Ironweed

©Robin Edmundson, 'Ironweed', watercolor, 8 x 10 inches.  

Framed to 11 x 14 inches.  $280.

I love ironweed.   I could [and do] stand at the side of the road and just look at it swaying with all that pink gorgeousness in the breeze. 

Lucky for me, the cows hate it and will eat around it, and fertilize it, thus ensuring that it proliferates with abandon.   

Bottoms

©Robin Edmundson, 'Where the Ironweed meets Helianthus and Goldenrod', watercolor, 18 x 24 inches. 
Framed to 24 x 30 inches.   $750

The bottomlands are where the muck is. They are the flood plains. Where the creeks overflow.  Where the flood debris collects.  Where the silt get dumped.  Where damp things molder and decay.

Many times during the year, the bottoms are impassable - soft, muddy, wet.

But when late summer comes and they are mostly dried out, they explode with color. It's easy to wax poetic this time of year - these areas are ridiculously gorgeous.  Fields full of purple ironweed and goldenrod.  Acres of helianthus and Queen Anne's lace.   The roadsides are blue with lobelia and blue mist flower.  Jewelweed sparkles orange and yellow in the shade.

And on cooler mornings, when the mist rises off the ponds, the colors sparkle with dew and we know how lucky we are to live here.

Ironweed & Friends

© Robin Edmundson, 'Ironweed, Black-eyed Susans and Lobelia', watercolor, 11 x 14 inches.
Unframed, $250.

When it comes to roadside flowers, I think my favorite time of the year is August and September.  Ironweed is spectacular.  Add to it the oranges of black-eyed Susans and jewelweed, and the blues of the blue mist flower and swamp lobelia and you have gorgeous views in every ditch and field.   I love living here.

It's a good opportunity to practice florals and I have taken advantage.   Don't be surprised to see more of these.

Ironweed

The fields are full of this stuff in late summer and autumn.   It's ironweed [and Queen Anne's lace].  

I looove that color.  

The butterflies must, too, because they're all over it. 

It's a tough plant, with roots to China - hence the common name, Ironweed.   The Latin is Vernonia altissima, which pretty much means Vernon's tall stuff.   It gets between 4 and 6 feet tall, not quite as tall as Joe Pye weed. 

Click the pic for an up close look at the flowers.   Notice the old spent flowers at the bottom of the cluster [they're brown], the bloomers in the center and the buds near the top.     Each little floret makes a lot of seeds.

A Lot.   

Which is why we have ironweed everywhere out here.  

Early Fall Wildflowers

It's beautiful this time of year.  

 We found this colony of Great Lobelia [Lobelia syphilitica] with some Missouri Primroses [Oenothera missouriensis] along a wet spot on one of our back roads.   It's glorious.  

These plants are about 24 inches high.   They like calm damp places and the blue fades right into the green.   It's hard to get a pic that captures how beautiful a whole stand is.  


I love that blue.

 And I love, love, love this fuchsia.  This is Vernonia altissima - Tall Ironweed.   It's called ironweed because the stems are like iron.  Almost impossible to pull up and you have to cut the stems to collect them.    We have this everywhere out here.  Cows and horses won't eat it, but they do fertilize it.   Which is why we have fields full of it.  

Glorious fuchsia fields. 

The bugs love it, too.  

Each of those little petals becomes a seed.   They spread like crazy. 


These plants are 4' - 5' high.  If you try to mow them, they'll just come back.   Shorter.   It's kind of not worth the effort. 

Nestled low in the grass, like pools of floral liquid, are large colonies of Blue Mist Flower.   It's one of many Eupatoria that are native here.  This is Eupatorium coeruleum.   It gets about 12 inches high.   I like it because it volunteers in nice places, but is easy enough to pull out where you don't want it.