Lots of hedge-apple fruits on the ground

Hedge-apple fruit the size of a large grapefruit. Kids like the name monkey brains

Osage-orange, aka hedge-apple on the campus tree walk behind Gallahue Hall at Butler. See large green fruit on the top of the tree

It is thought mastodons and other large, now extinct mammals ate these fruits, helping to spread the trees around.  The three trees also are somewhat unusual in having separate male and female trees.

Legume fruits of Honey locust with a quarter and the tip of my shoe for scale

Honey locust tree in the Clowes Hall lot at Butler University with large fruits

Pretty but invasive Burning-bush

This has been a great year for some fall color.  Burning bush (Euonymous alatus) has been particularly spectacular.  I’ve seen some beautiful hedges as I’ve driven around town.  One near the Governor’s Mansion caught my eye this week.  Warning though – these shrubs are non-native and can be invasive.  There are many other better choices.  See my 10/18/12 post for more on good, colorful native shrubs for fall color.

Striking red shrub

Skull-like puffball

Puffballs are reportedly edible (warning: I never advocate eating anything from the wild unless you are an expert at identification) and I have tried them (my husband, Dr. Tom Dolan is a mycologist and identifies mushrooms for the Indiana Poison Control Center).  Puffballs are the consistency of tofu or mushy Styrofoam, but suck up flavor from sautéed butter.

The puffball is the “fruit” of a mushroom that spends most of its time as tiny filaments called mycelia that spread through the soil making a living as decomposers.  When conditions are right, they produce puffballs as fruiting bodies to disperse their spores.

Rain garden in Clowes Hall parking lot.

The new building followed building standards for LEED certification.  Among other “green features”, the parking lot has permeable pavement that allow rain to drain through it, along with rain gardens full of moisture-loving plant to further help with keeping storm water in place.

The rain gardens are in nice bloom now, with red spikes of Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)

Cardinal flower in bloom.

and nice contrasting inflorescences of blue mistflowers (Eupatorium coelestinum).

Mistflowers in bloom.

New parking lot at Butler University with pervious pavement. Rain collects on the impervious sections.

Goldenrod flowers

All through fields alongside the interstate, in the Butler Prairie and in my home garden.  The most common goldenrod in our area is tall or Canada goldenrod, Solidago canadensis. This native plant loves old fields and the edges of road and woods.  It is a showy yellow-flowered plant that is falsely maligned as a hay fever trigger.  Goldenrods are pollinated by insects.  The plants make heavy pollen that sticks to insects like bees that carry the pollen from plant to plant to carry out cross fertilization and pollination.  Plants like grasses and ragweed produce prolific amounts of pollen and rely on the wind to carry it from plant to plant.

Great bugs on goldenrod

They make flowers without colorful petals because it is not necessary to attract pollinators.  This method of vectoring pollen does result in the production of copious amounts that can end up in the noses of susceptible people, resulting in the allergic reaction referred to as hay fever.  Ragweed and goldenrod bloom at the same time of year, so folks attributed the cause of hay fever to the colorful plants they saw blooming.

I was contacted several years ago by a researcher who wondered if changes in pollen quality might be responsible for honey bee colony collapse.  He claimed goldenrod pollen is the primary food for many bees in the fall, and wondered if climate change may be affecting pollen protein levels.  We hoped to be able to collect pollen from herbarium specimens to compare pollen from 40 years ago with that from goldenrods growing today in the same location.  Unfortunately, the herbarium specimens did not contain enough pollen to test.

Blue-stemmed goldenrod from my garden. Smaller and tamer than Canada, bought at the INPAWS plant sale several years ago.

Canada goldenrod in my garden

Oakleaf Hydrangea

 Both cream-colored and pinkish petal varieties are available.  There is a nice stand of the pink form at the IndyGo office downtown. 

Oakleaf Hydrangea has a graceful branching pattern with interesting bark that peels off to reveal different hues of reddish and cinnamon-brownish layers.  The leaves turn reddish in the fall, adding more seasonal color.

Like the common purple/pink hydrangeas, you can dry the flowers and enjoy this plant in arrangements through the winter.

Sally and Harmon Weeks great recent book on shrubs and vines of Indiana* lists only one Hydrangea native to Indiana, Hydrangea arborescens, wild hydrangea.  I’ve seen it at Marrott Park Nature Preserve.  It has smaller, less conspicuous flowers than those used in horticulture, but you can recognize the basic floral theme as Hydrangea.

*Purdue University Press ISBN: 978-1-55753-610-5.  $45.00

Zigzag spiderwort in my neighbor’s sunny garden

Spiderworts (Tradescantia spp.) and Day-flowers (Commelina spp.) are the only members of the Commelinaceae, the Spiderwort family in the Indiana flora. They are all monocots, with parallel leaf veins and flowers made of three parts or multiples of three.

