Dried Flowers

Preserving Wildflowers

Do you remember finding petals in books as a child? My grandmother and mother filled the family Bible with flowers, often roses, pressed between the vellum of these old books. What a wonderful way to capture the memories of the year.

Pressing flowers is one method of drying and preserving them. This is how it is done in preparation for storage in herbaria and museums. Not all flowers press well aesthetically. Unless of course you want to pull the flower apart before pressing in order create your own artful displays on bookmarks or other two-dimensional papers.

A second method involves even less preparation. Bouquets of similar flowers can be gathered together and tied with twine of elastic and hung in ventilated dark spaces, upside down. These keeps the stems straight and the darkness keeps them from fading too quickly. I use a closet and clothes hangars to pin the smallish bouquets.

Ornamentals ideal for drying include the globe thistle, poppy seed heads, cornflowers, statice, lavender and love-lies-bleeding. Wildflowers that dry well include yarrow, pearly everlasting, broom, flax, sea lavender, reed canarygrass, cottongrass and horsetail. Later in the fall you can add holly and winterberry with their crimson berries for a splash of bright colour.

There are many more to try. Certainly that special bouquet of roses if hung before they reach their peak can be captured and preserved. I have some 5 year old displays that are still immaculate in form.

Yarrow, photo by Martin Thomas

Pearly Everlasting, photo by Martin Thomas

Sea Lavender, photo by Martin Thomas

horsetails, photo by Jamie Ellison

Canada holly berries, photo by Ross Hall

Fall Flowers

I am always a bit sad when the asters and goldenrods begin to dominate the roadsides. As pretty as they are, it also means the flowering season is grinding to the end. To be sure, there are many flowers appearing in fall, even our native witch hazel doesn’t begin to produce blooms until late September.

Late summer is also the time when haters start to hate on the goldenrods. While some folks may be allergic to those plants specifically, most hay fever sufferers are reacting to the innocuous ragweed. While pollens are produced by all flowering plant species, those dependent on wind, like grasses and ragweed, produce more of it. Goldenrod is pollinated by insects and produces less pollen.

Ragweed pollen if viewed under magnification, is armed with hooks or barbs. This ensures they attach to sensitive lungs, causing all those symptoms of hay-fever.

The Aster is the birthflower for September. It is a symbol of powerful love while the morning glory, another icon of September reflects merely affection. Aster stems from the Greek word for star as is asterisk (little star) and disaster (ill-starred). Some people call some of the aster species, Michaelmas Daisy. Its flowering coincides with the Feast of Saint Michael. Nova Scotia has several naturalized species and even more native asters which should provide us with a display until mid-October.


Ragweed photo by Martin Thomas
Aster lateriflorus photo by Martin Thomas

Canada Goldenrod, Solidago canadensis by Martin Thomas

Botanical Latin 101

The science of botany has probably more discipline-specific words of any of the natural history subdisciplines. There are more than 30 words for types of hairs alone. But the origin of some of the words used can be a whimsical study. Let’s consider two common word endings in English vernacular names, wort and bane. Wort examples include liverworts, mugwort, ragwort, and many more. Wort comes from the Old English wyrt, an herb, plant, vegetable or crop.

Bane is derived from Old English bana, which means poison, killer or killer of. We have cowbane, baneberry, dogbane, and fleabane. These are killers of dogs, cows and fleas. Baneberry, is poisonous to all who consume the berries.

This is not new, dear readers, this is a review from a previous post. It does reflect on the fanciful nature of our language. The scientific names of plants, are those which are recognized in the published literature as the valid names of a plant entity. A species has two names, so is binomial. The first name is that of the genus. It can reflect a discoverer, a place or an attribute of all species belonging. Usually, the name is converted to a Latin or Greek word. Some examples of genus names are Circaea, Lupinus and Vaccinium. Each plant family is made up of multiple genera (plural of genus) which includes those plants sharing certain characteristics. Each genus then has one or more species included. Circaea, refers to Enchanter’s Nightshade. It is from Greek mythology. Circe who was the goddess of magic; an enchantress well-versed in magic potions and herbs. Lupinus translates from the Latin to mean wolfish or wolf-like. The name of the wolf is lupus. Perhaps 14th century botanists believed the plants ravenously depleted the soil, a fallacy as they are nitrogen-fixers, adding to the soil.

Vaccinium, the genus containing the blueberry and cranberry, refers to a cow, perhaps the plants are associated the habitat of cows in the distant past, as the name was used in classical times to refer to the blueberry.

The species name also can describe the size, shape, colour of the plant: albiflora - white, flowered; repens - crawling or sprawling; virginiana - of Virginia or the eastern US. Species names are used in many genera, while a genus name is unique to a family and a group of species.

Tansy Ragwort, photo by Marian Munro

Fleabane, photo by Marian Munro

Circaea, enchanter's nightshade, photo by Eugene Quigley

Lupinus, photo by Andy Dean

Vaccinium, blueberry flowers, photo by Martin Thomas

Wild Berry Ice Cream Toppings

Given the warm temperatures we are enjoying, I think it's time to come clean. I have been guilty of hoarding....hoarding these recipes since last summer. If you love to wildcraft, consider gathering these berries for ice cream toppings. I know you won't be disappointed. There are more, many more...and I did sneak a drink or two in as well.

