in Clive and Windsor Heights.

Early spring wildflowers are mostly gone now, but if you venture into wooded areas during the coming week, you may find lots of Jack-in-the-pulpits, sweet William, sweet Cicely or aniseroot, false rue anemone, wild geranium, Missouri gooseberry, and Virginia waterleaf blooming. Buds are open on many May apples/umbrella plants and wild ginger too, but you have to bend down and look under the leaves to see them. Unfortunately, the invasive garlic mustard is also flowering and developing seed pods. If you see it when you are out and about, try to pull it up by the roots and throw it away in a garbage bag. (If you leave garlic mustard on the ground, the plants can take root start growing again.)

Longtime followers of this series know I have a soft spot for wildflowers that might not be particularly “showy” but are tough as nails, thriving in some inhospitable habitats.

Littleleaf buttercup (Ranunculus abortivus) falls into that category. Native to almost all of the U.S. and Canada, this “somewhat weedy” plant can grow in “open woodlands, woodland borders, areas along woodland paths, degraded meadows, banks of rivers and ditches, pastures and abandoned fields, edges of yards, vacant lots, grassy areas along railroads and roads, and waste areas.”

Also known as littleleaf crowfoot, small-flowered buttercup, or kidney-leaf buttercup, these plants are easily overlooked among more striking spring bloomers. The flowers are small, and the foliage often blends in with surrounding plants.

Except where otherwise noted, I took all of the enclosed pictures near our home in Windsor Heights.

Today’s featured plants are among the few wildflowers I could identify before I embarked on the journey that led to the Iowa wildflower Wednesday series. I grew up calling them dogtooth violets. More often, I hear others use the common name white trout lily. Alternative names include thousand leaf or white fawnlily.

Erythronium albidum is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. According to Wildflowers of Iowa Woodlands by Sylvan Runkel and Alvin Bull, dogtooth violets are “found throughout the state in rich moist woodlands, especially in bottomlands with open woods.” The Illinois Wildflowers site notes,

An abundance of this plant indicates that a woodlands has never been subjected to the plow or bulldozed over. White Trout Lily is one of the spring wildflowers that is threatened by the spread of Alliaria petiolata (Garlic Mustard) in wooded areas.

Picking these flowers kills the plant, so leave them alone. Runkel and Bull write that the bulbs underground used to be a common food source for American Indian tribes. I’ve never tried to dig them up.

Dogtooth violets are “one of the first woodland flowers to bloom in the spring,” but they don’t last as long as some other early bloomers. In my corner of Windsor Heights, the dogtooth violet flowers have come and gone, whereas I still see lots of violets, rue anemone, and spring beauty. I took all of the enclosed pictures in mid-April.

Iowa didn’t experience much severe winter weather this year, but the political climate was harsher than at any other time in living memory. After writing up too much bad news these past few months, I’m glad to revive Bleeding Heartland’s weekly wildflower series. Click here for the full archive of posts featuring more than 140 native plants and a few plants of European origin that are now widespread here.

Downy yellow violet (Viola pubescens) is native to all of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. In Iowa, you may see it near homes as well as in wooded areas. Except where noted below, I took most of the enclosed pictures not far from our house in Windsor Heights. However, most violets I see in people’s yards are purple or the white color variation of that flower, the common blue violet. Less often, you may find striped white violet, a separate species.

According to John Pearson of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Viola pubescens are the only yellow violets native to our state. The Minnesota Wildflowers site has botanically accurate descriptions of the foliage, flowers, and seeds. Common yellow violet or smooth yellow violet are alternate names for this plant.

One of my blogging new year’s resolutions for 2016 was to publish more work by other authors, and I’m grateful to the many talented writers who helped me meet that goal. After the jump I’ve linked to all 140 guest posts published here last year.

I encourage readers to consider writing for this site in 2017. Guest authors can write about any political issue of local, state, or national importance. As you can see from the stories enclosed below, a wide range of topics and perspectives are welcome here.

Pieces can be short or long, funny or sad. You can write in a detached voice or let your emotions show.

Posts can analyze what happened or advocate for what should happen, either in terms of public policy or a political strategy for Democrats. Authors can share first-person accounts of campaign events or more personal reflections about public figures.

