As the saying goes, April showers bring May flowers. The full moon of May is known as the Flower Moon because many wildflowers bloom during this month. Indeed, fully 25% of the wildflowers that I have inventoried on local nature preserves, parks, and trails begin blooming during the month of May.
For example, here is a sampling of some of our native species of wildflowers that begin blooming throughout May (simply click on any image below for a closer look):
Little wonder that American Indians were inspired to name this month’s full moon after the colorful displays created by these native blooming beauties.
The Full Flower Moon will rise on Thursday at 9:53am. Tonight, look skyward to view:
On World Bee Day, we acknowledge the essential role that more than 20,000 species of bees play in pollinating so many plants around the world that keep people and the planet healthy. This day has been celebrated since 2018, thanks to the efforts of the Government of Slovenia with the support of the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations, which led the UN General Assembly to declare May 20 as World Bee Day.
The date for this observance was chosen as it was the day Anton Janša, a pioneer of modern apiculture, was born. Janša came from a family of beekeepers in Slovenia, where beekeeping is an important agricultural activity with a long-standing tradition.
Some species of bees – including honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees – live socially in colonies while most species (>90%) – including mason bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, and sweat bees – are solitary. The most common bees in the Northern Hemisphere are sweat bees.
Human beekeeping or apiculture has been practiced since at least the times of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece, and, today, it is most commonly practiced in the Northern Hemisphere. Bees have appeared in mythology, folklore, and through all phases of art and literature.
Honey bees are ~1/2 inch in length, and each part of their bodies is highly evolved in purpose. To wit:
Brain contains one of the densest collection of neurons and synapses of any invertebrate species.
Five eyes enable them with 360° vision as well as the ability to perceive the UV light spectrum, which helps them to see and locate pollen.
Antennae determine air speed and orientation to the sun during flights.
Wings can be connected by hooks called hamuli during flight, then unhooked and folded back at rest or when used to generate heat through shivering in the winter.
Legs have taste receptors on the tips.
Underneath the abdomen of workers are wax glands – young workers can secrete 8 scales of wax in 12 hours (for reference, it takes approximately 1,000 scales to build one gram of comb).
Make your garden or backyard landscape more bee friendly:
Create a safe haven for bees with pollen- and nectar-rich flowers by planting a range of native species that exhibit a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and bloom times.
Avoid using pesticides and herbicides.
Plant native species of trees in your yard; they provide nectar, nesting materials (e.g., resin and leaves), and their cavities make excellent shelters or nest-building sites.
Fill a shallow bird bath or bowl with clean water, and arrange small stones inside so that they frequently break the water’s surface; doing so enables the bees to land on them to access the water.
Watch the documentary My Garden of a Thousand Bees, filmed and narrated by wildlife photographer Martin Dohrn. It features a super-close look at the world of bees in the context of his own urban garden.
This week, I’m featuring Painted Trillium (Trillium undulatum) as one of our local wildflowers that begins to bloom at this time.
PLEASE NOTE: New York Protected Status: Exploitably Vulnerable = Native plants likely to become threatened in the near future throughout all or a significant portion of their ranges within the State if causal factors continue unchecked. Fragmentation of remaining habitat, contamination of the gene pool, and wild harvesting present ongoing threats to this species.
The genus name Trillium is derived from the Latin word “tres” for three and refers to the symmetrical three petals, three sepals, and three leaves of these plants, which also gives rise to another common name, ‘Trinity Flower.’
Description:
Painted Trillium is a long-lived perennial herbaceous plant 8 – 16” tall with three large leaf-like bracts arranged in a whorl atop a scape (stem) that rises directly from an underground rhizome. The bracts are ovate, bluish-green, prominently-veined, and waxy, each 2½ to five inches long on a definite stalk (petiole), broadly rounded at the base and tapering to a point.
