Photo by D. Sillman
(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog … My yard part 3
Continuing with the ”intended components” of our yard. These are the plants we purchased from the High Plains Environmental Center (Loveland, Colorado) and ones that we grew from seed that we obtained through the Audubon Society of the Rocky’s “Habitat Hero” program. All of these plants are growing in our “planting rings” and all of them are drought-resistant, Colorado-native species that are important in the dryland ecosystems around us!
Butterfly weed and black-eyed Susans. Photo by D. Sillman
Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa): Butterfly weed is type of milkweed. Its bright orange flowers produce large amounts of nectar which in turn attract large numbers of butterflies. The primary pollinators of this plant, though, are bees and wasps which are also seen in great swarms around the flowers. Butterfly weed grows in prairies, open woodlands, rocky canyons and hillsides. Like all of the plants listed here, it is extremely drought tolerant and requires little care or watering to grow and thrive.
Photo by E. Hunt, Wikimedia Commons
Blue Wild Indigo (Baptisia australis): Blue wild indigo, according to most references, is found in prairies, woodlands and stream sides all across the eastern portion of North America up to western sections of Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. The High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, Colorado (where we purchased our blue wild indigo plants), though, includes it in its local “native plants” inventory, so its western boundary must have stretched out into Northern Colorado in recent years. It is a perennial that reproduces by seed and via sprouting from its extensive rhizome. Seed production in the wild is quite compromised because of the impact of a seed-eating, parasitic weevil. It is a bushy, robust perennial that makes abundant, blue-purple, pea-like flowers on vertical spikes. The flowers are a rich nectar source for a wide array of bumblebees, butterflies, and many other pollinators. As its flowers indicate, it is a member of the pea family and, so, is capable of symbiotic nitrogen fixation via its root nodular bacteria. Its dense root system off of its extensive underground rhizome helps to make it extremely drought tolerant. Many caterpillars feed on the leaves and stems of blue wild indigo including the clouded sulphur, orange sulphur, eastern tailed-blue, and the wild indigo duskywing.
Photo by D. Sillman
Blue Flax (Linum lewisii): Blue flax is also called “prairie flax” and it is a common component of prairies and steppes all across the western two-thirds of North America (from subarctic Canada down into northern Mexico). It is an extremely drought resistant, shrub-like perennial whose two foot tall stems are covered with needle-shaped leaves and abundant one inch, pale, five petaled, blue flowers. The plant drops its mature flowers each day by early afternoon and then unfolds a new set of flowers at sunrise the next day. Native bees are especially attracted to these flowers for their nectar and pollen along with a wide variety of other pollinators (especially flies). The entire plant can be eaten by grazing/browsing animals (especially deer, proghorns and elk) in spite of the presence of compounds that
Close up of blue flax. Photo by D. Sillman
can be converted into cyanides by rumen and gut microorganisms. Seeds produced by blue flax are eaten, especially in the winter, by a variety of birds (including sage grouse). Ground squirrels and chipmunks, however, seem to avoid eating flax seeds while deer mice readily consume them (it makes up to 16% of their ingested food).
Black-Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta): Black-eyed Susans are native to the eastern and central portions of North America but have been extensively naturalized all across the continent. They are found in all of the lower 48 states and in 10 provinces of Canada. Growing primarily in meadows and prairies. This bi-annual plant (it flowers in its second year of growth) forms its distinctive yellow-petaled/black to brown centered flowers on top of stems that grow one to three feet high. The flowers last a very long time and are an important nectar source for butterflies and other pollinators. A number of lepidopteran caterpillars develop on the foliage of black-eyed Susans (including the bordered patch, the gorgone checkerspot and the silvery checkerspot). Seeds in the old flowerheads are an important fall food source for birds.
Prickly pear and yucca. Photo by D. Sillman
Plains Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia polycanthus): I felt that it was essential to have a patch of prickly pear cactuses growing in our dry-steppe front yard! They are one of the truly emblematic plants of the dry ecosystems of the West! Plains prickly pear is the most widely distributed cactus in North America. It is found in the deserts of West Texas all the way over to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the central and western Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. One of the reasons that plains prickly pear is so widespread is its ability to tolerate freezing temperatures and prolonged winters. In the winter the aboveground paddles dehydrate in order to protect the plant’s tissues from freeze damage. They then lay flattened, discolored and deflated on the ground (see Signs of Winter 9, February 17, 2022 for a discussion on the overwintering physiology of prickly pear cactuses).
Prickly pear in flower, June 2022. Photo by D. Sillman
Prickly pear cactuses grow in clumps of spiny, six-inch-long pads and may form a paddle mass that stands up to two feet tall. The pads are actually flattened, expanded stems that are designed to store moisture and the covering cactus spines arise from structures that in other plants make leaves. A pad may last for up to ten years and a stem may make a new pad every year, so there is a significant rate of growth in these prickly pear patches. New pads are able to grow roots down into the soil and thus stabilize the expanding cactus patch. Flowers form at the top of the paddles in early summer and produce abundant nectar for a variety of pollinating insects. The actual pollination of the prickly pear flowers, though, is mostly carried out by beetles. The fruit formed from these pollinated flowers are eaten by many animals. Coyotes (which, unfortunately, we don’t have in our front yard ecosystem!) are said to be extremely fond of these sweet cactus fruits.
Photo by D. Sillman
Yucca (Yucca species):There are 49 species (and 24 subspecies) within the genus Yucca. One of the great, and historically evocative common names that actually appended to several of these species is “Spanish bayonet.” Yuccas are shrub to tree-sized, evergreen perennials that have a rosette (“circle”) of tough, sword-shaped leaves growing up from its base and tall, branching white flowers masses that then project up out of the rosette mass. They are found throughout Mexico and up into the southwestern and dry central states of the United States all the way to southern Alberta (Canada). They also extend along the coastal woodlands and beaches of the Gulf Coast states up around Florida to the dry, coastal habitats of the southern Atlantic states.
The pollination of yucca flowers is carried out by specialized lepidopterans called “yucca moths.” (a species of either a Tegeticula or Parategeticula moth). The female yucca moth when it transfers pollen to the yucca flower also lays one of its eggs in the flower. The developing larvae then eats most (but not all!) of the yucca seeds leaving sufficient seeds for the perpetuation of the yucca plant. Yucca plants also serve as a food and development site for several other types of lepidopteran species.
In the dry prairies and steppes of Colorado, yucca is often one of the only green plants see on a winter hike! Its evergreen nature really stands out against the overwhelming browns and grays of the High Plains winter!
(Next week: the unintended plants of our yard!)