Guest authors do not need to e-mail a draft to me or ask permission to pursue a story idea. Just register for an account (using the “sign up” link near the upper right), log in, write a post, edit as needed, and hit “submit for review” when you are ready to publish. The piece will be “pending” until I approve it for publication, to prevent spammers from using the site to sell their wares. You can write under your own name or choose any pseudonym not already claimed by another Bleeding Heartland user. I do not reveal authors’ identity without their permission.

I also want to thank everyone who comments on posts here. If you’ve never participated that way, feel free to register for a user account and share your views. If you used to comment occasionally but have not done so lately, you may need to reset your password. Let me know if you have any problems registering for an account, logging in, or changing a password. My address is near the lower right-hand corner of this page.

Bleeding Heartland’s weekly wildflower series has grown far beyond what I envisioned when I published the first Iowa wildflower Wednesday in March 2012. The search for material has taken me to many parks and nature preserves I’d never explored and connected me to some incredible photographers and naturalists, including Eileen Miller, Leland Searles, and Marla Mertz.

Many readers have told me the wildflower posts are among their favorites at the site. For a long time I’ve been meaning to collect all of the links in one place.

After the jump you’ll find the common and scientific names of nearly 150 species featured here so far. The date next to each plant’s name links to a post with multiple photographs. I would not have been able to identify most of these plants five years ago. Before my son’s interest in Jack-in-the-pulpits inspired me to start learning more about native plants in 2009, I could not have identified even a dozen of them.

I will continue to update this index once Iowa wildflower Wednesday returns during the spring of 2017. UPDATE: As of the summer of 2019, this series has featured more than 200 plant species.

Continuing a Bleeding Heartland tradition, I’m closing out the wildflower series with assorted pictures of asters, many of which bloom well into the Iowa autumn. Heath asters and calico asters were featured in last year’s final wildflowers post, New England aster the year before. I included a few more views of that colorful plant today, along with pictures of a white and yellow species commonly known as Frost aster, Hairy white oldfield aster, or Awl aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum). The plant is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains.

Other members of this family you may find blooming across Iowa in the fall include flat-topped aster, blue wood or heart-leaved aster, and sky blue aster.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Iowa wildflower Wednesday will return in the spring. Click here for the full archive (five years of posts).

People sometimes ask when I’m going to run out of native plants for this series. The answer is not for a very long time. I already have a list of about three dozen species I hope to cover in 2017. Most have not been featured before on Bleeding Heartland, because I never caught them at the peak blooming time, or wasn’t happy with my photographs, or ran out of Wednesdays in the appropriate season. Look for several posts by guest authors next year as well. I’m actively seeking volunteers to capture a few deep pink or red flowers that tax my limited photography skills, such as the purple poppy mallow, cardinal flower (red lobelia), and wild four o’clock.

Marion County Naturalist Marla Mertz presents an unusual wildflower that lacks chlorophyll. You can view her earlier contributions to Bleeding Heartland’s wildflower series here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Venturing into the woods in late summer is not common for me, as the prairie whispers my name. A quick walk in the woods might just be a good change of pace. Hiking boots on and a camera over my shoulder, off to the woods I go. Within a few short feet of a walking trail, my eyes immediately zoomed to the ground…a snow white flower? mushroom? fungus? Kneeling to take a closer look, the flower appeared to be a fungus. My eyes gaze around the forest floor to see a few more tiny, white looking, flowers and some have tinges of color. Flower or fungus? Being easily entertained, I photographed in every way shape and form in hopes that some would help me to define this unique “something”.

What appeared to be a strange looking fungus, had all of the aspects of a true flower. Not green, but white; a clammy feeling to the touch and waxy petal looking leaves that alternate up the stem. Some were in clumps and some were singled out. Some bowed and some stood straight up. Some had a pink tinge of color and some had a dark purple to black tinge around the petal looking leaves. Some had little yellow-looking flowers within the top of the plant. After an hour of photographing and digging out the old reliables of resource books, all of these observations pointed in the direction of the Ghost Plant, also known as Indian pipe and fairy smoke. Mystery solved!…almost.

When I planned to feature these wildflowers the day after the presidential election, I was hoping the country–if not Iowa–would have something to celebrate today. Prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya) is a spectacular plant and seemed fitting for the occasion of Americans electing the first woman president.

