Long stamens dangle and wave in the breeze, identifying this as a male plant. As the species name implies, this species has dioecious flowers (from Greek meaning “two houses”): that is, it bears male and female flowers on separate plants. The female flowers are little upright greenish clusters, but the male flowers are more common and more charming. In spite of the common name, Early Meadow Rue seems to prefer woods to meadows; this one was growing on a rocky hillside in the Squaw Run valley in Fox Chapel, where it was blooming in late April.
(More at the full article.)
We have added several new pictures to the page. These plants were growing beside Saw Mill Run in Seldom Seen, where they were blooming in the middle of April.
Family Papaveraceae (Poppy Family).
These charming relatives of the Bleeding-Heart like a damp wooded hillside, more often a gentle slope than a steep incline. The flowers really do look like old-fashioned pairs of breeches hung upside-down to dry. “Pretty, but odd” is Gray’s description. These plants were growing in Bird Park in Mount Lebanon. (More at the full article.)
A very strange-looking plant when it begins to bloom; the plant is almost eggplant-purple, and only half-formed, but already bearing brown flowers. Later the leaves will turn green and the flowers will turn yellowish, and it will look much more like a normal plant. These plants were growing near the Trillium Trail in Fox Chapel, where they were blooming in early April.
More pictures are in the full article.
This plant is not recorded in any of the references as existing in Pennsylvania. We are very close to positive in this identification, however, and there is a large patch of it in the Squaw Run Valley in Fox Chapel. It is primarily a Midwestern species, but it also occurs in other isolated and widely separated stands in the East. It resembles the Rue Anemone, Thalictrum thalictroides (and we mistakenly identified it that way when we first ran across it), but its even carpet of three three-parted leaflets identifies it, as do the invariably white five-petaled flowers (actually the “petals” are sepals) and the habit of forming a dense colony.
More pictures are in the full article.