Eye candy Friday: Wisconsin roadsides.
Something I have loved for many years is about Wisconsin, and particularly about northern Wisconsin, that they (whoever they are) do not feel compelled to mow the roadsides. This is in direct contrast to their counterparts in Minnesota, who seem offended by unshorn rights-of-way. Consequently, many of Wisconsin's roadsides and ditches grow a diversity of plant life -- wildflowers, grasses, small shrubs -- which in turn foster a variety of insect and bird life. I took all these photos along the 2-mile stretch of paved township road that leads from the gravel road around our lake to the state highway.
Let's start with some of the more common wildflowers. Actually, all of these are common. Some are just more common than others.
Clockwise from upper left: common yarrow (white) with some kind of black-eyed Susan/sunflower behind it, mullein (yellow) with ox-eye daisies behind it; and a bunch of ox-eye daisies with a happy fritillary butterfly in the middle.
Other common roadside wildflowers:
Clockwise, again: daylilies; creeping bellflower; Canada thistle; yarrow and red clover.
With the exception of the yellow daisy-like flower in the first photo, all of those flowers are exotics, either introduced or escaped from gardens. The ones that follow are natives.
Woodland sunflower, looking rather bedraggled because we had had a tumultuous thunderstorm with 60 mph straight-line winds the night before.
Summersweet, of the spirea family. The flowers are the conical spires near the bottom of the photo; the skinny spikes are some kind of grass seed heads:
Wild bergamot (Monarda fisulosa), first cousin to the bee balm in your garden. The flowers are normally bright lavender, but these were pale and washed out for some reason. The Indians used to make tea from the leaves. I tried it one year but was not impressed:
Tick trefoil, so called because the foliage is three-leaved and the crescent-shaped seeds are covered with minute velcro-like hooks that enable them to cling to pant legs and animal fur:
Spreading dogbane (I have no idea how it spreads nor why it is bane to dogs):
The first few years we were here I was disappointed that there were no wild roses in the roadsides. Then one year I spotted a clump a few miles north. In the last couple years they have started to appear along our road:
Fireweed, so called because it is often one of the first plants to reseed and bloom after a fire:
Milkweeds -- common, beloved of the Monarch butterfly larva; marsh; and butterfly weed:
I take credit for this butterfly weed growing wild at the end of our gravel road. I had planted some several years ago in a xeriscapic garden in our front yard, but that garden is now largely under the new deck. Since this is the only butterfly weed I have seen anywhere in Polk County and it is growing a half mile from where I used to have it, it seems a safe guess that it grew from a seed that originated in my garden. Yay, me.
I used to have marsh milkweed growing in another flower garden in a spot where rain water from the roof tended to accumulate. It attracted dozens of little black butterflies every year. But it grows wild in lots of damp areas, so I cannot take credit for it.
As lovely as wildflowers are, the grasses that grow in the roadsides have their own kind of subtle beauty. I have discovered that adding a few stems of grasses with seedheads makes a flower arrangement look better, more sophisticated.
There used to be a few patches of both little and big bluestem grasses along the road, but I haven't seen them this year. One of the things about wild plants is that any given year will be different than the year before and the next year will be different again.
This next thing is kinda scary. I took this photo over a week ago, so it was early July. Very early July.
That is goldenrod, people. Goldenrod is an end-of-summer, early fall flower. Why is it blooming in early July? Did our late spring freak it out so much it decided to go directly to autumn, do not pass go, do not collect $200? Weird. But like I said, nature is not necessarily consistent year to year.
Finally, here is a blue flag growing by our dock. I planted this one myself, but they are native to the area.
