116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
A favorite for each season
Wild Side column: Plants can offer beauty, life and a little shade from summer’s sun
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
My “favorite” plant, always a native perennial, varies with the seasons.
The dandelions in my lawn get the nod until their blooms turn to fluff, to be succeeded by white clover, both relished by the spring’s first pollinators, the bees.
By Memorial Day my wild rose plantation unfolds its delicate pink petals and fills the air with a subtle perfume that makes me want to stand downwind and makes bees want to bury their faces in the yellow pollen.
Rolling into summer, the milkweed I’ve planted and nurtured over the years begins to dominate the fringes of my garden, setting the table for the monarch butterfly larva that will devour their leaves.
The butterfly weed with its orange flowers is the prettiest. The homely blooms of the hardy common milkweed smell the best. My favorite is the swamp milkweed, not just because of its slender leaves, modest flowers and elegant seed pods, but mainly because the monarchs will flit past the common and butterfly species to lay their eggs on the swamp.
My midsummer favorite, my 8-foot-tall cup plant, with its hundreds of yellow blossoms, provides a feast for my eyes and a nectar and pollen feast for bees, butterflies and beetles. If the nectar doesn’t slake their thirst, they can sip from the water that collects in the hollows where leaves meet stems — the cups from which their name derives.
At summer’s end, the fiery spikes of the cardinal flower — named for the rich red color of the robes of Catholic prelates — light up secluded river banks, attracting hummingbirds and wayward anglers.
As I write this on Wednesday in longhand on paper, I’m sitting in the shade of my all-time, 365-days-a-year favorite plant, the ancient and burly bur oak that towers over my garden.
A keystone species in ecosystems, the bur oak provides food and shelter for birds, mammals and hundreds of insect species.
Mine is a squirrel condominium, whose residents never tire of scolding me for sitting in their patio.
For the people who live among them, bur oaks provide summer shade and four-seasons beauty.
With their corky bark, sturdy limbs and longevity, they are a symbol of strength and permanence on the landscape.
Like its most ardent, tree-hugging admirer, however, mine is in decline, losing branches and vigor with each passing year.
I hope it outlasts me, but if it doesn’t, its offspring will be there for mine.
Daily Newsletters