What's Blooming Kansas City - Eastern Blue Star

 

Three Eastern Blue Stars (Amsonia tabernaemontana) were planted five years ago in the prairie section of our yard. This spring, we are up to six groupings of these star shaped flowering plants, with more new starts still  emerging to the delight of pollinators. It grows up to three feet in height and expands as a clump up to three feet wide, however, the spread will occur over many seasons. It enjoys at least six hours of direct sunlight.

As with many native perennials, given the right conditions, they will spread. It is time to share the bounty with friends, family, co-workers and neighbors. 

What's Blooming Kansas City - Bedstraw

 

Considered a weed by some and unnoticeable by many, is the annual bedstraw (Galium aparine). The tiny white flowers at the top, and whorled leaves spaced along the square stem, provide a contrast usually to the plants around it. It is not the flora that inspired the creation of velcro, but possesses the same hook-like features on its stems and leaves that allows it to grasp and cling onto most fabrics. As the name implies it has been used by many to provide some loft and cushion to a makeshift mattress.

Snip off a portion of a stem and throw it onto a t-shirt worn by a child. The kid may shriek but then be delighted to see it stick. In turn, they will probably do the same.

 

What's Blooming Kansas City - Dogwood Trees

 

The Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida pictured above) and Rose dogwood (Cornus kousa) pictured below respectively, grace many homeowners yards. Typically small in height with an open spread, the cross shaped flowers will delight for several days.

 

Dogwoods, of which there are many varieties, lend themselves to some easy identification traits. For one, the veins in the leaves curve towards the outer edges. Another is that the tree generally falls into the "MAD-BUCK" way of determining the species. MAD-Buck is an acronym used by some in the eastern US to approach tree identification. Approximately 80% of the deciduous trees in the east have opposite branches. Those species are in the maple, ash, dogwood and buckeye tree families (a noticeable exception is the native Alternate Leaved dogwood). So when contemplating what kind of non-evergreen tree it may be, checkout its branching pattern first.

When at times I point out to people that a tree is a dogwood, I will ask the unsuspecting person "Do you know how I know it is a Dogwood?", and often the response is no. I will tell them "By its bark."
 

What's Blooming Kansas City - Pawpaw Tree

 

 

 

The North American Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is a tree not well known by the general public. It belongs to the family of custard apples, Annonaceae, and some refer to the fruit as the North American banana. It requires the nearby presence of a Pawpaw relative to cross pollinate and produce fruit.

I have sampled a few of the fruit and found it quite tasty, with some resemblance to that of a banana. What surprised me was the size and amount of seeds within the fruit, an oblong one half inch, dark pod. I tried several ways to get some seeds to sprout, but to no avail. Like other trees, the literature suggests the acid within the digestive juices of an animal, such as a raccoon, might be needed to break down the seed covering.

An interesting and seemingly unrelated fact has entered American folklore connecting the Pawpaw to the Lewis and Clark expedition. During their three year expedition there were several members of the party that were game hunters. Lewis and Clark realized they could not take enough food provisions to last the entirety of a quest that would take who knows how long. So the strategy included the use of  hunters who would go in advance of the group and harvest wild game and bring it to a riverbank campsite that the others were progressing to. Those in the rear were in larger boats and in the journey westward, they were going against the current of the Big Muddy. It was an arduous feat and they averaged only ten miles a day as they pushed, paddled and pulled their watercraft upstream. No wonder each member ate around eight pounds of meat every day. 

On the return journey their daily mileage increased as they went with the flow. The group got excited as they recognized they were getting closer to the goal of returning to their departure point of St. Louis. It was more than three years since they started and they were eager to return. They wrote in their journals that a shift had occurred in their food collection ways. In the waning days of the expedition they took advantage of the nature of Pawpaws, the trees propagate by root sprouts forming significant groves and therefore, in the ripening days of September when the trek was about to end, they subsisted almost entirely on Pawpaws. The services of the hunters was no longer needed. 

Pawpaw fruit - Missouri Department of Conservation photo