The single flower, usually 2 inches wide, appears on the top of the scape, just above the whorl of three bracts. The wavy-edged petals are lance-shaped and have a tapered, pointed tip, which turns backward when in full bloom. The flower is white, with an inverted, deep pink V (or splotch) at the base of each petal that appears as if hand painted, which radiates along the veins of each petal and serves as a nectar guide for pollinators.
The flower is followed by fruit in early fall that is a fleshy, berry-like capsule that starts off green and changes to bright red. The fruit is a berry-like capsule, ½ to 1 inch long, with no ridges. No other North American Trillium species has a fruit of this size, color, and shape.
Photo Credit: Mwanner, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
From seed to blossom, each Painted Trillium plant takes a minimum of 6 years. In the first year of life, the seed merely puts out a rhizome; it is not visible above ground. The following year, it may send up a small leaf. For the next three years, a single leaf will appear, helping to increase the size of the growing rhizome below. Finally, the plant will produce the characteristic three leaves, which it may repeat for two to three more years. Finally, a blossom will be produced once it has achieved maturity. Once a trillium is established, it is very long-lived (documented cases of 10-25 years), as long as the rhizome is undisturbed.
Folklore:
Painted Trillium is considered a symbol of longevity and strength.
Culinary and Medicinal Uses:
CAUTION! The berries and roots have low levels of toxicity.
While the leaves are said to be edible if boiled first, in Franklin County, Maine, the greens were called ‘Much-Hunger’, which clearly suggests that eating Trillium leaves is a last resort (SOURCE: Fernald, M.L., and A.C. Kinsey. 1943. Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America. Idlewild Press, Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY. 452 pp.).
Therefore, given the protected status of this plant in New York, I would hope no one would choose to forage for this beautiful native plant.
The whole plant is used in a poultice or the root in tea to treat a wide variety of ailments. The Algonquin used a root tea to facilitate child birth, regulate menstrual cycles, and to alleviate other menstrual problems, imparting another common name of ‘Birth Root.’
Wildlife Value:
Painted Trillium is the host plant for the larvae of American Angle Shades (Euplexia benesimilis) and Black-patched Clepsis Moth (Clepsis melaleucanus). Honey bees and bumble bees visit for pollen and nectar.
The seeds of Painted Trillium produce a lipid-rich appendage called an elaiosome, which is a nutritious food source for ants. Ants collect the seeds and carry them back to their nest, where they consume the elaiosome and discard the intact and viable seeds in old galleries or refuse tunnels. These refuse areas tend to be high in organic matter, phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen, making them ideal for germinating the discarded Painted Trillium seeds. The mutually beneficial relationship between this plant and native ants is known as “myrmecochory” or ant farming. The ants benefit from the nutritious food source, while the seeds that are “planted” in ant nests are safe from predation by rodents, avoid competition with parent plants, and have access to the essential nutrients present in the underground nests.
Yellow jackets (Vespula spp.) are also attracted to the elaiosome and have been similarly documented in carrying seeds to their nests.
Painted Trillium plants are browsed by White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and Groundhog (AKA Woodchuck) (Marmota monax) eat the fruit.
Where Found Locally:
Painted Trillium grows in both full shade or semi-shade and prefers strongly acidic, humus rich soils in low moist hardwoods and mixed hardwoods with hemlock.
Orchids come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, and are considered the most highly evolved of plants. They typically have showy, three-petaled flowers with the middle petal (the lip) differing in shape and color.
Some plants flourish only in a very specific set of conditions or habitats. In ecological terms, these species are called specialists, whereas those that grow in a wide range of ecological conditions are called generalists. Exemplifying the specialists is the Pink Lady’s Slipper. This hardy native orchid flourishes only in semi-open woodlands in deep humus and acidic, but well-drained soil, and even there it requires the presence in the soil of a particular fungus from the Rhizoctonia genus to survive. Generally, orchid seeds do not have stored food inside them like most other kinds of seeds. Orchid seeds require threads of the fungus to break open the seed and attach them to it. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients to the orchid seed. When the orchid plant is older and producing most of its own nutrients, the fungus will extract nutrients from the orchid roots. This mutually beneficial relationship between the orchid and the fungus is known as symbiosis and is typical of almost all orchid species.
