FIELDS OF GOLD AND A BAD NEWS BEAR

FIELDS OF GOLD

...COREOPSIS

MEADOW RUE

SWEET CICELY...

ALONG THE ROADSIDE

BAD NEWS BEAR

Monday, 8:00 AM.  57 degrees F, wind NW, calm.  The humidity is 75%, and the sky is clear except for some haze.  The barometer predicts partly cloudy skies.  We are going to Duluth today, I don’t know if the flood damage will be apparent or not.
     The apple orchard fields are robed in gold now with tickseed, Coreopsis tinctoria, in the sunflower family.  There must be hundreds of thousands of them.  Their ultimate source might be native or they may have escaped years ago from area flower farms and reseeded themselves..  In either case they are a fine sight.  Their common name refers to the seed capsules, which are “stick-tights,” and the species name refers to its ancient use as a dye plant.
    Tall meadow rue, Thalictrum  dasycarpum, in the buttercup family, is growing in abundance along Hwy. 13  between the Onion and Sioux rivers.  It is an attractive but rather subdued wildflower.
    Sweet Cicely, I believe this one is Osmorhiza chilensis, in the parsley family, is blooming now along Hwy. 13 between Bayfield and Washburn.  It is a rather tall but delicate plant in flower, with a rather sweet, faintly anise scent. 
    Growing along with it and easily mistaken for it from a moving vehicle are white-flowered yarrow plants.  I am not sure whether these are a native species or escapees of the much cultivated Achillea millifolium, as it is a very mixed up and difficult genus, but I will guess them to be the native A. borealis.  In any case Achillea species have long been associated with wound healing, that property supposedly discovered by the Greek warrior Achilles. I have put a compress of the leaves on cuts and it seems to work.  
    I am disgusted with our resident bear, who destroyed one of my Juneberry street trees Saturday night on Tenth Street, just to get at a few berries.  He is a bad news bear and obviously needs a lesson in sustainable urban forestry, or perhaps a butt full of birdshot.