#narrow-leaved tick-trefoil | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vandaliatraveler · 8 months

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Despite its undignified name, Muddy Creek is a lovely mountain stream that normally runs fast and clear on its steep descent to Cheat River. But after a week of heavy rain in NC-WV, the stream looked a bit murky yesterday. Not even the sediment washing away from the mountains dims its beauty in my eyes. And the enchanting, moss-encrusted forest along its bank holds its own late summer treasures.

From top: great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica), which pairs beautifully with cardinal flower to provide late summer color in a native wildflower garden; white wood aster (Eurybia divaricata), which is the most common of the shade-loving white asters in this area; crooked-stemmed aster (Symphyotrichum prenanthoides), also known as zigzag aster, whose clasping, spatula-shaped leaves distinguish it from big-leaf aster, another woods-loving aster with lavender flowers; blue-stemmed goldenrod (Solidago caesia), whose spreading, yellow-flowered stems provide stunning late-season color in a native wildflower garden; an intensely-green collage of moss, woodland stonecrop (Sedum ternatum), Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) and heartleaf foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia), which I am trying hard to reproduce in my own native wildflower shade garden; the shaggy-maned stem of Coker's Amanita (Amanita cokeri), one of the most impressive mushrooms of Appalachia's summer forests; beech-drops (Epifagus virginiana), a parasitic plant that grows and subsists on beach tree roots; the bright red berries of false Solomon's seal (Maianthemum racemosum); yellow jewelweed (Impatiens pallida), whose explosive seed pods give the plant its other common name, pale touch-me-not; and narrow-leaved tick-trefoil (Desmodium paniculatum), also known as panicled tick-trefoil, a late summer pea whose sticky seed pods commonly hitch rides on shoes and boots.