Backyard Nature: Weed or wildflower? Birds, bees and butterflies know the answer

by Marjorie Rachlin

Wildflower or weed? That can be in the eye of the beholder, but “weed” is gradually disappearing from the lexicon as we recognize that many wild plants are native to the area, and play a critical part in the ecosystem. In many cases, humans have also found ways to cultivate and use them – usually to eat or for medicinal purposes.

You’ll find some prime examples among the flowers of summer.

Swamp milkweed

Swamp milkweed with monarch butterfly

In early August this lovely native pink milkweed blooms on a slope in Rock Creek Park near Military and Glover Roads. It is a favorite of bees, monarch butterflies and swallowtail butterflies, all of them seeking nectar and pollinating as they get it. In a few weeks the plant will have sturdy green pods, ripening with downy seeds.

Milkweeds are a critical plant for monarch butterflies. Like many butterflies, its caterpillar is fussy and eats only one food plant. Modern farming has cut the habitat for these milkweeds, and it is one factor in the falling population of monarchs.

This orange milkweed was photographed at the Broad Branch stream restoration. Like all the milkweeds, it is an important monarch host.

It also makes a good garden flower for hot dry places, and nurseries have been selling it for some years. I grow it on my tree lawn because I like that vivid orange.

Thistle

This thistle with the purple flower and the bursting seed pods is a native plant that grows in the Broad Branch stream restoration area. Look at the bulging area beneath the flower, and you can see its relation to the artichoke (cardoon), a distant cousin.

Thistles may look nasty and prickly and weedy, but they are rated among the ten best plants for nectar. This nectar bounty is so important to bees and butterflies that experts are urging farmers to let them grow. As you can see in the photo, this thistle’s seeds are ripe now, each one with a thistledown parachute to carry it away on the wind.

Thistles make hundreds, perhaps thousands of seeds, because wind dispersal is a hit-or-miss project. Most of the parachutes will not land in a place they can germinate. (Dandelions and milkweed produce hundreds of similar wispy parachutes for the same reason.)

Just before we snapped this photo, a pair of goldfinches were busy eating the seeds. Thistle seeds are a must in your winter feeders if you want to attract goldfinches.

River oats

This time of year I look for river oats to make bouquets. I admire its graceful stems and flat seedheads. It is a grass, like many of today’s grains, although not a true oat. Grasses like these were domesticated by the Mesopotamians several thousand years ago, and one grass (emmer) is thought to have eventually become the wheat we grow today.

In the Washington area you can find our native river oats along woodland edges, the Potomac River and at the Nature Center garden in Rock Creek Park. The indigenous people here probably harvested it for its nutritious seeds.

Bergamot

Native lavender bergamot at the Rock Creek Nature Center

This lavender flower probably looks familiar – along with a red species it has become a common garden plant. It is a favorite of hummingbirds.

Bergamot is a native member of the mint family, and its aromatic leaves have a spicy oil that has been used for medicinal purposes in many countries over the ages. The National Conservation Resource Center of the USDA lists eleven different Indian tribes that used bergamot for an astounding variety of purposes. Leaves and stems were used as a poultice for skin wounds, chewed for dental pains, boiled or crushed for stomach gas, applied for headaches, colds and fever. Indians also used it as a flavoring in cooking.

Bergamot is a source for a chemical called “thymol,” which is found in many commercial mouthwashes today.

Joe Pye weed

Nectaring on this Joe Pye weed blossom are two yellow swallowtail butterflies (above and below the sign) and a little yellow butterfly (to the left of the sign). This plant is a native all over the U.S., but you can see this one behind the Rock Creek Nature Center.

Like all aromatic plants, Joe Pye weed was used as an herbal remedy for many ailments by the indigenous peoples and early settlers. The name comes from an American Indian healer named Joe Pye (actually Jopi) in Massachusetts in the 1740s.

Fall arrivals

There are a lot more “pretty” weeds out there now – grasses, Queen Anne’s lace, fleabane, mallow and small-flowered sunflower species. As we get into September, we will see goldenrod, ironweed and purple asters, all natives.

And while you are looking, watch out for dragonflies flying over the grassy slopes around Pierce Mill and in the Rock Creek Park meadow near Military and Glover Roads. Forest Hills offers a surprisingly diverse plant and animal life to the interested observer.

This article is adapted from a August 2019 article by the late Marjorie Rachlin. Marlene Berlin, Sarah Conezio and Georgia Telmo provided the photos.