This is the first of a 3-part series of articles about the orchids I’ve observed on area trails. Part 2 will appear in three weekly installments beginning in early July and the finale will be posted in late August. Each will feature the orchids that are in bloom at that time.
Today, I’m featuring Pink Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium acaule) as one of our orchids that begins to bloom at this time.
PLEASE NOTE: New York Protected Status: Exploitably Vulnerable = Native plants likely to become threatened in the near future throughout all or a significant portion of their ranges within the State if causal factors continue unchecked. Fragmentation of remaining habitat, contamination of the gene pool, and wild harvesting present ongoing threats to this species.
The genus name Cypripedium is from the Greek, “Kypris”, a name for Venus; and “pedion”, also Greek, for an anklet, instep, or having to do with the foot. Presumably then, Cypripedium translates as Venus’ Slipper. The species name acaule, meaning stemless, refers to the pair of opposite stemless leaves at the base of the plant. Another common name for this plant is Moccasin Flower.
Pink Lady’s Slipper is one of the largest native orchids in the United States. Once it has germinated, it may take more than a decade before a plant first blooms (Curtis, John T. 1943. Germination and seedling development in five species of Cypripedium L.American Journal of Botany 30: 199-206). Thereafter, they don’t bloom every year and most plants will produce seeds only four or five times over their lifespan, which averages between 20-25 years. In between blooming, they’ll remain dormant in the soil, gathering resources until they are ready to bloom again.
Description:
Pink Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)
Pink Lady’s Slipper is a long-lived perennial herbaceous plant up to 16” tall with two opposite toothless basal leaves that are 3½ to 9 inches long and 1 to 3½ inches wide with conspicuous parallel veins.
Its showy flower is a single large bloom atop an erect hairy stalk along with a couple of green or copperish-brown sepals and petals, but no leaves.
The flower is magenta to whitish-pink; sometimes the whitish pink flowers will have darker pink venation. Rarely the flower may be all white. Lady’s Slipper orchids have three petals, one that forms the ‘slipper’, while the other two are shaped like slightly curly ribbons or ties, positioned just above the slipper. Unlike most other species of this genus, the pouch of this flower opens in a slit with inwardly rolled edges that runs down the front of this flower, rather than as a round opening.
An old Ojibwe legend tells of a village visited by plague. It was the dead of winter and many died, including the village healer. To save the community, a young girl made a dangerous journey through the snow to find medicine for the sick. She succeeded, but on the way lost her moccasins, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in the snow. When spring arrived, the bloody footprints put forth moccasin flowers.
Pink Lady’s Slipper has been used in sachets to protect against and ward off hexes, curses, spells and the evil eye.
Once inside, the bees find no reward, and discover that they are trapped, with only one point of escape. Inside the pouch, there are hairs that lead to a pair of exit openings, one beneath each pollen mass. The bee must pass under the stigma, so if it bears any pollen from a visit to another flower, it will be deposited before picking up a fresh load on the way out.
Bees quickly learn from this experience and soon avoid repeat visits to these flowers, which accounts for low pollination rates for this orchid. To wit, a University of Maryland botanist studied a few thousand Pink Lady’s Slippers in a national forest and found that, over 16 years, about 1/3 of them flowered. Of those, a mere 23 were successfully pollinated! However, once pollinated, each successful flower will produce tens of thousands of seeds.
Where Found Locally:
Pink Lady’s Slipper requires highly acidic soil but tolerates a range of shade and moisture. As such, it is usually found under partial shade in pine forests, where it can sometimes be seen in large colonies, but it also grows in deciduous woods.
I visited Ann Lee Pond Nature and Historic Preserve this afternoon in search of a few particular species to see if they were in bloom in anticipation of offering one of my impromptu Lickety-split Botanizer walks early next week. Unfortunately, by the time I’m next available to offer such an outing, it will be too late to enjoy the showiest and most wonderfully fragranced of those. So, please, make time to pay a visit to this preserve in the next couple of days! If you go, take the trail with the plastic bridge over the pond and into the woods, then stay left at each intersection until you find your way back out of the woods; go straight past the dam/outlet and return to the parking lot.
