Northern Spicebush

 

Northern Spicebush
Lindera benzoin

This is one of my favorite shrubs, growing nicely in any good quality moist woodland.  It flowers early in the spring, dotting the woods with golden flowers.  Later, it's leaves come out, which smell so nice and can be made into a tea, as can the twigs.  In the fall, the fruits are pretty red berries and then the leaves turn a golden-yellow color.  It's just a nice plant all year long.

Fruits and glossy leaves

Northern Red Oak

Northern Red Oak
Quercus rubra

 This is exactly what a large red oak tree looks like.  All trunk with the "ski tracks" bark, and then some branches way up high.

Northern Mountain Ash

Northern Mountain Ash
Sorbus decora

Indiana is at the very southern edge of the range of this species and has been extirpated in the wild.  It was reported from a few counties, mostly northwest, with one vouchered specimen at Butler University found in LaPorte county in 1924.  That seems to be the only vouchered specimen from Indiana.

Could it be re-introduced?  Perhaps.  The vouchered specimen was found in sandy black oak woods.  The Michigan Flora website describes its habitat as:

Forested dunes and bluffs, especially frequent at edges of forests along Lake Superior; deciduous, mixed, and coniferous forests, often with fir, cedar, and pine, but sometimes in beech-maple stands; seems to thrive particularly well along shores, perhaps because of the moister climate and perhaps because released from competition of larger trees in the forest.

It might be worth a try!

Northern Maidenhair

Northern Maidenhair
Adiantum pedatum

This is one of the prettiest ferns in the state.  Notice that the stem is so thin that it's hard to see, giving the appearance of a bunch of leaves floating in air.  I didn't see this until reviewing another great website - https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/fern/maidenhair-fern.

While found throughout the state, it is uncommon, found only in higher quality woodlands.  Unfortunately, there aren't as many high quality woodlands as their used to be.

Nodding Wakerobin

Nodding Wakerobin
Trillium flexipes

This is also known as Nodding Trillium.

The trilliums are a good example of the difficulty of trying to organize species. They were originally put into the Liliaceae family; then some taxonomists put them into their own family; Trilliaceae, then back to the Liliaceae family, on to the Melanthiaceae family, and now some are putting it back into the Trilliaceae family.

There were disagreements all around; probably arguments, bickering, brawls, and perhaps a feud or two.  The difficulty is that evolution is a continuum rather than a set of discrete steps, and it's hard to decide where the cutoff points are.  Discrete steps do happen, but not always.  Also, it's not always simple to trace the continuum of evolution and taxonomists don't always agree on how it went.  All in all, this makes taxonomy, and taxonomists, a very interesting study.

The flowers are generally white, but sometimes there are maroon ones.

Typical Trillium leaf

Nodding Onion

Nodding Onion
Allium cernuum

Wild populations of this plant are uncommon, but it is often a part of prairie restoration seed mixes, so it's population may be increasing.  A key feature is that the flower raceme "nods", unlike other Allium species.  Also, the leaves are flat like grass leaves.

Flat, grass-like leaf

The flowers aren't quite nodding yet, but they will.

Michigan Lily

Michigan Lily
Lilium michiganense

The Michigan Lily is always a delight to come across during a walk through the woods.  It is an uncommon plant, which makes it more special when spotting them.

It is quite similar to Turk's Cap Lily (Lilium superbum), but the Turk's Cap is only found in some scattered counties in southern Indiana.

Kentucky Coffeetree

Kentucky Coffeetree
Gymnocladus dioicus

 You seldom see the flower of the Kentucky Coffeetree since they're high in the tree.  Look for them in May/June when the tree is leafing out.

Kentucky Coffeetree is a legume, same as clover, redbud, locust, and soybeans.  Part of the evidence is the seedpods, some of which are noted below.

 

                                       From left to right:

                                            Honeylocust

                                            Eastern Redbud

                                            Black Locust

                                            Kentucky Coffeetree

Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon

Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon
Tragopogon lamottei

This plant goes by many names, most of which are easier to say than Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon.  The names I use for this blog come from the name used by the USDA Plants Database - https://plants.usda.gov/home/plantProfile?symbol=TRPR.

Other names are Salsify and Goats-beard, both of which are better than Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon.  Of course I don't think anyone reads this blog, so I could call it anything I want.

This is why it's called Goats-beard.

Indian-Tobacco

Indian-Tobacco
Lobelia inflata

As you might guess, Indian-Tobacco was smoked by Indians.  Native Americans used it for a variety of medicinal reasons, some of which involved smoking, such as a treatment for asthma.  It was also used as a ceremonial plant, i.e. used by shamans and others to cure people during a ceremony.  Sometimes these ceremonies involve hallucinogenic plants, but I think Indian-Tobacco only caused a feeling of goodwill, similar to nicotine.

However, consuming this plant has a variety of side effects, ranging from excessive sweating to death, and lots of options in between.  Do not smoke or eat this plant unless you get clear advice from a medicinal herbalist!

The flowers and seedpods are quite distinctive looking.

Red Maple

Red Maple
Acer rubrum

Red Maple is naturally found in lowlands; wet spots.  However, given its beautiful fall color and tolerance for wet spots, it has been planted extensively in landscape situations.  In fact, there are over 20 varieties that have been created for landscaping.  You are probably more likely to come across one in someone's yard than in the wild, unless you spend time wandering around in swamps.

The leaves are a bit different than the leaves of other maple species.  Note the three lobed design where none of the sides are parallel and the edge of the leaf is serrated.  That's a lot to memorize, but if you look at enough of the leaves, you'll get the hang of it.

