Stockbridge Mtn, Harriman State Park (05/18/19)

[youngkapcho]

Dwarf Ginseng

Dwarf ginseng is a member of the Araliaceae (Ginseng) family. This family contains trees, shrubs, vines or herbs with sometimes simple but usually compound leaves, and small flowers in umbels or head-like clusters. Flowers of dwarf ginseng are tiny (about two millimeters wide), dull white umbels rising from a whorl of three compound leaves. In botanical Latin trifolius means "three leaves". It flowers from April to June followed by yellowish, clustered berries in July to August. The plant reaches 10 to 20 centimeters in height (4 to 8 inches).

Dwarf ginseng is found in moist woods and damp clearings from Ontario, Canada east to Nova Scotia, south to Georgia and northwest to Kentucky, Indiana, and Minnesota. It looks like a small version of American ginseng (P. quinquefolius), but can be distinguished by its three nearly sessile leaflets versus the five, stalked leaflets of American ginseng.

American Indians used tea of the whole plant for colic, indigestion, gout, hepatitis, hives, rheumatism, and tuberculosis. The root was chewed for headaches, shortness of breath, fainting, and nervous debility. Its distinctive tubers can be eaten raw or boiled.

Aster

Blueberries

Wild Strawberry

Yellow Star Grass

Hypoxis is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Hypoxidaceae. The genus has an "almost cosmopolitan" distribution, occurring in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Australia.^[2] Europe lacks native species.^[3] Most species are in the Southern Hemisphere, especially in southern Africa.^[4] Common names for the genus include star-grass,^[4] star lily, yellow stars, African potato,^[2] and stars.^[5] The genus is the largest of the Hypoxidaceae family^[6][7] and has its centre of variation in South Africa,^[6][8][9] where it occurs in open undisturbed grasslands.^[8] The name Hypoxis was taken over by Linnaeus in 1759 from a name coined by Paul Reneaulme in 1611 for a superficially similar species of Gagea and meaning "a little sour", referring to the taste of that plant's leaves.^[10][11]

Description[edit]

These plants are perennial herbs with corms or rhizomes. Some have tubers. The aboveground herbage is a layered cluster of lance-shaped, linear, or hairlike leaves, sometimes sheathed together at the bases. The blades are usually at least slightly hairy. The flowers are borne on a short, stemlike scape in a raceme or umbel arrangement, or sometimes singly. The flower has six yellow tepals which may be hairy, especially on the undersides. The undersides may also be whitish or tinged green or red. Occasional flowers have 4 or 8 tepals. The fruit is a capsule with a few to many small, oily seeds.^[2][4][5]

The seeds are needed to identify many species. Most have seeds less than 2 millimeters long, so microscopic examination is required.^[12]

Uses[edit]

Hypoxis plants have long played a role in traditional African medicine; H. hemerocallidea and H. colchicifolia are the best known species used to make medicine and teas. The genus is not only used in traditional medicine, it has become important also in pharmaceutical preparations.^[13]

False Solomon's Seal

Starflower

Trientalis borealis, synonym Lysimachia borealis,^[1] also known as the starflower,^[2] is a North American woodland perennial that blooms between May and June. Starflowers are creeping rhizomes with 8 inch (20 cm) vertical stalks. Each stalk has a whorl of 5-9 lanceolate leaves at its tip, with one or two white flowers on smaller stalks extending from the center of the whorl. The flowers are about 0.5 inches (11 mm) across and consist of five to nine petals that form a star-like shape.^[3]

Trientalis borealis is listed as endangered by Georgia and Kentucky and is listed as threatened by Illinois and Tennessee.^[4]

Dandelions

Blue Violets

Azalea

Patridge berries

Garlic Mustard

Spotted Wintergreen

Yellow Star Grass

Wild Strawberries

Columbines

Aquilegia (common names: granny's bonnet^[1], columbine) is a genus of about 60–70 species^[2] of perennial plants that are found in meadows, woodlands, and at higher altitudes throughout the Northern Hemisphere, known for the spurred petals ^[3] of their flowers. 

Description[edit]

The leaves of this plant are compound and the flowers contain five sepals, five petals and five pistils. The fruit is a follicle which holds many seeds and is formed at the end of the pistils. Underneath the flower are spurs which contain nectar, mainly consumed by long-beaked birds such as hummingbirds.^[5]

Insects[edit]

They are used as food plants by some Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) caterpillars. These are mainly of noctuid moths – noted for feeding on many poisonous plants without harm – such as cabbage moth (Mamestra brassicae), dot moth (Melanchra persicariae) and mouse moth (Amphipyra tragopoginis). the engrailed (Ectropis crepuscularia), a geometer moth, also uses columbine as a larval food plant. The larvae of the Papaipema leucostigma also feed on columbine.^[7]

Plants in the genus Aquilegia are a major food source for Bombus hortorum, a species of bumblebee. Specifically, they have been found to forage on species of Aquilegia vulgaris in Belgium and Aquilegia chrysantha in North America and Belgium. The bees do not show any preference in color of the flowers.^[8]

Uses[edit]

Double-flowered Aquilegia × hybrida

The flowers of various species of columbine were consumed in moderation by Native Americans as a condiment with other fresh greens, and are reported to be very sweet, and safe if consumed in small quantities. The plant's seeds and roots are highly poisonous however, and contain cardiogenic toxins which cause both severe gastroenteritis and heart palpitations if consumed as food. Native Americans used very small amounts of Aquilegia root as a treatment for ulcers.^{[citation needed]} However, the medical use of this plant is better avoided due to its high toxicity; columbine poisonings may be fatal.^[6]

An acute toxicity test in mice has demonstrated that ethanol extract mixed with isocytisoside, the main flavonoid compound from the leaves and stems of Aquilegia vulgaris, can be classified as non-toxic, since a dose of 3000 mg/kg did not cause mortality.^{[citation needed]}

Culture[edit]

The Colorado blue columbine (A. coerulea) is the official state flower of Colorado (see also Columbine, Colorado).

Evolution[edit]

Columbines have been important in the study of evolution. It was found that the Sierra columbine (A. pubescens) and crimson columbine (A. formosa) each has adapted specifically to a pollinator. Bees and hummingbirds are the visitors to A. formosa, while hawkmoths would only visit A. pubescens when given a choice. Such a "pollination syndrome", being due to flower color and orientation controlled by their genetics, ensures reproductive isolation and can be a cause of speciation.^[21]

Aquilegia petals show an enormous range of petal spur length diversity ranging from a centimeter to the 15 cm spurs of Aquilegia longissima. Selection from pollinator shifts is suggested to have driven these changes in nectar spur length.^[22] It was shown that this spur length diversity is achieved solely through changing cell shape, not cell number or cell size. This suggests that a simple microscopic change can result in a dramatic evolutionarily relevant morphological change.^[3]

Blue Violet

Buttercup

Wild Geranium

Common Periwinkle

Rambling Blackberries

Mock Oranges