Join with other KNPS members and friends for our first, in-person fall meeting since 2019. Our 2022 Fall Meeting will be held at Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park on Saturday, October 15th. There will be a meeting in the morning, from 10am-noon, with interesting talks and updates from KNPS, and walks in the afternoon to look at some of the plants and plant communities that occur at the state park. The fall meeting will be held in tandem with the Short’s Goldenrod Festival being put on by the state park.
September 24 was a gorgeously mild fall day, perfect for Bluebirds of Central Kentucky‘s first festival. This organization’s mission is to improve habitat for one of Kentucky’s most beautiful native birds, the bluebird.
Our booth was next to Ironweed Nursery and Frankfort’s Fantasy Forest. The event took place at West Sixth Farm, also in Frankfort. Between the beautiful weather, the vendors, and the scenery, none of us could’ve asked for a better day, or time.
KNPS Director, Deborah White and Susan Harkins talked with lots of folks, but, mostly children. It was fun talking with children about native plants and habitat. Several were already knowledgeable on the subject, which was encouraging.
The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. We occasionally feature an article from a past issue. This one, about Kentucky’s most widespread milkweed species, Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), first appeared in the fall of 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3. If you would like to see other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 34, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2019 (after which we moved to this blog format) can be found.
Kentucky’s Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L.) By David Taylor, US Forest Service
Whole plant with flowers
Common milkweed is a perennial forb that spreads by means of rhizomes and seed. It is one of about 115 species that occur in the Americas. Most species are tropical or arid land species. Plants may occur as a few individuals, but once established, form small to large colonies. Individual plants range from 1 to 2 m (~ 3 to 6 ft) tall. Leaves are elliptic to ovate to oblong and somewhat thick. Mature leaves are 15-20 cm (6-8 in) long and 5 to 9 cm (~ 2 to 3.6 in) wide, with a prominent midvein. The underside of the leaf is frequently finely pubescent. The stem is stout, usually simple, and green to black (see below) in color. When broken, the leaves, as well as stem and fruit, exude milky latex. Flowers are purplish to rosy pink to mostly white or even greenish and about 2 cm (0.75 in) long and 1 cm (0.4 in) wide. They occur in semi-spherical umbels (umbrella-like clusters) in the upper leaf axils. Flowers are somewhat complex in their structure, with structures not found in the average flower. The flowers are strongly and sweetly scented.
Milkweed pods
The fruits (pods), known as follicles, are formed from the union of multiple flowers. They are green, covered in soft spiky projections and are finely pubescent. When the seeds are mature, the follicle splits exposing the seeds. Each seed is equipped with a coma, a soft group of hairs. As the newly exposed seeds dry, the hairs of the coma expand allowing the seed to catch a ride on the wind. When broken, the leaves, as well as stem and fruit, exude milky latex.
Common milkweed is a widespread and somewhat weedy species. It is known from most of the eastern U.S and the eastern-most prairie states as well as southern Canada from New Brunswick to Saskatchewan. It is frequently found in fence rows, on roadsides, in fields, and in prairies and pastures. Given the opportunity, it will establish in gardens and even thin lawns. It is tolerant of light shade, but generally is a full sun species.
Monarch caterpillar on leaf
The genus name, Asclepias, commemorates Asklepios, the Greek god of medicine. Some of the species have a history of medicinal use including common milkweed (wart removal and lung diseases) and butterfly weed (aka pleurisy root— pleurisy and other lung disease). The specific epithet, syriaca, means ‘of Syria’ and is a misnomer: Linnaeus thought the species was native to Syria. This species is some times eaten as a salad herb, requiring multiple boilings of the young shoots before it is palatable. The reason for the boiling is to rid the shoots of various cardiac glucosides and other bitter principles. Milk weeds contain various levels of these compounds which render the plants toxic to most insects and animals. For some insects, the cardiac glucosides become a defense. They can store them in their tissue which renders them inedible or toxic to other animals. Monarch butterflies use this defense and birds leave them and the caterpillars alone. What the birds do not know is that northern monarchs feeding on common milkweed accumulate relatively little of the toxic compounds and probably would be edible. The more southern butterflies accumulate large amounts of the compounds from other species and are in fact toxic.
