Phenology for 10/9/12: Dayflowers

Apart from the paucity of moths and butterflies, this weekend's phenology is...getting back to normal for the time of year in Scott County, Virginia.

If anything, fall foliage is a bit behind schedule. While some leaves changed color due to fire blight, some changed due to aging, and some leaf changes are cued to the amount of daylight and occur on schedule regardless of the weather, many trees are still waiting for cold weather. Those who didn't get to do their "leaf peeping" last weekend should still see plenty of color next weekend.

Most flowers are as usual: some chicory and Queen Anne's lace, an occasional late daisy or dandelion, lots of asters. Goldenrods are past their peak but still blooming.

However, two flowers we usually see in May and June are just reaching their peak in September and October. Blue dayflowers and pink "lady's thumb" (I don't see the resemblance) didn't do very well with June's drought and July's and August's floods. I'd given up hope that the "grass" in my front yard was going to bloom at all, this year, until mid-September, when the Lady's Thumb went into competition with the flybush, turning the whole front garden pink.

Dayflowers are pretty things. Most people don't notice that there are two species; they can actually compete with each other, and unfortunately the ones with the bigger, brighter flowers are classified as invasive. The native species are the ones that normally bloom in late summer and autumn. More discussion, with pictures, at these links:

http://wildflowers.jdcc.edu/Asian%2520Dayflower.html

http://wildflowers.jdcc.edu/Virginia%20Dayflower.html

Here's a beautiful picture of a "lady's thumb" flower:

http://www.delawarewildflowers.org/images/polygonum_persicaria.jpg

Here's a nice, fair discussion of the plant, mentioning that, although it's not native, this "grass" in the buckwheat family fits into North American ecology by providing food for several animals:

http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/weeds/plants/lady_thumb.htm

Botheration...I wanted to share some information about an introduced garden plant locally known as flybush, but everything a Google search for "flybush" seems to turn up is completely unrelated to the late-summer star of my garden. It's a perennial plant that springs up anew each year and, if pruned brutally in June, will bloom outside the windows rather than sprawling over the roof. It has lovely red-to-pink-to-white-blotched blooms.