There are four species of Spiderwort in the state. The common name comes from the arrangement of the flowers on the ends of the inflorescences with bracts underneath that curve back like the legs of a spider. We have Glaucous spiderwort (Tradescantia ohioensis) in the Butler Prairie. Flowers are a brilliant florescent blue in early June, especially on cloudy days. I bought some at the INPAWS auction a few ago that reliably bloom in my sunny front garden.

Three petals and six stamens of Spiderwort

Virginia spiderwort (T. virginiana) and Zigzag spiderwort (T. subaspera) are found in woods. Virginia spiderwort blooms in late spring; Zigzag a little later in the summer. The fourth species in Indiana is a non-native found in the north.

Day-flowers with their wandering-Jew-like leaves.

Day-flowers get their name because they only last one day, opening in the morning and fading by day’s end. Ours in Marion County are Common Day flowers (Commelina communis), non-native but not fiercely invasive. I see them along the edges of the Butler Woods. The photos are from the front steps of the International School. The flowers are beautiful and delicate, with two pale blue petals and one white petal.

Delicate flowers of Day-flower

Last year’s leaves are a beautiful tan color

 This time of year is one of the best for seeing small American beech (Fagus grandifolia) trees in forests in Central Indiana. 

Beeches tend to keep their light tan colored leaves throughout the winter.  You can detect small trees in the woods as you drive along I-65 in southern Indiana or along US 31 to the north.  These small trees are a hopeful sign that beech is replacing itself.  On the Butler University campus we have lost several very large and very old trees in the last few years, trees we estimate to be over 300 years old.  Forty percent of Witness Trees identified in surveys conducted in Marion County in the 1820s were beech.  My recent surveys of forest remnants found less than 2 percent remaining, while there has been a great increase in sugar maple.  Sugar maple is thought to be on the increase in some areas due to fire suppression.  Lack of fire, a natural disturbance in presettlement forests, allows more sugar maples to establish and survive.  Sugar maple is easily killed by fire.  I have always wondered if loss of passenger pigeons affected seed dispersal and regeneration of beech.

A few tan leaves remain on the small beech tree in the center of the photo

Nice smooth gray bark of an American Beech tree with tan leaves still retained on the tree

Open-grown white oak tree on the Butler University campus

This time of year is a good time for noting individual trees in the landscape.  Their shape and growth form helps you know the history of a site.  Trees that grow in forests tend to have few outward extending lateral branches.  Open-grown trees, free from competition with other trees for light that occurs in forests, tend to have large lateral branches.  Some natural habitats, like savannas, are characterized by scattered open-grown trees.  In central Indiana, large open-grown trees are mostly found in yards and parks where they have been planted or in places where the woods around them was cleared a long time ago when they were small young trees.

Open-grown tree near Atherton Union that was part of the landscaping of Fairview Park

There are some classic open-growth architecture trees on the Butler University campus.  The campus was Fairview Park prior to Butler moving to the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood in the late 1920s.  A ring of oak trees partially surrounding Atherton Student Center are amazing examples of the open- grown form.  They must have been planted around the time Fairview Park was established at the turn of the 20^th century.

Evergreen trees in the landscaping at Butler University.

Another striking feature of the landscape this time of year is the presence of evergreens.  All conifers, cone-bearing trees, in Marion County have been planted, with the possible exception of Eastern red cedar, Juniperus Virginia, based on early records of the native flora.  All the winter color and wildlife cover they provide are the result of human efforts.

Fall color

A few weeks ago I could see the reddish-purple hue of green ash in the woods along roads and highways.  This lets you know how many trees are likely to succumb to the Emerald Ash Borer.  This week it seems the sugar maples are ablaze with red-orange.  Hackberries turn pale yellow-green; oaks a burnished russet or copper.

For more information on leaves and why they turn color check out our Herbarium website at www.butler.edu/herbarium.  We have a whole section on trees and the Butler tree walk.

Sugar maple branch

Two other fall items of note.  This seems to be a super year for fruit on redbuds.  I wrote about these small trees, members of the bean or legume family, in the spring. 

Redbud fruits are legumes, dry at maturity, splitting along 2 sides to release seeds

Following their nice floral display, now you can see the legume fruits, like small, dry beans, that hang from the branches.

A favorite shrub for fall color is chokeberry. 

Chokeberry

As nice a red as the nasty, invasive, non-native, popular landscaping ornamental burning-bush, it also produces tasty fruit for birds to eat throughout the winter.

Chokeberry fruits. Bitter compounds break down and may even ferment through the winter, making the berries more tasty to birds