In the Yellow Palette

 

Back in Minnesota, we had Indian paintbrushes—large showy paintbrushes with bright scarlet heads. We don’t have those fancy-schmancy paintbrushes here. Ours are mostly yellow; a few are orange. Some people call the orangey ones Indian paintbrushes, and they may be right about that name, but those are not the same paintbrushes Minnesotans call Indian paintbrushes.

This is not to say that the less showy paintbrushes of the Yukon aren’t perfectly nice. You can see how attractive they are in the photo from oldest son above. But they don’t say, “Hey look at me! Aren’t I spectacular?” the way those big red Minnesota paintbrushes do. 

I don’t know what is the correct common name for this variety of Yukon paintbrush. In defense of my uncertainty, I’ll tell you that there are over 200 species of paintbrushes and the majority of them grow in western North America. That’s a whole lot of species to keep straight, and if you’ve done any perusing of paintbrush photos, you know there might not be many visible differences among the various types of paintbrushes. And just to make things even more complicated, paintbrushes of the same species like to mix it up with their features in order to keep even an expert wildflower indentifier—like Judy K, for instance—on her toes. One plant of a particular paintbrush species will have a hairy stem, for example, while it’s supposedly identical twin living right next door will have a smooth, freshly shaven stem. Can you blame me for being confused?

Paintbrushes are members of the figwort family, and the colored tips that we admire aren’t really flowers at all, but  coloured leafish bits. (The term leafish bits is, of course, technical jargon.) Paintbrushes, then, are not flowers, but flower wannabes making a rather good show of it.  I shall give them an A for effort.

What you won’t see on their report card is a comment from the teacher saying  they play well with others. It’s not that paintbrushes don’t like being with others, but rather, that they like being with others a little too much. They are the clinging vines, or more precisely, the mosquitoes or lice of the plant world. That’s right: they are very pretty parasites. Paintbrushes attach their roots to the roots of nearby plants and suck nourishment from them, and they’ll die if you remove them from the life blood of their next-door neighbor. This means that if you decide you want paintbrushes in your wildflower garden, it’s a mistake to dig up a single plant for transplant. No, you must take the whole neighborhood with it so that the paintbrush has the plants it likes to parasitize living closeby.

I’ve transplanted paintbrushes and I knew enough to bring the surrounding grasses along, too. My paintbrushes did fine for a couple of years, but then died out. What I didn’t know is that it’s only once a whole colony of paintbrushes is established that you can count on natural reseeding to keep the colony going. With the number of plants I had—three or four altogether—I needed to help nature out a little by replanting every year if I wanted to keep paintbrushes in my garden. But all in all, given the complicated relationships paintbrushes thrive in, its probably best to leave them where they are and enjoy them there.

Previous wildflower posts: 

• Lavender Charm
• Into the Wild Blue
• The Blue Belles
• Stopping on Yellow
• Waving the White Flag
• Hot Pink
• Born to the Purple
  

Calling All Yukon Wildflower Experts

Okay, so you probably don’t need to be an expert to know this. You just have to know more than I do.

Now that you’re here, can you identify this for me? I’d like to add it into my last wildflower post of the season. Should you need a closer look (and I’m betting you won’t) you can click on the photo.

Born to the Purple

Next up in our Yukon wildflower tour is a dark lavender or blue-purple flower that’s blooming right now—the mountain larkspur if you’re Canadian, or sierra larkspur if you’re American, or delphinium glaucum if you want to show off your Latin. And those who know Latin might also  know that the name delphinium comes from the resemblance each flower has to a little leaping and swimming purple dolphin.

This particular type of larkspur (and there are many types of wild larkspur) is native in western North America from Alaska down through California and eastward as far as Alberta.  Yes, they dwell in the Rocky Mountains, and hence, you see, their common name.

 

Mountain larkspur is also found in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but there it is an introduced species, not an  not  indigenous one. And it’s a pity that some traveler carried it to the prairies, because this plant does a nasty number on cattle who eat too much of it. Unfortunately, in the spring on the grasslands, larkspur reaches grazing height before the surrounding natural grasses and a few cattle will be lost due to larkspur poisoning. This wildflower is toxic to other animals, like horses and sheep, but for reasons not well-understood, it is not as deadly for them as it is for cattle.

It’s because of it’s pernicious effect on grazing cattle that delphinium glaucum has been declared a prohibited noxious weed in both the U.S. and Canada. That means no one can import the seeds, although I’m not sure what the seed import ban accomplishes, since these are native plants in both countries. But if you are crossing the border, you’ll want to check your pockets for any stray delphinium seeds, just in case. You wouldn’t want to be charged with smuggling a prohibited weed, would you?

So are mountain larkspur good for anything besides looking tall and stately and deep purple? As you might imagine, that noxious label limits their use as food or medicine, but their flower juice can be mixed with alum to make  a pretty blue ink. I’m not sure ink in delphinium blue is indelible, but it’d certainly be inedible.

 

 

The photo directly above is of another Yukon wildflower, one that, along with the mountain larkspur, is from the buttercup or crowfoot family. There’s a close family resemblance, isn’t there? The best way to tell these two flowers apart is by the fifth petal on this second one. See how it forms a hood over the bottom four petals? That mini head covering is what gives  this bloom one of its common names—monkshood.

 

In Latin, it’s aconitum dephinifolium. Better yet is another of it’s common names—wolfbane—given because the juice from this flower has been used for poisoning wolves. Like it’s larkspur cousin, monkshood is highly toxic. There’s a poem by  John Keats called Ode on Melancholy that has this line:

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine….

That’s good advice. Three years ago, there was a young Canadian actor who died after he ate monkshood sap. He was a vegetarian known for his love of nature, but evidently not so much for his knowledge of it.

 

Where I grew up, every child learned this dittified warning, which saved me a few rounds of cortisone pills:

Leaves of three, 

Let them be! 

As a public service, I’m composing another little verse for those who live in monkshood territory.

Petals five and one’s a hood?

You must leave it in the wood!

It’s not exactly Keats, is it?

 

Previous wildflower posts: 

• Lavender Charm
• Into the Wild Blue
• The Blue Belles
• Stopping on Yellow
• Waving the White Flag
• Hot Pink

 Both photos are by Andrew Stark. You can click for a better view of the little leaping dolphins or stylish purple hoods.