Hope you are able to stop by and see (and smell) the gorgeous Early Azaleas in bloom before their floral show draws to a close for another year.
Happy trails!
NOTE: If you haven’t yet signed up as a Lickety-split Botanizer to receive notifications of my future impromptu wildflower walks, please visit the Lickety-split Botanizer webpage for more info. Each of these walks are not otherwise announced and you must be registered to be invited. Join today! It’s FREE!
Sheep’s Sorrel (Rumex acetosella), which may also be called Field Sorrel, Red Sorrel, or Sour Weed, has a sharp citrus taste, which makes it great for use in soups, sauces and garnishes. Its leaves and flowers are used raw in salads, or its leaves can be used to replace lemon or lime in dishes requiring an acidic zing. It can also be used in any recipe that calls for cultivated French Sorrel (Rumex scutatus).
The basal rosette leaves are best harvested in the spring when they are the most tender and best for eating. Leaves are roughly ¾ to 2 ½ inches long and up to ¾ inches wide and typically have flares at the bottom, giving them an arrowhead shape. Simply clip them off with garden scissors. When gathering, look for plants that haven’t started to grow a flower stalk yet and where most of the leaves crowd out from its basal rosette. Bigger leaves are easier to harvest and often more tender. Also, it is well worth the effort to remove the leaf blades from their long and fibrous leafstalks.
After harvesting, the leaves should be refreshed in cold water, drained, rolled in a dry towel and stored in a zip-top bag in the fridge where they’ll last for 6-7 days, or longer, as pictured above. Change the towel occasionally. Source: https://foragerchef.com/sheep-sorrel/
You can also dry the plant, much like drying basil leaves and using the dried leaves to make teas or to toss into rice.
Nutrition Info: One cup of chopped leaves contains –
Vitamin A (>3,300mg) and Vitamin C (60mg)
60mg calcium, some magnesium, some phosphorus, 500mg potassium, and a small amount of zinc
Cautionary Note: Like all the sorrels, Sheep’s Sorrel contains a high amount of oxalic acid, a compound also found in rhubarb, spinach and chard. If you’ve had a history of kidney stones, your doctor may advise you to avoid sorrel and other high oxalate ingredients. On a related note, if you cook any Rumex species, it is best to use a glass or ceramic pot rather than any metallic pot.
This week, I’m featuring Common Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium montanum) as one of our local wildflowers that begins to bloom at this time.
Common Blue-eyed Grass is actually a member of the iris family (family Iridaceae), which consists of herbs growing from rhizomes, bulbs, or corms, with narrow basal leaves and showy flower clusters at the tips of long stalks.
Description:
Common Blue-eyed Grass is a native North American perennial with a clump-forming growth habit and narrow blade-shaped leaves. Leaves are all basal, long and slender, grass-like, generally 5-10 inches long, the largest over 1/10 inch wide with smooth, almost waxy surfaces and very finely toothed edges. The flowering stems are also flattened, 1/10 to 1/8 inch wide, with a strong central vein and two distinct wings on the sides. The stem also has very finely toothed edges and often twists up to a full turn from base to tip.
Its star-like flowers are bright blue to deep violet with a yellow center, 5/8 to ¾ inch across with 6 tepals (three petals and three almost identical sepals, although the sepals are typically slightly wider than the petals – see photo below), the tips of which are usually notched with a small needle-like projection at its very tip.
A bright spot at the base of each tepal creates a greenish to yellow throat, with a column of bright yellow-tipped stamens in the center. Flowers or borne in groups of 2 to 4 on short slender stalks with only 1 or 2 flowers open at a time, at the tip of a long leaf stem and enclosed by two narrow leaf-like bracts (spathe); flowers are overtopped by a pointed bract (see first photo below). The spathe (see second photo below) is typically green like the color of the leaves and stem, sometimes bronze or purplish, with the outer one up to 3 inches long and may be more than twice as long as the inner one. The edges of the outer spathe are joined for up to 1/8 inch at the base.
