The fourth-deepest snow—about two feet in many neighborhoods—in recorded Pittsburgh history fell on February 5 and 6. The weight of the stuff brought down huge trees and cut off electric power to hundreds of thousands, some of whom are still without power three days later. (Old Pa Pitt himself is forced to post this article as a guest on someone else’s connection.) These scenes are from a woody lot in Mount Lebanon.
The snow bowed these arborvitae trees into graceful arches, although this particular sort of grace is usually unwelcome in traditional landscape planting.
This big maple tree came down across a driveway; here we see it already showing the marks of the bowsaw that some day will finish disassembling it.
It’s that time of year: pumpkins fresh from the fields, brilliant autumn leaves, and ghost lynchings. We see all of them here at Shenot Farms outside Wexford.
The new Flora Pittsburghensis is a celebration of the wild flowers of Pittsburgh and suburbs. Wild flowers will still appear once in a while on Father Pitt’s site, but Flora Pittsburghensis is devoted exclusively to botanical matters, leaving Father Pitt to concentrate more on the architecture and history of Pittsburgh.
They’re black and gold, and they bloom all summer. Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) are popular garden plants here, but they also pop up along roadsides and in vacant lots. Father Pitt is of the opinion that this flower, with its persistence, its indomitable good cheer, and above all its showy black-and-gold coloring, ought to be adopted as a symbol of Pittsburgh.
Flowers of the genus Eupatorium brighten late-summer roadsides and almost define the season in Pittsburgh. They are members of the Composite family (Compositae or Asteraceae), which means that, as with daisies or dandelions, each apparent flower is really a cluster of tiny flowers. Collectively members of the genus are all known as “thoroughworts.” Here are three of the most common species.
Click on the picture to enlarge it.
Snakeroot (Eupatorium rugosum) lives at the edge of the woods in large colonies, giving whole forests a broad white margin. A close look reveals the individual flowers that make up each head.
Joe-Pye-weed (Eupatorium fistulosum) is one of our most spectacular late-summer flowers. It can easily grow to eight feet high, and its faded mauve color is unique. The name, legend has it, refers to an Indian known as Joe Pye who used the plant to cure various ailments.
Thoroughwort or boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) lives in wet areas, as here at the edge of a marshy pond. Note how the opposite leaves completely surround the stem.
Ground cherries grow almost wherever there is ground. We have two species in the area; both produce edible fruit inside their little Japanese lanterns, although it’s not usually much good until a week or two after it falls off the plant. (The papery lantern is toxic, so don’t eat it.) These pictures are of Physalis pubescens.
The flowers face downward and so are easily missed, but they’re worth examining closer. The color is primrose yellow with mahogany splotches around the center. They look like little Tiffany lanpshades, almost always held wide open and parallel to the ground.
Touch-me-nots, or jewelweeds, are some of our most common roadside flowers, and few flowers are more delightful. Close relatives of the garden Impatiens plants that seemed to have taken over the nurseries a few years back, they grow in vast colonies along the edge of the woods.
There are two common species in the eastern United States. Impatins pallida, which grows in the north and at higher elevations, has yellow flowers; Impatiens capensis (or Impatiens fulva), which grows in the south and at lower elevations, has bright orange flowers. Pittsburgh is right on the border of their ranges, so we get both, sometimes thoroughly mixed in the same colony. These pictures are all of Impatiens pallida.
The name “touch-me-not” comes from the explosive properties of the seedpods. If you touch a ripe seedpod, it will suddenly explode and send seeds flying in all directions. (The explosion is harmless, of course, but very amusing to children.) The secret is in the tense fibers of the pod, which, when the thin membrane that holds them together is ruptured, curl instantly into little coiled springs. You can tell a pod is ripe when you can see the black seeds through the thin green membrane.
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The flowers are perfectly adapted for pollination by bumblebees. Each flower is almost exactly the size of a bumblebee; what the bee wants is far back in the spur of the flower, so that the bee must enter the flower completely and then withdraw, laden with pollento fertilize the next flower.
Dame’s Rocket (Hesperis matronalis) lights up the hillsides of Pittsburgh in late spring. Pittsburghers commonly refer to it as “phlox,” but it’s actually a member of the crucifer or mustard family, as you might guess by its four petals in a cross shape. It’s a foreign invader, a descendant of garden flowers brought by the first European settlers. But who can object to a weed as beautiful as this? The flowers commonly come in a range of colors from vivid purple through pink to white, but some patches have bicolor flowers delicately spattered with color in an infinite variety of patterns.
