Physocarpus opulifolius
Spiraea alba
Spiraea tomentosa
Japanese
Spiraea (Spiraea japonica). This
attractive bush is a garden favorite, but it seeds
itself and can become invasive. It likes a wet
location, especially along the banks of a stream. It
blooms in late June and into July, with clusters of
little rosy pink flowers with long, pink-headed
stamens. (In the horticultural trade, “Spiraea” is
often spelled “Spirea.”)
Aruncus dioicus
Gillena trifoliata
Pyrus malus
Crabapple
(Malus coronaria).Crabapple trees
especially like the edge of the woods, or an open
woods with clearings. They bloom in late April and
continue into early May. The flowers vary from white
through pink, the buds being much darker than the
flowers.
Amelanchier intermedia
Amelanchier arborea
Crataegus…
Fragraria virginiana
Waldsteinia fragrarioides
Silvery
Cinquefoil (Potentilla argentea).
Originally from Europe, this little flower joins the
herds of little five-petaled flowers in our fields.
The minimalistic leaflets are dark green, shiny, and
somewhat leathery. It begins to bloom in June.
Potentilla recta
Norway
Cinquefoil (Potentilla norvegica). Also
called Rough Cinquefoil, because it has rough hairs
all over. This paradoxical cinquefoil has three
leaflets rather than five. It grows in waste places
and isn’t too particular about soil; this plant grew
in the middle of a gravel driveway near Cranberry,
where it was blooming in mid-June.
Common
Cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex). This
plant looks very much like Indian Strawberry until we
notice that the leaves apparently have five leaflets
rather than three; we say apparently, because Gray
tells us that the leaves are “3-foliolate but
apparently 5-foliolate by the parting of the lateral
leaflets.” The plants spread by wiry little runners;
see the picture at the bottom of this article. These
plants were blooming in early May in the lawn of the
Allegheny Cemetery.
Indian
Strawberry (Potentilla indica). This
little creeper, found in shady lawns everywhere, bears
bland, tasteless fruit that looks like wild
strawberries, but it’s easily distinguished by its
yellow flowers. Children like to tell each other that
the fruit is poisonous and then dare each other to eat
it. It’s perfectly edible, but not really worth
eating. It is nevertheless much valued by herbalists,
who suppose it to have useful medicinal properties.
The blooming season is extraordinarily long, and
Indian Strawberry can bloom in midwinter if encouraged
by a warm spell.
White
Avens (Geum canadense). This unassuming
little member of the rose family likes to grow at the
edge of the woods. It blooms in the middle of the
summer. The white flowers bear more than a passing
resemblance to the flowers of blackberries or
strawberries.
Geum virginianum
Geum vernum
Purple-Flowering
Raspberry (Rubus odoratus). The
beautiful flowers of this plant vie with wild roses
(Rosa spp.) for spectacle, and indeed it is often
planted as an ornamental. In the wild, it prefers a
semi-shaded hillside, blooming in late May. The leaves
are more or less maple-shaped. The raspberry-like
fruit, alas, is no good for eating.
Blackberry
(Rubus allegheniensis). Blackberry
canes are full of thorns, but they give us
blackberries, so who are we to complain? The flowers
that precede the berries are like little white roses,
as befits a member of the rose family—but curiously
wrinkled and untidy roses, as if they had slept in
their petals after a long night of exhausting revelry.
Rubus…
Agrimonia gryposepala
Agrimonia rostellata
Soft
Agrimony (Agrimonia pubescens). These
delicate racemes of yellow flowers appear in the open
woods, and you are likely to miss them if you are not
looking for them. They bloom in early August. Older
references usually list this as Agrimonia mollis,
a synonym.
Rosa palustris
Rosa carolina
Rosa multiflora
Memorial
Rose (Rosa wichuriana). Also known as Rosa
luciae. This is the familiar pink rambling rose
of roadsides and banks in the city and suburbs. It
often persists around old homesites, but it also seems
to appear spontaneously often enough that we can
regard it as a naturalized citizen of our flora. The
large single flowers with shallowly notched
overlapping petals and very regular elliptical toothed
leaflets are distinctive.
Prunus americana
Prunus persica
Prunus avium
Prunus cerasus
Wild
Black Cherry (Prunus serotina). These
fine large trees produce an abundance of little white
flowers in narrow racemes, followed by tasty black
fruit. The crinkly rough bark of mature trees is
distinctive. The similar Choke Cherry (Prunus
virginiana) also carries its flowers in narrow
racemes, but its fruit is red, its bark is smooth, and
it rarely grows into more than a medium-sized tree.
Prunus virginiana