I stuck with the plan because beautiful things will continue to exist, even after a narcissist with ugly impulses becomes the world’s most powerful man.

Prairie blazing star is native to a bunch of states that voted for Donald Trump yesterday and a few that voted for Hillary Clinton.

Marion County Naturalist Marla Mertz presents more Iowa wildflowers I’ve never seen “in real life.” I highly recommend her previous contributions to this series: Showy orchis and Queen of the Prairie. -promoted by desmoinesdem

This spring, Iowa wildflower Wednesday featured a very small, and more commonly known woodland orchid, the Showy Orchis. It is a notable early spring find, and I always look forward to visiting the woodlands for its appearance.

Some of us don’t trek the woodlands in the fall as often, as the prairies and vibrant blooms of roadsides keep us forever in awe and discovery. Late August, September and October are great times to visit the woods, and if you are looking for orchids, a sharp eye and delicate step bring fascinating finds. Iowa’s fall woodlands hold a few inconspicuous and rare little orchids. Oval ladies’-tresses (Spiranthes ovalis) and Autumn coralroot (Corallorhiza odontorhiza) are two of the most common.

Long after most woodland or prairie wildflowers have gone to seed, many aster species are blooming well into the autumn across Iowa. One of the prettiest is blue wood aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium), also known as heart-leaved aster, common blue wood aster, or broad-leaved aster.

This plant is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains and thrives in “moist to dry deciduous woodlands, woodland borders, areas adjacent to woodland paths, thinly wooded bluffs, shaded areas along streambanks, and rocky wooded slopes.” I took the enclosed pictures in mid-October along the driveway that leads from 45th Street to the Bergman Academy (old Science Center of Iowa building) in Des Moines.

This year’s unseasonably warm autumn weather inspired me to feature a plant today that typically blooms in the summer. Several colonies of Purple giant hyssop (Agastache scrophulariifolia) were in peak flower six to eight weeks ago along the Meredith bike trail between Gray’s Lake and downtown Des Moines.

This member of the mint family is native to much of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes it as a plant of “special value to native bees, honey bees and bumble bees.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service guide for this species notes that goldfinches and hummingbirds are also attracted to the flowers, and the plant is a “popular ornamental,” since its height (up to five or six feet) “makes it a good choice as a background against fencing.” It thrives in moist soil and can handle full sun or partial shade.

Purple giant hyssop is a close relative of blue giant hyssop, also known as anise hyssop, which Bleeding Heartland featured last year. According to the Minnesota Wildflowers website, purple giant hyssop has a green calyx (the “cup-like whorl of sepals” that holds the flower) and green on the underside of leaves, while blue giant hyssop has a blue-violet calyx and a “whitish” color on the underside of its leaves. Iowa naturalist and photographer Leland Searles gave me an easier tip: crush a leaf. If it smells like licorice, you’ve found anise hyssop.

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: Some exceptionally sad news caught my eye recently:

A new investigation by the Associated Press and the USA Today network found that in the first six months of 2016, children aged 17 or younger “died from accidental shootings — at their own hands, or at the hands of other children or adults — at a pace of one every other day, far more than limited federal statistics indicate.” Alaska and Louisiana had the highest rates of accidental child shooting. A separate feature in the series focused on three incidents that killed two teenage girls and seriously injured another in Tama County, Iowa.

Government research on accidental gun deaths is nearly non-existent, because more than two decades ago, the National Rifle Association persuaded Congress to defund gun research by the Centers for Disease Control.

Meanwhile, the AP’s Scott McFetridge reported last week on the growing hunger problem in Storm Lake. The problem isn’t lack of jobs–the local unemployment rate is quite low–but a lack of livable wages. Iowa-born economist Austin Frerick mentioned Storm Lake and other towns dominated by meatpacking plants in his guest post here a few months ago: Big Meat, Small Towns: The Free Market Rationale for Raising Iowa’s Minimum Wage.

I enclose below excerpts from all of those stories, along with some good news from the past week:

The African-American Hall of Fame announced four new inductees, who have done incredible work in higher education, criminal justice, community organizing, and the practice of law.

Planned Parenthood marked the 100th anniversary of the first birth control clinic opening in the country on October 16. Click here for a timeline of significant events in the organization’s history.