BERRY WILD SYRUPS for MILKSHAKES or SUNDAES

Foxberry Syrup

1 c. foxberries, ½ c. water, 1 c. sugar. Boil and cool. Good over icecream, pancakes, etc.

Wild Cherry Syrup

4 c. black or choke Cherries, ½ c. water. Boil, blend then strain. Return pureé (about 2/3 c.) to pot, add 2/3 c. water, 3/4 c. sugar and a couple of drops of almond flavouring. Reheat and stir until sugar dissolves. Cool and serve over cheesecake, ice cream or pancakes.

Bunchberry Syrup

4 c. bunchberries½ c. water.Boil and mash, sieve pulp. Return to pot and add 1/4 c. sugar, ½ tsp. Salt, 1 tsp. Cinnamon, 1 tbsp. Lemon juice and a sprinkle of nutmeg. Heat and serve hot with pork, or cold over ice cream.

Huckleberry Sauce

Heat 2 c. huckleberries with 1/4 c. water, and 1 c. sugar together until sugar is dissolved. Delicious on pancakes, ice cream or by the spoonful with unpleasant medicine!

Blackberry sauce

- same as for huckleberry sauce. Can strain some or all, to remove seeds.

Sheep Sorrelade

Boil 5 cups of water and 1 cup of sugar and add 1pound of fresh leaves. Boil rapidly for a couple of minutes. Let steep for 2 hours before straining. Strain and chill another 2 hours. Mix with soda water and serve over ice.

As with all wildcrafting endeavours, follow the 5Ps to collecting: plant, part, place, preparation and proper. For a refresher, read my list here.

photo by Martin Thomas, Bunchberries

Foxberries, photo by Eugene Quigley

Huckleberry, Ross Hall

Sheep Sorrel photo by Martin Thomas

Looking for Volunteers for Citizen Scientist project

Many of you read the pieces I posted on pollinators this year.at 7:36 I am pumped after an inaugural meeting yesterday of our Pollinator Project. We gathered at Prescott House in Starrs Point, Kings County to discuss the fledging project. Dr. Ann Fraser of Kalamazoo College provided her knowledge on this type of monitoring activity. We have chosen three Nova Scotia Museum sites: Prescott House, Fishermans' Life Museum and Haliburton House to pilot and perfect our data collection. 

If you live near Wolfville, Windsor or Oyster Ponds, Nova Scotia staff would like you to consider joining us as volunteer pollinator observers. The time commitment is only 2 hours twice a month, at most, from April to October.

We provide all training and reading materials. You provide a willingness to learn and to contribute your observations to a North American-wide initiative to record images and data on our native bees using Citizen Scientists.

For more information, please read this guide: http://www.xerces.org/download/pdf/PA_Xerces%20Guide.pdf

Your duties can begin in the remaining weeks of 2015, or for the growing season of 2016. Please contact me here by expressing your interest, or email me: Marian.Munro@novascotia.ca

from beneficialbugs.org

Kissing Cousins, or Not!

Most of us understand that gardening with plants native elsewhere can have an impact on nearby lands not under cultivation. Two commonly planted root vegetables, the parsnip and the carrot have naturalized in Nova Scotia, reverting to an ancestral state over the generations since they have been first introduced to the continent. They commonly grace our roadsides and fields with their lacy umbels of flowers, one white and the other yellow. The  wild carrot is also called Queen Anne’s Lace. The flower umbels are creamy white. If you look closely, you will often see a single purple flower amidst the white ones. The leaves are fernlike and much divided. Flowers are carried atop a somewhat softly hairy stem. If the plant is dug, its root has a strong scent of carrot, but is probably not palatable.

Wild Parsnip seems to becoming more prevalent in roadsides, vacant lots and in fields. Its flower umbels are yellow and the leaves are pinnately divided (resembling a feather), as well as lobed. A more robust plant than wild carrot, Wild Parsnip should not be handled. All parts of the plant may cause contact dermatitis, resulting in painful blisters. Subsequent exposure to sunlight can result in photosensitivity, with a return to skin lesions, the effects of which resemble those of other cousins, the hogweeds.

For more information on wild parsnip, hogweeds and their look-alikes, visithttp://www.invadingspecies.com/invaders/plants-terrestrial/wild-parsnip/ Also please see the video I posted from an interview conducted by CBC National. https://www.facebook.com/thenational/videos/vb.62680227685/10153038665722686/?type=2&theater

Wild Carrot, photo by Martin Thomas

Wild Parsnip, photo by Martin Thomas

August flowers

August flowers

Published by Marian Munro · August 6, 2015 at 8:00am

August births are blessed with the majestic and colourful gladiolus. Glads are also called Sword Lily, a throw-back to the ancient Roman gladiators, where the winner was buried under gladioli by cheering onlookers. In fact, its Latin name, gladiolus, means ‘sword’.

Giving the flowers imbue the feeling of remembrance, calm, integrity and even infatuation, as the sword pierces the recipient’s heart with love.  These plants with their single-sides spikes of brightly hued flowers have been under cultivation since 1800, once they were discovered in their native Africa.

Their colours range from white, pink, red, yellow and orange and various variegated choices, a result of many years of plant breeding.

Glads, by Carlos Sathler and found on Pinterest