This striped maple sapling has huge leaves because it’s in the understory and it needs to catch a little light. But it’s also kind of bizarre. Imagine a 5-year-old with full-sized adult hands? (Also check out that electric blue striping!) #NativePlants

Damselfly, closely related to dragonflies, presumably sitting around waiting for a mosquito to chomp on. They breed in water and their larvae also eat mosquito larvae. I would like many of these to live near me, please!

Wild raisin growing in the Maine midcoast region. Viburnums support about 100 different moths and butterflies, and their flowers are short-lived but striking. They also make pinkish, bird-attracting berries later in the season. Another plant I wish was in my typical plant nurseries #NativePlants

Want to know which goldenrods won the “bugs” category (which I made up) in Mt. Cuba Center’s trials? #NativePlants 🌱

While researching for this week’s post, I stumbled on an iNaturalist observation of a caterpillar using a blue flag iris that’s not included in any of the big datasets. This is very exciting and I don’t understand why various members of my household doesn’t want me to talk about this constantly

Milkweed beetle on common milkweed, which they rely on. No need to remove one if you find it on your milkweed. That’s why you planted milkweed, to attract and feed wildlife! Go get your camera! Summon the neighbors and point, jump up and down with joy! Or just enjoy it, maybe that’s more reasonable

Butterfly weed flowers, man. 🌱 Make sure you really get in there and look. My gawd. The petals are the downward-flaring skirt. The part in the middle's the fused male/female parts. And there's a little "horn" arching out of each hood (opposite the petal) #NativePlants

Gaillardia (either the annual firewheel or a hybrid of G. pulchella and G. aristata) is not quite a #NativePlant in MA. More of a midwest/southwest species. Does provide a lot of quick biomass and populator support for a first-year garden bed though! 🌱

Red-banded leaf hopper hanging out on anise hyssop. Feeds on sap. Is fed on by spiders, lacewings, ladybugs. Pretty. #NativePlants #Insects

Wrote about (the #NativePlant) version of a plant whose flowers impressed people so much they made up a whole new set of botanical jargon. Excellent for rain gardens and clay soils. 🌱

does anyone involuntarily say OH HELL YEAH when they see fireflies in their garden? On Virginia strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) #NativePlants #Insects

Does anybody in Europe want to come get their wool carder bee? You can take this hairy penstemon it's so attached to. #NativePlants (though not native #bees, unfortunately...this one will probably headbutt a bumblebee or two.)

Tried to focus on BEE BUTT, got penstemon

Winterberry (Ilex verticulata) flower buds forming. Like other hollies, plants in this family form flowers at the base of their leaves. This is what allows those red berries we love to see in winter to be scattered along the branch instead of all bunched up at the tip. #NativePlants 🌱

Red columbine, in bloom and in fruit (yes, that’s what it’s called). The fruit’s made up of five follicles. A follicle is dry fruits that splits open along it seam. When it does, it’ll spill out its seeds and, one hopes, make more columbine! 🌱 #NativePlants

Milkweeds 🌱 are stingy. Yeah, that’s right. Your "Save The Monarchs!” plant. Its pollen isn’t powdery and gatherable. It’s in a waxy sac called a pollinia that clips on to bees and wasps as they nectar. Then it hitches a ride to the next flower, and not back to the insect’s home to feed its young.

Believe it or not, this isn’t a flower. It’s LOTS of flowers. Each little q-tip head is a disc floret, a flower. The flashy yellow “petals” are ray florets, also flowers. In lance-leaf coreopsis, they're job is to show bees that the flower’s open for business. #NativePlants #BloomScrolling 5m

Peppers start when you look at the funny. But some native seeds need coaxing. Here’s what to know about what seeds need to grow 🌱

Green-striped grasshopper, a grass specialist—or, as you native plant sickos like to put it, “a thing birds eat.” In all seriousness, a pretty cool ecosystem process is that plants “eat” light, this eats grass, and birds eat this. So that’s how the sun feeds birds. #insects #nature

The markings inside mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) flowers look the way they do because they’re nectar guides for bumble bees. Like the guy with two orange sticks guiding the plane into the gate (if the plane was very fuzzy) #NativePlants #Bloomscrolling

This bug that appears to be wearing boxing gloves is a long-necked seed bug. It eats seeds and protects itself from predators by mimicking being an ant. Presumably some birds eat it anyway (this one's not toxic to birds like its family relative, milkweed bugs.)

When you are early to the party (Lance-leaf coreopsis, Coreopsis lanceolata. #NativePlant #Bloomscrolling)

Perhaps not as charismatic as a ladybug (if only it were bright red!), but this wrinkled soldier beetle also eats a lot of aphids! On arrowwood viburnum (Virbunum dentatum) #Gardening #BeneficialInsects

A sad #NativePlant story: Big leaf lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus) is native to the U.S., but not here in the northeast U.S. It hybridizes with sundial lupine, the exclusive food of Karner Blue butterfly caterpillars. Caterpillars can't use the hybrid. So this bloom’s going in a vase.