The fruit is a round to oval capsule between 1/8 and ¼ inch long, on a slender stalk and divided into three sections (carpels), containing tiny black seeds.
American Indian tribes used the roots of Common Blue-eyed Grass to make a tea for treating diarrhea (especially in children), to cure stomachaches, and to expel intestinal worms. Herbalists have used these teas to treat menstrual disorders, for birth control, and as a laxative.
Shaggy Soldier (Galinsoga quadriradiata) and Gallant Soldier (Galinsoga parviflora), either or both of which may also be called Galinsoga, Guascas, French Weed, or Quickweed, are both edible and, since they are similar in appearance, I’ll refer to them interchangeably here.
Quickweed is entirely edible. You can eat the stems, leaves, flowers, and seeds, raw or cooked.
If you find plants past their prime (even into summer), you can still harvest the leaves, but you’ll need to dry them since the flowers and tough stems will need to be sifted out and not used in the finished dishes you’ll make with it. You can also dry it or blanch and freeze it for later use.
Galinsoga can be cooked like any other leafy green, although it will have a bit more texture. Cooked as a leafy green, Galinsoga is mild tasting and pleasant, having a mild artichoke-like flavor. After drying, it takes on a stronger flavor that’s best used when cooked.
After harvesting Quickweed, it is best to either use it or to freeze or dehydrate it that same day as the leaves will wilt significantly.
To preserve Quickweed, you can blanch and freeze it like spinach or other tender greens. You can also dehydrate it to add to soups or stews. Typically, the dried greens are screened to remove the tougher flower buds and pieces of stem.
Harvest the plants, rinse them, and then pat dry with a towel before putting them into a dehydrator at 145°F (or the high setting) overnight, or until bone-dry and easily crumbled. If you don’t have a dehydrator, you could tie groups of plants together by their stems and hang them to dry in a place where they won’t get wet. Using a gentle fan aimed at the plants will speed up the drying process.
When the plants are bone-dry, put a colander in a larger bowl, then crumble the dried leaves and stems into the colander. Crush the plants with your hands, or with the back of a wooden spoon, moving them around in a circular motion to help the smaller particles fall through the holes of the colander.
When most of the small, crumbled leaves have passed through the holes, discard the stems and repeat the process.
The sifted results can be stored in a jar at room temperature like any other herb.
Nutrition Info: In 100 grams of this plant there are –
3.2g protein and 1.1g of fiber (compared to spinach which has 2.9g protein and 2.6g of fiber)
high in calcium: 284mg per 100gm (parsley 140mg)
Vitamins A (4mg), B1 (thiamin) (0.08mg), B2 (riboflavin) (0.21mg), B3 (niacin) (1.21mg), and Vitamin C (6.7mg)
60mg magnesium, 58mg potassium, 5.3mg iron, and 1.3mg zinc
Recipes for your culinary consideration:
Ajiaco (scroll down to bottom of webpage) and Ajiaco
Lady Bird Johnson said wildflowers “give us a sense of where we are in this great land of ours.”
Always the first full week of May, National Wildflower Week commemorates the colorful blossoms that bring our landscapes to life.
To celebrate this week, I encourage you to visit one of our area nature preserves, parks or trails to view the wildflowers now in bloom locally. Each day of this week-long celebration, I’ll feature a local native wildflower that you may find in bloom at this time.
To closeout this week’s focus on wildflowers and for your self-guided search today, I suggest that you go looking for Wild Plum (Prunus americana). See below for my suggestions as to where locally you can find this native species that may appear as a tall shrub (if multi-stemmed) or small tree (if single trunk).