Drake University Biology Professor Thomas Rosburg will receive this year’s Lawrence and Eula Hagie Heritage Award from the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. Rosburg is a legend among Iowans who care about native plants, wetlands, and prairie restoration.

You don’t need to venture into a high-quality prairie or wooded area to find today’s featured plant. Tall boneset (Eupatorium altissimum) grows well on sunny or partly shaded ground in a range of habitats: “open woods, thickets, prairies, along railroads, [or] waste areas.”

Sometimes known as tall thoroughwort, this member of the aster family is native to most of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains.

Some trivia before we get to the photographs: according to the Friends of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden website, the 40-some plant species with Eupatorium as the first part of the Latin nomenclature (including common and tall boneset) are “named after the Persian general Mithridates Eupator who is said to have used plants as a medicine and in his personal quest to become insensitive to poisons.”

Over the last few years, this weekly series has inspired me to visit many natural areas for the first time on the hunt for new (to me) Iowa wildflowers, such as wild blue sage, dwarf larkspur, and wood betony. Today’s featured plant was hiding in plain sight, barely a quarter-mile from my home. I’d noticed it before this summer, but for some reason assumed it wasn’t native and never learned its name until a couple of months ago.

Tall blue lettuce (Lactuca biennis) is native to most of Canada and the United States. Sometimes called blue wood lettuce, biennial blue lettuce or woodland lettuce, the plant thrives in shady, wet habitats, including woods, swamps, and stream banks. I took all of the enclosed pictures on the Windsor Heights and Urbandale bike trails, which run along North Walnut Creek.

Iowa naturalist Eileen Miller and I became acquainted through our shared appreciation for wildflowers. Her longstanding fascination with insects inspired her to learn more about the native plants these animals use to feed and reproduce.

Members of the Raccoon River Watershed Facebook group (open to anyone, not just central Iowans) are regularly treated to Eileen’s spectacular pictures of insects and arachnids, such as: an Eastern Comma caterpillar making a shelter, a crab spider guarding her egg sac, a wolf spider carrying spiderlings on her back, some Giant Ichneumon wasps drilling into a dead tree to lay their eggs on larvae of Pigeon Horntail wasps, a male giant water bug carrying eggs on his back, or a little planthopper winged adult emerging from the last nymph stage.

I recently asked Eileen to share some of her favorite pictures of insects feeding on and/or pollinating Iowa wildflowers. Thirteen gorgeous shots are enclosed below.

Eileen’s past contributions to this blog featured golden corydalis, hoary puccoon and fringed puccoon, marsh marigold, snow trillium, hepatica, blue cohosh, pasque flower, and yucca. Two years ago, she provided material for a post about unusual native fungi.

Last week’s featured wildflowers stand out, even in a colorful summer prairie landscape. In contrast, you could easily walk past flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata) without spotting them. The species is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains and grows in a wide range of habitats. But although flowering spurge isn’t a rare plant, I don’t recall noticing it before this summer.

I took the enclosed photos in late August and early September where the edge of woods meets a restored prairie in Dallas County.

Most thistles growing along Iowa roads or fields are invasive plants. Bull thistle and Canada thistle are on Iowa’s noxious weeds list.

But if you’re lucky, you may see a thistle that belongs in our state’s wooded or prairie habitats.

Tall thistle (Cirsium altissimum) is native to most of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains. Its seeds are a “staple” food for the eastern or American goldfinch, Iowa’s state bird.

I took the pictures enclosed below in late August and early September on a restored prairie in Dallas County.

Today’s featured plant was a new discovery for me a few weeks ago. Its tall, branching stems with many delicate flowers compelled me to pull over my bicycle, despite being hungry for breakfast at the downtown farmers market.

Biennial gaura (Oenothera gaura) is native to much of North America east of the plains states. As its name suggests, the plant has a two-year cycle, developing a “a rosette of basal leaves” during the first year and flowering the next year. You are most likely to find it in “tall grass prairie, woodland openings and river banks.” Biennial gaura thrives in full sun but “tolerates many kinds of soil.” Its alternate name biennial beeblossom testifies to the plant’s appeal to various insect pollinators.

I took the enclosed photos along the Meredith bike trail in Des Moines, close to the southeast end of Gray’s Lake.