The stems contain a bast (inner ‘bark’) fiber used by Native Americans to produce twine and rope. The concentration and quality of the fiber make it potentially useful as a commercial fiber plant. Fiber quality is that of flax.
Common milkweed is an important pollinator and food plant for a large number of insects (more than 450 documented). It could be said that common milkweed is Nature’s mega food market for insects. Numerous butterflies, flies, bees, wasps, and beetles feed on the nectar and pollen produced by the flowers. Even hummingbirds will try, apparently unsuccessfully, to extract nectar. Aphids, especially the yellow-orange oleander or milkweed aphids (Aphis nerii), are commonly found on milkweeds including common milkweed. Large infestations of aphids can lead to formation of sooty mold on the plants which can turn the stems and leaves from green to gray to black. Two true bugs, the large milkweed bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus) and the small milkweed bug (Lygaeus kalmia) feed on the seeds, but the large milkweed bug is more often encountered. Large populations of either species can reduce the seed production potential of a colony of common milkweed by as much as 80-90%. The colorful (red with black dots) red milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetraophthalmus) feeds on the leaves. The milkweed leaf beetle (Labidomera clivicollis), another orange-red and black beetle may feed on common milkweed but has a preference for swamp milkweed (A. incarnata). At least two caterpillars, the milkweed tussock caterpillar (Euchaetes egle) and the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) feed on this plant. The red (or orange-red) and black coloration of most of these insects is known as aposematic coloration; that is, the colors advertise the fact that the organism is not good to eat. Other palatable species mimic the toxic species and gain some protection as a result. A well known example is the viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus) which mimics the monarch .
Large milkweed bugsPredated milkweed seedsMilkweed tussock moth caterpillarsMilkweed aphid, mothers and young, on Cynanchum laeve
For monarchs, common milkweed is among the most important food plants. It is the primary food plant for northern U.S. and southern Canada monarchs and is a major food plant for monarchs in the central and southern U.S. Monarchs migrating from the mountains of Mexico lay eggs on milkweed species in northern Mexico and the southern U.S. The butterflies that result from these eggs move further north in stages, with a change in species of milkweeds utilized as they move north. Common milkweed is the usual northern species. Monarchs can be helped by encouraging existing common patches of common milkweed and planting new ones. The plant grows readily from seed and spreads quickly by deep rhizomes. Because common milkweed can be weedy and difficult to remove, care should be used to establish the plant only in places where spread can be tolerated.
The Lady Slipper newsletter of the Kentucky Native Plant Society has been published since the Society’s founding in 1986. We occasionally feature an article from a past issue. This one, about the United States’ largest native fruit, the Pawpaw, Asimina triloba, first appeared in the fall of 2005, Vol. 20, No. 3. If you would like to see other past issues, visit the Lady Slipper Archives, where all issues from Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1986 to Vol. 34, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2019 (after which we moved to this blog format) can be found.
Kentucky’s ‘Tropical’ Fruit, the Papaw
by John Thieret, NKU
Photo: Ellwood J.Carr, from the collection of the Pine Mountain Settlement School
A visit to a fruit/ vegetable market in the tropics is a great experience. All sorts of plant products that we in the temperate zones do not recognize are there. Among these are fruits of the Annonaceae, the custard-apple family, including the bullock’s-heart, cherimoya, guanabana, sweetsop, and soursop. These are unknown to most people in our part of the world, but we do have a member of the Annonaceae that does NOT grow in the tropics, our papaw, Asimina triloba. This is a shrub or small tree, which, as I have seen it, never exceeds perhaps 20 feet in height and 6 inches in trunk diameter, although there are reports of individuals 50 feet tall and with a trunk 2 feet in diameter, truly a mega-papaw.
A common enough plant, the papaw thrives in rich woods over much of eastern U.S. from northern Florida to far eastern Texas, then north to New York, far southern Ontario, Michigan, Iowa, and southeastern Nebraska. It grows throughout Kentucky, almost certainly in every county.