Distinguishing Characteristics:
Wild Plum appears either as a thicket-forming shrub or a small tree with a short, crooked trunk. As a tree, it typically grows to 15-25′ tall with a broad, spreading crown. As a shrub, it suckers freely and can form large colonies. The trunk has rough grey bark. Branches and twigs are an attractive dark reddish-brown with horizontal lenticels and sometimes have thorny lateral branchlets or short side twigs with thorn-like tips. Flowering stems are usually grayish and scaly with age. The bark of the larger branches is grey and smooth, except for irregular ridges and exfoliated patches.
The medium to dark green alternate leaves are 1¾” wide, stalked, an elongated 3-4” long oval with a tapering tip, and sharply toothed margins, which are sometimes double-toothed. The upper surface of each leaf is slightly wrinkled in appearance, rather than smooth. The slender petioles of the leaves are about ½–¾” long and hairless.
Wild Plum has fragrant, white flowers in showy, flat-topped clusters of 2-6 flowers in each that occur before the leaves emerge in spring. Each flower is about ¾–1″ across, consisting of 5 white rounded petals.
Flowers are followed by edible, round, red plums (1″ diameter), which ripen in early summer. The skin of each fruit is smooth and the bright yellow pulp is fleshy and juicy; it becomes sweet when the fruit is fully mature. At the center of each fruit, there is a single large stone that is ovoid and somewhat flattened, tapering at both ends.
Leaves turn yellow to red in autumn.
Where Found:
Wild Plum is mostly a woodland species, growing in mixed-hardwood communities and on woodland ecotones. Habitats include mesic woodlands, woodland borders, thickets, powerline right-of-way within wooded areas, pastures, and fence rows. This species benefits from occasional disturbance in wooded areas as it is unable to compete with larger canopy trees.
The nectar and pollen of the flowers attract bees, various flies, and other insects, including Henry’s Elfin (Callophrys henrici) butterfly. Honeybees are the principal pollinator. Other bee visitors include Andrenid bees, bumblebees, cuckoo bees (Nomada spp.), Halictid bees, and Small Carpenter bees (Ceratina spp.).
The fruits are eaten by mammals primarily, especially the Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) and Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), but also American Black Bear (Ursus americanus) and White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus). These mammals help to spread the large seeds to new locations. Birds, such as Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), occasionally peck at the fruits, but they do not distribute the seeds.
How to Grow Your Own:
By root –
The root system of Wild Plum is fairly shallow and spreading, allowing vegetative regeneration (root suckers) to form thickets. Prunus species may be rooted from dormant hardwood, softwood, semi-hardwood, or root cuttings. Semi-hardwood and softwood cuttings taken in summer root easiest.
By seed –
Collect fruit when it is filled out, firm, and ripened. Clean the seeds from the pulp, then decide if you will plant them yet that autumn or if you will do so in the spring.
The best time to plant Wild Plum seed is in fall as this will allow it to naturally self-stratify during the winter to aid germination in the spring. Seeds to be sown immediately in fall do not need to be dried.
For spring sowing, however, briefly air dry the cleaned seeds. Then stratify the seeds in moist sand for 30-60 days in a greenhouse, then cold stratify (36-41 degrees) for 60-90 days. You can store the seeds in a bag with moist sand in the fridge or you can store them outside. If you keep them outside, be aware that rodents will eat them if they have access. Therefore, store your plum seeds outside by burying buckets in the ground; make small holes in each bucket to allow drainage and fill the bucket with a mix of damp sand and seed. In the spring, the seeds will most likely be sprouting and it’s best to wait until all have sprouted before planting them. Plant them about a half inch deep and cover with a thin mulch.
Lady Bird Johnson said wildflowers “give us a sense of where we are in this great land of ours.”
Always the first full week of May, National Wildflower Week commemorates the colorful blossoms that bring our landscapes to life.
To celebrate this week, I encourage you to visit one of our area nature preserves, parks or trails to view the wildflowers now in bloom locally. Each day of this week-long celebration, I’ll feature a local native wildflower that you may find in bloom at this time.
To continue this week’s focus on wildflowers and for your self-guided search today, I suggest that you go looking for Red Baneberry (Actaea rubra). See below for my suggestions as to where locally you can find this native forb.