Since last Wednesday’s post featured a woodland plant with blossoms that are easy to miss, I thought it would be fun to go to the other end of the Iowa wildflowers spectrum today. Rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium) grows in prairie habitats in most of the plains and Midwestern states. These tall plants with large yellow flower heads are bound to catch your eye when they are blooming.

Rosinweed (sometimes called wholeleaf rosinweed) is one of four Silphiums. Bleeding Heartland has profiled two of the others: compass plant and cup plant. The last Silphium is prairie rosinweed, also known as prairie dock. The website of the Friends of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in Minnesota has a handy comparison chart.

I took the enclosed pictures at either the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City (Jasper County) or at Whiterock Conservancy near Coon Rapids (Carroll County). You should be able to find plenty of rosinweed blooming at either location over Labor Day weekend.

This week’s featured plant is a species I learned to identify only a few weeks ago. Far from the most impressive flowers you’ll see blooming in moist habitats during the summer, smooth hedge nettle (Stachys tenuifolia) “is easy to overlook,” since it “tends to be rather small-sized and non-descript.” This member of the mint family is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. I took all of the enclosed pictures along the Windsor Heights or Urbandale bike trails.

The foliage of smooth hedge nettle strongly resembles that of American or Canada germander, which grows in similar wet places and was the focus of a Bleeding Heartland post last month. At first glance, the flowers are hard to tell apart too, but hedge nettle blossoms have an upper lip that is absent on germander flowers.

Some hedge nettle species are also known as woundwort. That name may ring a bell, because General Woundwort is a memorable character from the fantastic adventure story Watership Down. If the name doesn’t sound familiar, make time to read Watership Down sometime. That book has been one of my favorite novels since I read it as a child. My kids enjoyed it too when we read it together a couple of years ago.

The tiny white flowers on today’s featured plant aren’t the most impressive-looking blossoms you’ll find in late summer, but they are in a family of “deer-resistant pollinator magnets.”

Virginia mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Also known as common mountain mint, these plants thrive in a range of moist habitats and are “not fussy about soil texture.” A wide range of insects pollinate the flowers, but mammals tend to avoid the fragrant foliage. The strong mint smell is unmistakable when you crush a few leaves. I took these pictures a few weeks ago at Whiterock Conservancy near Coon Rapids and next to the Meredith bike trail in Des Moines, close to the southeast parking lot at Gray’s Lake.

Scroll to the end of this post for two bonus shots of a much more “showy” wildflower. I was sad to learn that the native range of Royal catchfly (Silene regia) does not extend to Iowa. However, this plant with bright red flowers can be cultivated here and reportedly attracts hummingbirds. I found these growing in one of the plantings at a Gray’s Lake parking lot.

Large yellow flowerheads are abundant this time of year along roadsides and on almost any Iowa prairie, even small remnants or restoration projects. You may find cup plants, compass plants, yellow coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, brown-eyed Susans, rosinweed (soon to be featured at Bleeding Heartland), Jerusalem artichokes, common sunflowers, Maximilian sunflowers, or today’s plant.

Ox-eye (Heliopsis helianthoides) is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Also known as false sunflower, oxeye sunflower, smooth oxeye, or sweet smooth oxeye, it has a longer blooming period than many prairie flowers. The shape of the leaves and the raised flower centers, which are yellow or orange, help distinguish ox-eye from other members of the aster family with yellow flowerheads. Ox-eye grows in wooded areas and on disturbed ground as well as in prairies.

A huge colony of ox-eye is thriving at a rest stop on the north side of I-80 near Bettendorf (Scott County), where I took most of the enclosed pictures in July. As a bonus, I included a few shots of goldenrod plants with an unusual feature.

Whether you are a novice or seasoned professional, finding a “new” species is exciting for nature-lovers. Many thanks to Leland Searles for sharing this essay and beautiful photos. -promoted by desmoinesdem

At the end of a hot, dusty day on the gravel roads of Marion County, I braked the Honda van to a stop at a t-intersection. I had pushed hard to finish as many miles of roadside survey as possible, stopping each quarter mile to note the vegetation on each side of the road. Mostly I saw brome and reed canary grass, wild parsnip and wild carrot, giant ragweed and sheep fescue. Often enough there were stands of Jerusalem artichoke or common milkweed.