Although some papaw enthusiasts wax ecstatic over the fruits, papaws are not everyone’s favorite. This divergence in appreciation stems from, first, natural differences in fruits from different trees and, second, differences in people’s taste buds. I have found fruits from some trees not worth the effort of trying to get them down from the branches. But other trees can produce fruits that I’d describe as almost excellent. The best papaws I ever tasted were in southern Illinois on a rather cool, almost frosty fall morning. Yes, quite worthwhile. The Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley described, in hoosier dialect, the gustatory experience:
And sich pop-paws! Lumps a’ raw Gold and green,—jes’ oozy th’ough With ripe yaller—like you’ve saw Custard-pie with no crust to.
Another assessment of the taste, by an Indiana lad, is included in Euell Gibbons’ book Stalking the Wild Asparagus: “They taste like mixed bananers and pears, and feel like sweet pertaters in your mouth.” I’ll second that, at least for a good papaw.
Long before Europeans began their assault on the North American continent, the indigenous peoples, along with various animals—possums, raccoons, squirrels, and skunks—sought the fruit. The first Europeans to see it—some 450 years ago—were De Soto and his entourage. They wrote of it, mentioning its “very good smell and excellent taste.” About 200 years later the plant was introduced into cultivation by Europeans who brought seeds to England. Then in 1754 the first illustration of the papaw appeared in Catesby’s Natural History of Carolinas (see right). Lewis and Clark, in the early 19th century, found the fruits to be welcome additions to a meagre diet. To this day, the fruits are collected and used by country people and by city dwellers who like to eat their way through the landscape.
As for ways to use the fruits, first and foremost they can be eaten out of hand. As they ripen, they change from green to brown or nearly black, then looking not especially appetizing (recalling ripe plantains). The fruit pulp, creamy and sweet, contains several large, flattened, brown seeds. One of my friends made a necklace for his wife from the seeds. Better, I guess, than one made from finger bones.
Enthusiasts use the fruit for pies, puddings, marmalade, bread, beer, and brandy. I’ve tasted papaw bread and found it OK. Barely. I once tried to make papaw bread—I’ll say no more about that dismal experience. (The persimmon bread I attempted was no better.)
On a few occasions I have seen the plant grown as an ornamental. With its large, somewhat drooping leaves, it is rather attractive. The maroon flowers, which bloom in spring when the leaves are still young and covered with rusty down, are not all that conspicuous, and the fruits—well, my experience has been that papaw plants in cultivation as lawn specimens just do not make many fruits. As a matter of a fact, I have always noted that, even in the wild, the fruits are not abundantly produced. Maybe I just was not at the right place at the right time. The plants seem to require cross pollination, which is a disadvantage to those who would use them as ornamentals and, at the same time, would like some fruits.
If you have never tried one of the fruits, head for the woods in the autumn and attempt to find one. Maybe someone you know can help you. Even if you do not find the fruit much to your liking—maybe you will, maybe you won’t—you will have had a new gustatory experience.
For many years attempts have been made by horticulturists to ‘improve’ the papaw and make it into a commercially viable fruit. Their efforts notwithstanding, the fruit remains a Cinderella. On only one occasion have I seen papaws for sale: at a roadside farmer’s stand in southwestern Ohio among a fine display of squashes of a dozen kinds. Breeding and selection work has been carried out in several places, notably at Kentucky State University where about 1700 papaw trees grow in KSU’s 8-acre experimental farm and where the PawPaw Foundation is headquartered. Once, in Pennsylvania, I saw a papaw orchard of maybe 50 trees. I wish now that I had stopped and spoken with the orchard’s owner. Perhaps, with continued efforts at breeding and selection, papaws might some day be common items in our temperate fruit and vegetable markets, as common even as are the annonaceous cousins of Asimina triloba in markets of the tropics. This is the goal toward which papaw enthusiasts and breeders are striving.
We have several native plants in Kentucky named after reptiles, snakeroot, lizard’s tail, adder’s tongue fern, and three rattlesnakes, master, plantain, and root. We also have green dragon and snapdragon, but they don’t really count because, well, you know…. the one named after a turtle is appropriately named turtlehead.