Distinguishing Characteristics:
Red Baneberry is a bushy herbaceous perennial plant that is 1-3′ tall either unbranched or sparingly branched with large, highly-divided leaves. The central stem and any secondary stems are light green and smooth; leaf stems are up to 6” long, light green, and smooth. Each plant has 1-4 alternate leaves that are thrice divided, becoming widely spreading. Leaflets are 1¼–3½” long and coarsely toothed along their margins. The upper leaf surface is medium green and smooth, while the lower leaf surface is slightly more pale and either smooth or hairy along the major veins.
Above the foliage are dense, globular clusters of small white flowers. The fruit is an attractive, but poisonous, red berry.
The central stem and any secondary stems terminate in solitary racemes of flowers that are 1-2″ long; these racemes become slightly longer when the flowers are replaced by berries. Each flower is about ¼” across or slightly wider, consisting of 4-10 white widely spreading petals that are individually narrowly elliptic in shape, and 15-40 white, long and showy stamens. The ascending to widely spreading flower stems (pedicels) within each raceme are ~½” long (or slightly more) and noticeably more slender than the central stalk (rachis) of the raceme. The flowers have a rosy fragrance and the numerous stamens give each cluster a feathery appearance.
The main way of distinguishing Red Baneberry from White Baneberry (Actaea pachypoda), whether in flower or in fruit, is the thickness of the pedicel. The flower stalks of White Baneberry are noticeably thicker than the slender flower stalks of Red Baneberry. This difference is most pronounced after the flowers fade and are replaced by fruit. The stalks supporting White Baneberry fruit thicken and turn a bright red, while the stalks of Red Baneberry fruit are significantly more slender and remain green or greenish brown.
Afterwards, fertile flowers are replaced by bright red, glossy, ovoid berries that become about ¼ inch long at maturity. Each berry contains a fleshy pulp and several seeds. Individual seeds are about ⅛ inch long, reddish brown, and crescent-shaped.
Where Found:
Habitats include moist to mesic woodlands, shady stream banks, and shaded areas where some seepage of ground water occurs. Red Baneberry is shade-tolerant and can grow in moderate to full shade, doing best in light to moderate shade. It is found in hardwood forests, but is also seen in mixed wood forests with conifers.
In botany, there is a scale called the “Coefficient of Conservatism.” The scale represents how tolerant a plant is to human disturbances and how representative it is to a pre-settlement natural community of plants. Coefficients of conservatism (“C” or CoC values) are increasingly being used to prioritize natural areas for conservation as well as for the monitoring of outcomes of habitat restoration projects. Species least tolerant of human disturbance and with an affinity for high-quality native habitats are placed in category “10.” Red Baneberry is placed in category “8.”
SOURCE: Bried, Jason & Strout, Kerry & Portante, Theresa. (2012). Coefficients of conservatism for the vascular flora of New York and New England: inter-state comparisons and expert opinion bias. Northeastern Naturalist. 19. 101-114. 10.2307/41495840.
Red Baneberry’s importance for wildlife is low, because it is generally not an abundant plant. The flowers do not have nectar, offering only pollen to visiting insects, which are mainly bees. Most bees seen on the flowers are Halictid species (including Lasioglossum cressonii and Lasioglossum versans). However, the main pollinator in the Northeast is said to be the European Snout Beetle (Phyllobius oblongus), an introduced weevil.
NOTE: Red Baneberry is a protected plant listed as a species that is exploitably vulnerable. It is a violation of New York State Environmental Conservation Law §9-1503 to collect or destroy listed plants without the permission of the landowner. The regulation gives landowners additional rights to prosecute people who collect plants without permission.
By division –
Because the root system consists of a vertical rootstock with fibrous secondary rootlets below, it is not possible to propagate by root division.
From seeds –
Best sown as soon as the fruit is ripened in autumn. Seeds have a limited viability, so if sown in spring, germination rates may be poor. The seeds are slow to germinate, doing so in the following year, and then flowering in the third year.
Curious By Nature 