Wrote about a plant family whose most reliable identifying characteristic is that it will blister the inside of your mouth if you eat it. (Don’t do that. There are less painful ways.)

#Bloomscrolling is cool, but so is the wildlife that likes your plants! Especially if they're #NativePlants, since this is one reason you planted them. Here's a carpenter bee (Ceratina spp.) on blue flag iris. Blue flag's normally bumble bee pollinated. This bee's likely stealing a sip of nectar.

Sometimes, when we think of plants exclusively in terms of what they can do for us, it surprises us when they do other things. Like bloom! Garden sage (Salvia officinalis). Look at those bilabiate (two-lipped) flowers!

The jumping spiders (family Salticinae) are all aware that I’m coming after them for pics. This one turned around to glare at me before running off. (On Viburnum nudum, whose common names include both Possumhaw Viburnum and Wild Raisin)

Ants freeloading on blueberry blossoms (Vaccinium corymbosum). This is a plant that needs to be "buzz pollinated." Some bees (like bumbles) can vibrate their flight muscles so fast that they shake pollen loose. Ants can't buzz pollinate. Hence the nectar larceny(an actual word coined by a scientist)

Walking around my garden repeatedly proclaiming “It is time!” like a desperate Rafiki

Summary of some fascinating research about if yeasts in flowers warm up the nectar when they eat it, producing a nice spring sauna for bumble bees / stealing all the sugar

When seedlings germinate, friction between the soil and the seed stem (the hypocotyl) pushes the cap away. Sometimes it doesn’t, though, and you get a goofy-looking seedling, like this one doing an impression of a duck. (You can push the seed cap off if it doesn’t fall off on its own.)

Iris people have decided, for whatever reason, that there’s not enough jargon in botany, and they need to come up with their own. Admittedly, theirs is cooler. For example, instead of sepals and petals, they talk about falls and standards.

Why do the flowers on red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) hang down? One reason is they "prefer"--if you'll forgive the word choice--some pollinators over others. Hummingbirds? Great! Honeybees? No! They'll just taking our pollen to dandelion a few feet away and waste it.

Green-and-gold (Chrysogonum virginianum)’s native range ends a little south of me (a few hundred miles actually). But it’s such a beautiful groundcover. Why in the world isn’t that a bog standard horticulture industrry offering? Just LOOK at this thing! Surely this is at least as good as Vinca minor

A pollinator you might not think about much: beetles! This is a red-necked false blister beetle on black cherry (Prunus Serotina). The adults live on pollen and nectar, while the larvae break down wood and cycle organic matter back into your soil.

There’s an enormous amount going on with Golden Alexander (Zizea aurea) plant’s flower structure. The whole thing is called an umbel (think “umbrella”). The umbel's made up of lots of little umbels (umbellets), each of which has its own cluster of golden yellow flowers. #NativePlants

Wrote about one of my favorite U.S. shrubs, northern spicebush which is often on “plant this native instead!” lists for forsythia. I think this is probably not a persuasive replacement on looks alone, but forsythia’s got nothing on the birds and butterflies and moths. #NativePlants

Peonies have nectaries outside their flowers. This "extra floral nectar" attracts ants, which protect them from insect herbivores. This means peonies practice a sort of integrated pest management: attract the beneficial insects to protect from the ones that want to eat your flowers

Mining bee investigating my raised beds. Probably Andrena vicina, Neighborly Mining Bee. Like bumble bees, they can buzz pollinate, which means they're good pollinators for things like blueberries. (Buzz pollination is when a bee vibrates its flight muscles quickly, shaking pollen loose) #bees

Looked up and saw a Great Blue Heron hunting and took the mediocre-est of mediocre pictures.

Just learned that a yeast is a lifestyle choice, not a specific type of fungus. It means a fungus growing as a single-celled organism.

Celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum). It’s got pretty yellow flowers, but I think this bud stage is also very, very cool. Apparently the hairy sepals actually fall off when the flower begins to open.

Every year I am tempted to put my tomatoes (and peppers and cucumbers etc.) in the ground early. This is my attempt to short circuit that temptation.

(Lowbush) Blueberry flowers (Vaccinium angustifolium. Blueberry flowers do not make pollinating super easy. Bumblebees (among others) can buzz pollinate them, a behavior where the bee vibrates its flight muscles real fast, shaking out the pollen.

The official way to learn plant ID is through families. The unofficial way is probably to go outside and see what’s growing nearby. This is, I think, common wood rush (Luzula multiflora). (I am next to useless on IDing grasses, rushes, and sedges, I admit.)

Serviceberry. The hypanthium—the goblet-shaped thing just below the flower—is hairy. Unfortunately, the botanical name for this is a pubescent hypanthium

Jacob’s ladder, Polemonium reptans. “Reptans” is used in lots of Latin names. It means “creeping” and is a hint that a plant grows like a groundcover, forming a mat.

One of the most ecologically critical plant families

American nursery web spider. Leaf litter is critical to its ability to hunt and survive winter.