Kentucky’s two turtleheads are distinguished by flower color, white and red. White turtlehead (Chelone glabra) has been observed in 38 of our 120 counties across the state but is mostly absent west of the Land Between the Lakes. Red turtlehead, also called Pink or Rose, (Chelone obliquavar. speciosa) fills the void in western Kentucky and is also found in a few counties towards the center of the state (10 total). A rare third variety of Red turtlehead (classified as endangered) grows in three southeastern counties (Chelone obliquavar. obliqua). Another pink variety that is commercially available is Lyon’s turtlehead (Chelone lyonii), but it is not native to Kentucky.
Description and growing conditions
Chelone
As the name implies, turtleheads possess flowers that resemble the head of a turtle. They grow two to three feet tall with opposite, lanceolate leaves sporting serrated edges that can reach a length of six inches. The one to one a half inch flowers are borne on a dense terminal spike in late summer to early fall and persist for about a month.
Turtleheads grow in wetlands and enjoy keeping their feet wet and their tops in full sun or partial shade. They aren’t picky about pH and can tolerate both acid and basic soils if organic matter is present. The flowers are visited by hummingbirds and pollinated by bumble bees which appreciate having a late season food source available before entering diapause for the winter. Deer generally avoid the plants due to their bitter leaves but some amount of browsing can occur where deer populations are high. I sacrificed a leaf from one of my seedlings (see below) to verify the bitter leaf theory and can attest that it is true. That being said, the dried leaves are used to make tea, and they are also incorporated into an ointment.
Red turtlehead is listed as a species of special concern by the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves. To gauge its rarity, consider that there are only seven observations of red turtlehead in Kentucky on iNaturalist. Compare that with 1,224 may apples, 1,110 spring beauties and 1,086 blue phloxes.
Chelone
I was fortunate to find several Red turtlehead plants last fall in McCracken County. I collected seeds in November, sowed half of them immediately and the remainder stayed in my garage until March. The germination rate for both batches was very high – probably 75 percent. There were no problems with damping off or other fungal issues and I’m looking forward to finding homes for about 60 seedlings this fall.
Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly
The white turtlehead (not the red) is the host plant for the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly, which has been the state insect of Maryland since 1973. It was named for George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore who helped found the colony of Maryland. Its wing spot colors and patterns resemble those on the Calvert family crest. Unfortunately, it has experienced a significant population decline and is currently listed as rare in the state. In 2012, the Baltimore Checkerspot Recovery Team of Maryland formed to develop and implement plans to reverse this trend, which includes increasing the white turtlehead population in the state. Details of their plan including an excellent section on turtlehead propagation can be found at Conservation and Management of the Baltimore Checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton) in the Maryland Piedmont: Strategies for Wetland Restoration, Captive Breeding and Release
It is also rare in Kentucky having been reported from only 18 counties. There is only one iNaturalist observation of this butterfly in Kentucky, from Henry County. While the odds are high that you’ve never seen a Baltimore checkerspot in the wild, it’s possible you’ve seen one in your mailbox. The US Postal Service issued two stamps with the image of this butterfly: a 13-cent stamp in 1977 and a 65-cent stamp in 2012.
So how did the state butterfly of Maryland make it onto two stamps whereas Kentucky’s state butterfly, the viceroy, has yet to grace an envelope in the United States? I’m guessing the fact that the Maryland border is about four miles from the United States Postal System Headquarters in downtown DC has something to do with it. Of course, everyone would mistake our viceroy with a monarch anyway, so maybe we will never see our butterfly on a stamp!
So why should you add turtlehead to your native plant garden? This hardy, easy-to-grow perennial with distinctive flowers will lend color to your garden late into the fall. Bumble bees and hummingbirds will thank you for giving them a late season nectar source after many of our other native plants have gone to seed. Finally, we all know how we are all encouraged to plant milkweed to help the monarch butterfly. The fact is there are many other insects that need our help. So, plant turtlehead in your garden and maybe you will be lucky enough to see a checkerspot butterfly in real life instead of just on a postage stamp!
Robert Dunlap is an amateur naturalist living near Paducah who owns every Peterson Field Guide that was ever published.