The t-intersection brought a decision. Do I drive a half mile on the county hardtop to a short, unnamed gravel road, one that I missed two days earlier, and have a look? I could see it from the stop sign: a sea of crop land on either side, an old fenceline leading a quarter mile to a farmstead. Not a big deal. Time to go home.

Sometimes a whimsical curiosity emerges, gently, gaining force, wanting recognition. I drove the half mile, turned and rolled twenty feet to a stop, looked out the window onto the fence and soybeans that were almost neon in the yellowing light. Not much here.

Curiosity again. What’s ahead in fifty feet? The accelerator moved gently down. Another stop. Brome grass out the driver’s window, the fenceline on the other side. Something between me and the fence, a native sedge, already gone to seed, its yellow leaves standing out among the darker grasses. Probably Carex grisea. Not very interesting. I should head home.

Like last week’s featured wildflowers, today’s plant thrives in wooded areas and has delicate, faint pink flowers. Pointed-leaf tick trefoil (Desmodium glutinosum) is native to most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. I found the colony pictured below near the main road through Maquoketa Caves State Park (Jackson County).

As a bonus, I included two photos of a non-native plant with much brighter pink flowers, which I saw recently in a seep (wet area) at Whiterock Conservancy near Coon Rapids (Carroll County).

Following Marla Mertz’s post last week about a spectacular and rare prairie plant, I wanted to feature some unassuming wildflowers common in a range of wet habitats.

Nine species of germander are native to North America, but according to John Pearson of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, only one (Teucrium canadense) is native to Iowa. (Pearson added that other kinds of germander may be found in gardens.)

Sometimes called American germander or wood sage, Canada germander often grows in ditches, at woodland edges, or next to streams. I took all of the enclosed pictures along North Walnut Creek, near where the Windsor Heights bike trail passes under College Drive.

Side note for nature lovers riding RAGBRAI next week: please keep an eye out for Milkweed Matters volunteers handing out common milkweed seed balls for bicyclists to cast in unmowed ditches along the route. Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed plants to reproduce.

We now return to your regularly scheduled edition of Iowa wildflower Wednesday.

Monarch butterfly enthusiasts have prepared more than 50,000 balls containing common milkweed seeds for riders participating in next week’s Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). As its name suggests, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is the most prevalent among the 17 types of milkweed found in Iowa. However, the use of genetically-modified Roundup Ready corn and soybeans greatly diminished common milkweed on Iowa cropland. “Kelly Milkweed” Guilbeau and a friend scattered some milkweed seeds while doing RAGBRAI in 2014, then prepared about 2,000 balls of seed to hand out during last summer’s ride across Iowa.

Elizabeth Hill, who manages the Conard Environmental Research Area at Grinnell College, has collaborated with Guilbeau on the Milkweed Matters initiative, greatly expanded this year. I wish them every success; driving around Iowa last week, I saw huge stands of wild parsnip along too many roadsides.

I enclose below two pictures of common milkweed blooming, as well as a press release explaining where riders can pick up seed balls to toss in unmowed ditches along the RAGBRAI route, which runs across southern Iowa from July 24 through 30.

You can learn more at the Milkweed Matters website and receive regular updates on Twitter (@milkweedmatters) or Facebook. Butterfly fans can find more good links at the Monarchs in Eastern Iowa website. Although I’m not skilled at identifying butterflies, I enjoy the occasional “butterfly forecasts” by the Poweshiek Skipper Project.

P.S.- Hill will always have a special place in my heart as the accidental godmother of Bleeding Heartland’s Iowa wildflower Wednesday series.

Many thanks to Marion County Naturalist Marla Mertz for these views of a spectacular native plant. In case you missed it, check out her first contribution to this series, featuring the much smaller (but still striking) showy orchis. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The prairie presents her Queen! The Queen of the Prairie, Filipendula rubra. Filipendula: from Latin filum for “thread” and pendulus for ‘hanging,” in reference to the small tubers strung together by the fibrous roots. Rubra: from Latin, meaning “red”. The panicle of pink flowers and buds exudes her beauty in the month of June.

To some observers, one may think of cotton candy. She stands high above any prairie grasses and forbs this time of year, and your eyes can’t help but make a connection with this beauty.