The Blueys are Blooming…again.

When the North American Native Plant Society asked me to write about a plant for the cover of their newsletter, I picked “the Blueys,” one of my favorite urban wildflowers, and one of the toughest. It blooms all summer in trash alleys, ditches, cracks in the asphalt, and this morning, at a telephone pole.

Thanks to recent rains, the Blueys are having their fall revival, so it’s time to share the article here at SidewalkNature. Irene Fedun, editor of the Blazing Star kindly gave permission to reprint a version below.

First, here’s a screenshot to show the artwork by Beatrice Paterson:

And here’s an audio clip in case you’d rather listen to the whole thing:

Who can resist a true blue flower? As blue as a bluebird wing, as blue as a summer sky, bluer than any local butterfly?

In Nashville, we’ve got several species of native, blue flowers, but most lean toward violet or lavender. Even a smidge of pink can nudge blue to not-truly-blue. True blue is rare.

Whitemouth dayflower is true blue. In books, it’s also known as Slender dayflower and Widow’s tears, but none of these names reference what’s so striking about the plant – the clear, bright, beautiful blue – so at our house, it is known as the Blueys: as in “Hey, the Blueys are blooming, come and see.”

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Fall Author Events and a butterfly update

Below, I’m listing local events where I plant to speak or share or both. The first one is this Saturday (Sept 27) at the Hendersonville Public Library.
But first, an update from this month’s Native Nature Share:

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Cottonwood petiole gall

Underneath Cottonwood trees right now, you might find leftover leaves. They tell a story. A strange story.

It’s the story of a particularly interesting aphid. Virgin birth! Live birth! Eggs! Wings! No wings! Sexual! Asexual! Above ground! Below ground! Sucking mouthparts! No mouth at all!
These aphids do it all.

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Secret Sidewalk: eight late-November wonders

As fall drifts toward winter, nature doesn’t slow down, not really. Amazing things happen all around us, all the time. This site’s tagline: “Everyday wonders in everyday habitat loss” includes not just “natural” areas, but our own yards, trash alleys, parking lots, roadsides. For example, our Secret Sidewalk …

The Secret Sidewalk is a shortcut through 3 neighborhood blocks, but rather than running along a street, it runs between homes. It’s a 5-foot-wide Metro right-of-way flanked by property lines, and it feels intimate, despite crossing four roads, and despite tall privacy fences. It takes walkers past a mix of cultivated and wild. Exotics, natives, volunteers, invasives: all here. Signs of the season change daily.

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Classroom Butterflies

“Butterflies for Science?” was the invitation I emailed my friend.
“YES!” she answered, “I want butterflies for my classroom. How do we do it?”

Here’s how we DON’T do it:
No kits of generic caterpillars mailed 2nd Day Air with tubs of larval food paste (a “proprietary mixture of vitamins, proteins, and fats”).
No butterflies released into the wild without regard to the calendar or what plants are outside.*

Our butterflies are a name brand! The Gulf Fritillary.
Our caterpillar food is the real thing, the ONLY thing: this butterfly’s particular larval host plant. There would be no new Gulf Fritillaries without it.

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Leaf Rescue

Today’s Sidewalk Nature: Leaf Rescue.

Before: leaves headed for storm grate.
During: leaves shoved into reused plastic bags.
After: leaves dumped onto my yard (for the pawpaw patch).

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Persimmon Predictor

Folklore says the inside of native persimmon seeds can predict winter weather.
Alas, Folklore doesn’t say *how* to slice the seeds, which can be tricky.
Look for the shape of the embryo (and future “seed leaves”):

Fork = mild
Spoon = snow
Knife = “cutting” cold

The method is as accurate as Woolly-bear caterpillar predictions, which is to say, not at all.
Both are fun, but with persimmons, you get to lick your fingers.

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Forbidden Fruit (the Sidewalk Fig story)

“Pick me!” says the fig hanging over the street.

Every morning, I resist the temptation to pluck a fig from a sidewalk tree. I walk before dawn, but the plump silhouette is clear against the brightening sky.

“Pick meee!”

I’ve watched this fig grow from the size of a chocolate chip to the size of a . . . fig. There are dozens on offer: stem-down, bottoms-up candy for strangers. But I keep walking. Someone might be looking out a window.

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