The female flowers are tiny and red.

In the spring, the red female flowers really brighten up the tree.

Golden Ragwort

Golden Ragwort
Packera aurea

The genus of Packera is named after John G. Packer, a botanist from the University of Alberta. The species name of aurea means "gold" in Latin.  This seems odd since all of the Packera species that I know of (the groundsels and ragworts), are yellow/gold in color, so I'm not sure why this one is called Golden.  A better name that is sometimes used is Heart-leaved Ragwort, which is helpful since its basal leaves are heart-shaped, unlike other members of this genus.

Speaking of which, why is a heart shape different than the actual shape of a heart?

Basal leaf - heart shaped

Cauline leaf

The flowers of all of the Packera species look the same to me.

Flowering Dogwood

 

Flowering Dogwood
Cornus florida

Springtime in Indiana is punctuated by flowering dogwoods and redbuds.  Not only is it spectacular, it has many medicinal uses.  According to the Native American Ethnobotany database, a bark infusion was used for many purposes, including headaches, fevers, worms, poison antidote, childhood diseases, diarrhea, and many others.

Flowering trees in the woods are a delightful spring sensation

The buds are quite distinctive

Fire Pink

Fire Pink
Silene virginica

These flowers are a delight to see because they are the reddest things in the woods!  You'll be walking along looking at shades of brown and dark green and then poof, there are a bunch of little fires along the forest floor.

They are rather uncommon plants found in open woodlands.  It is thought that fire suppression has been a factor in their rarity since woodlands overgrow quickly without some sort of disturbance to clear the forest canopy.

Field Sagewort

 

Field Sagewort
Artemisia campestris

The picture above is a young start of a plant.  It eventually gets tall with lots of unimpressive flowers.  This plant grows in dry, sandy areas, particularly around the dunes.

An interesting fact is that it is a host plant for another rare hemiparisitic plant; Orobanche fasciculata (Clustered Broomrape).  The only place to find these plants together in Indiana is at the Indiana Dunes.

Fernleaf Yellow False Foxglove

Fernleaf Yellow False Foxglove
Aureolaria pedicularia

This species is cool in that it is a hemiparasite, which means that it gets some of its nutrition from another plant, namely oaks.  Its roots attach to the roots of an oak tree and suck out the juice.  It doesn't hurt the oak tree.  All of the Aureolaria species, i.e. the yellow false foxgloves, are hemiparasites on oak trees.  You won't find any in a garden anywhere unless it's shaded by an oak.

According to the botanists, this species differs from other Aureolaria species by its bipinnatifid leaves, pinnatifid calyx teeth, and glandular hairs on its stems and pedicels.

Note the bipinnatifid leaves

Note the pinnatifid calyx teeth

Note the glandular hairs on the stem and pedicels

Fan Clubmoss

Fan Clubmoss
Lycopodium digitatum

Ah, the clubmosses, which aren't a moss at all, but rather a primitive vascular plant. These plants have been roaming the earth for some time now, over 300 million years.  The plants of old were monstrous, as large as oak trees, and the dominant plants of the era.  Coal beds were formed by these and other spore-bearing plants.

Fun Fact: The spores of this plant are high in oil and are quite flammable, once called "lycopodium powder".  When tossed in a flame, they ignite briefly with a bright flame and have historically been used as a source of light for photographer's flashes, as well as many other uses that people have had over the years for flashy flames.  Now I've got to go out and collect some, for research purposes.

Leaves look like a fan

European Lily Of The Valley

European Lily of the Valley
Convallaria majalis

This plant is a good example of the difficulty of taxonomy.  In this case, the difficulty is that this plant had been found in the southern Appalachian mountains in the early 1800's, far from any known plantings of it in gardens at the time.  The American variety is a bit different than the garden variety, so taxonomists had to figure out what to do with it, i.e. is it a species, a variety, or the same as the European variety.

As with every other plant, each taxonomist had a different idea and in the days before the internet and instant communication, chaos reigned in the American Lily of the Valley world.

In one paper I read, they noted that the American version has been named variously over the years as:

• Convallaria majalis
• C. montana 
• C. majuscula
• C. majalis var. montana
• C. pseudomajalis

Of course, they didn't like any of the names and came up with a new one:

• Convallaria majalis L. subsp. majuscula

You can find mention of practically any of these names currently in use in various places.  Of course, it doesn't really matter here, since the southern Appalachian mountains don't run through Indiana.  We'll only find garden escapes.

The pretty flowers make this a favorite for gardens and bridal bouquets.

Elmleaf Goldenrod

Elmleaf Goldenrod
Solidago ulmifolia

Plant namers have the same sort of trouble as street namers; it's easy to run out of ideas for names.  When it gets to the point of naming plants after other plants, you know they hit the bottom of the barrel.  In fact, the species name of ulmifolia literally means elm leaf, so they couldn't even think of a good scientific name.

On the other hand, if you know what an elm leaf looks like, it does make it easier to identify this species, since the leaves look more like elm leaves than the other goldenrod species.

This is one of the woodland species, along with Zigzag (Solidago flexicaulis) and Blue-stemmed or Wreath (Solidago caesia) Goldenrods.  All three of these are a delight to see during a walk through the woods.

The leaf looks somewhat like an elm leaf, although it looks like any other leaf that is toothed and wider than many other goldenrod species.

Zigzag Goldenrod leaf

Wreath Goldenrod leaf