I write this message just a week after historic and unprecedented floods devastated Eastern Kentucky. I know I speak for all of our members when I say that our hearts are broken for the lives that were lost and the homes, businesses, and entire communities that were utterly destroyed. Unsurprisingly, Kentuckians across the Commonwealth have stepped up by volunteering and providing needed resources to their fellow Kentuckians. If you are reading this message and are looking for a way to help, a donation to the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund is one way to make a difference. Thank you.
Be sure to mark your calendars for the KNPS Fall Meeting, Saturday, October 15, at Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park. This will be a great opportunity to get together with other KNPS members and friends and to find out what the Society is planning for the end of this year and in 2023. We will also be taking easy walks through the Blue Licks State Nature Preserve to see the globally rare and endangered Short’s goldenrod (Solidago shortii). We are still working out details for the meeting but you can read about what we currently have planned here: KNPS 2022 Fall Meeting – Save The Date, Oct. 15. Learn more about Short’s goldenrod from this article from the Lady Slipper Archives, “A Short Take on Short’s Goldenrod.”
Swamp candles (Lysimachia terrestris)
This summer the Society built on the success of Wildflower Weekend by getting back to scheduled, in-person field trips. In June we had our first field trip of the year at the Ohio floodplains of the Ballard Wildlife Management Area in Ballard Co. The participants saw many wetland obligate species such as broadleaf arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), green arrow arum (Peltandra virginica), as well as the lovely swamp candles (Lysimachia terrestris), a species that is rare in KY and only known from two far western counties.
Green comet milkweed (Asclepias verdiflora)
In July, Alan Abbott took a group to Buena Vista Glade in Taylor, Indiana, about 50 minutes west from downtown Louisville. This glade community has similar shallow soils and limestone bedrock as glades in Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, as well as similar plant communities. The group saw several interesting glade species, including straggling St. John’s-Wort (Hypericum dolabriforme), green comet milkweed (Asclepias verdiflora), and whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata).
At the end of July, the Society was finally able to present a workshop that had originally been scheduled for March, 2020, and which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic. The workshop, “Plant Family Identification Motifs: patterns for simplifying the complexity“, was given by Dr. J. Richard Abbott, Assistant Professor of Biology, and current Curator of the University of Arkansas Monticello Herbarium. With the cooperation and assistance of the good folks at Bernheim Arboretum, a group of around 20 native plant enthusiasts spent a day in the facilities and plantings at Bernheim, learning how to use certain motifs to ID plants to their plant families. The group learned a lot and as one participant, Carol, wrote, “Just wanted to drop a line that this class was fantastic! I’d attend a Part 2 session if there was one scheduled!”
Watch for more field trips and workshops in the months to come and remember that KNPS members get first shot at signing up for any of these events before they are opened to the general public.
Everything that KNPS does happens because of the support and help of our members and friends. On behalf of the Society, I want to thank everyone reading this message for caring about the native plants of our beautiful Commonwealth and for the support you give to the Kentucky Native Plant Society, thank you.
If you would like to get more involved with the activities of the Society or if you have any questions about KNPS or the native plants of Kentucky, please send us an email at KYPlants@knps.org
Save the date for our 2022 Fall Meeting at Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park on Saturday, October 15th. There will be a meeting in the morning from 10am-noon with interesting talks and updates from KNPS, and hikes in the afternoon to look at some of the plants and communities that occur at the state park. The fall meeting will be held in tandem with the Short’s Goldenrod Festival being put on by the state park.
Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park is known as one of the only locations in the world where the rare Short’s goldenrod occurs, with the other known population occurring in Indiana. Short’s goldenrod is a perennial herb that grows in glades, along old bison traces, in old fields, and on rock cuts along roads. It has typical yellow goldenrod flowers and hairless foliage. It blooms from mid-August to late October, so it will be in full bloom for all to see at the fall meeting. Other potential flowers of note to see will be Agueweed (Gentianella occidentalis), Cream Gentian (Gentiana alba), and Great Plains Ladies’-tresses (Spiranthes magnicamporum).
Stay posted for next month’s Lady Slipper for more details!
