Native Plants That Ramble

Naturally Natives

Plants that Ramble

by Scott Woodbury

Milkweed’s fluffy seeds can drift for hundreds of miles.

Missouri Wildflowers Nursery

9814 Pleasant Hill Rd Jefferson City MO 65109 www.mowildflowers.net mowldflrs@socket.net

573-496-3492

Meet us at one of these locations in the St. Louis area. Give us your order by Tuesday before a sale, and we will bring it to the location.

Kirkwood Farmer’s Market, 150 East Argonne Dr. Kirkwood MO 63122. Give us your order in advance or pick from the selection at the market. April 2, 9, 16, 23, 30; May 21, 28; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Shaw Nature Reserve, 307 Pinetum Loop Rd Gray Summit, MO 63039. Event: “Spring Wildflower Market;” General Public: Free admission. May 7, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Members preview sale: Friday, May 6, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Shopping at our Brazito (Jefferson City) location: Our retail “store” (outdoor sales area) is open for you to make selections. You can also send a pre-order and pick it up at the nursery. Open 9 to 5 Monday through Saturday, noon to 5 Sunday. We can ship your order! We ship plants on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays all year. UPS usually delivers the next day to Missouri and the surrounding states. Shipping charges apply. Long-distance dispersal is how species migrate long distances, maintain genetic variability, and will potentially adapt to climate change. This is why frogs hop like crazy on rainy days in summer: to mate with distant frogs and hopefully keep a healthy and diverse bloodline going. This is why male black bears and timber rattlesnakes wander far from the den in summer. Occasionally, unusually long-distance dispersals take place, including a bald eagle that got caught up in a storm over the Atlantic and came down in Scotland, and a Chinese duck that flew all the way to the West Coast of North America. Who knows what hitchhiking seeds they may have carried with them to distant lands. Coconuts float across oceans, and with luck, sprout on a faraway island. In the short run, the chances for successful dispersal (in rare cases) might appear slim, but over geologic time (thousands of years), the chance for success becomes more plausible. That said, common dispersal happens all the time and close to home.

Along Ozark rivers, wild gourds, with fruits that resemble large bobbers, can float for hundreds of miles when the waters rise. I’ve seen them floating into West Valley at Shaw Nature Reserve on rising spring floodwaters. Native Americans used wild gourds as floats for fishing nets. Other native riparian (living near creeks and rivers) plants with floating or buoyant seeds include sedge, rush, iris, arrowhead, rose mallow, monkey flower, water plantain, and pipevine. The muddy floodwaters of autumn are a stew of silt, sand, mussel shells, river glass, and seeds that get deposited far away downstream. Milkweed, willow, aster, groundsel, goldenrod, and blazing star (most species in the Aster family) have fluffy seeds that can fly for hundreds of miles on a steady breeze. Willow seeds fluff out and take to the breeze in May. That’s why black willow (Salix nigra) quickly shows up in every ditch and pond. Milkweeds begin their aerial journey in late summer and fall. It is not uncommon to see

Tips and Resources for Growing and Landscaping with Sustainable Native Plants

The tiny fruits of our native gourd Cucurbita pepo var. ozarkana can float for hundreds of miles to a new home downstream. them floating in the breeze at the same time that monarch butterflies begin their migration south. Candles in the wind. My favorite examples of dispersal are tumbleweeds. You know, the ones that appear in old westerns. A drive through Kansas or

Colorado reveals how they roll and bounce across the Great Plains during the dry season, until they get caught by a fence. We have tumbleweeds here in the lower Midwest. You don’t typically see them on highways, but you may see them rambling

Robert Weaver A dried Baptisia australis can snap off and tumble through the landscape, dropping seeds from dried pods as it goes. across the backyard, or an ancient wild prairie remnant, where they are free to travel long distances, with the assistance of strong winds. Our local tumbleweeds are blue (Baptisia australis) and white wild indigo (Baptisia alba). Yellow wild indigo (Baptisia sphaerocarpa) is less common in the wild, but more common in gardens. They begin tumbling in late November or December when the base of the main stalk rots off neatly at ground level. At this point, the mass of dead plant stems, leaves, and viable seeds in black pods is as wide as it is tall and is the shape and weight of a beach ball. You can imagine how fast and far a beach ball can travel, bouncing over a wide-open prairie. They eventually run into a fence or a woodland edge where they come to rest, until the wind changes direction! Wild indigos carry their seed in pods that are tightly held at first, but when they dry out and start bouncing over the ground, seeds fall out along the way: long-distance dispersal. They often also carry weevils that like to eat wild indigo seeds— dispersal of two species, all for the price of one.

So in your garden, don’t cut that stalk. Wait for the first winds of winter to jostle your indigos free. And when they hit the other side of the garden, wait for them to go the other way the next time the wind picks up in the other direction. Who knew how much fun could be had with tumbleweeds in the confines of a tiny urban yard. Happy gardening ya’ll.

In all things of nature there is something of the

~ ARISTOTLE

Horticulturist Scott Woodbury is the Curator of the Whitmire Wildflower Garden at Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit, MO, where he has worked with native plant propagation, design, and education for 30 years. He also is an advisor to the Missouri Prairie Foundation’s Grow Native! program.

OPEN MONDAY - SATURDAY | 8 AM - 5 PM