Autumn Ramble

It is winter now, flowers & flowering shrubs are resting.. so there is time to look back & appreciate their last hurrah in autumn.

We are accustomed to admiring a plant’s prime blooms, but the end game, while more muted is also lovely. The pictures below are of native plants taken in early November at Assateague National Seashore in MD & VA (http://www.nps.gov/asis/index.htm)

Some were still in bloom..

Grass-Leaved Golden Top

Grass-Leaved Golden Top, or Euthamia graminifolia  (grass-leaf) is in the Aster family, and for 100 years was incorrectly classified as a goldenrod.

Bur Marigold, Bidens Aristosata

Likes wet feet.

Winged Sumac, Rhus copallium was having a last fling

The Rose Mallow was fallow (Hibiscus moscheutos)

Groundsel Tree, Baccharis halimifolia (Soft-leaf)

Groundsel is also known as Sea Myrtle and can be most easily distinguished by their leaves: the groundsel’s leaves alternate along the stem and are duck-foot-shaped with several irregular teeth along the upper edges..

Groundsel Tree earlier in the season taken in Connecticut.

The Cattails (Typha genus) were disintegrating into bird-nest fluff.

The Dog Fennel, Eupatorium capillifolium (small-leaf), doggedly held on..

Dog Fennel, though considered weedy and invasive in some locations, is actually endangered. It belongs to the Aster family and is related to a garden favorite Eupatorium purpea (Joe Pye Weed).

And now that winter is here, and flowers are silent and the bones of trees laid bare, we are left with the light and dark, and the lovely textures of tree bark.

Have you ever noticed how Dog Wood bark fracures as it ages?

Loblolly Pine, Pinus taeda

Loblolly means “low wet places”, appropriate for trees growing on a barrier island.

Loblolly pines were formerly known as Oldfield Pine due to its easy colonization of abandonned fields.

And so I leave you with the fine form of Loblolly Pines in the distance, to your winter musings.

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. ~Andrew Wyeth