SMALL YELLOWS ON LAWNS

     From April into summer, many short-grass lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania are sprinkled with golden bits among dominating dandelion and white clover flowers.  The gold is small, yellow blossoms of Indian strawberry and common yellow wood sorrel plants that add more natural beauties to lawns.

     These perennial, ground-hugging plants have many characteristics in common on the human-made habitats they share, including roadsides, fields and lawns.  These plants of both kinds grow so close to the ground that many of them are not cut off by lawn mowers.  In fact, cutting grass short allows more sunlight to reach these prostrate species.      

     Each of these flowering species has five yellow petals on each lovely bloom and three leaflets on each leaf.  Patches of both pretty plants are cheery to see nestling in the short grass.  Both kinds are pollinated by bees, flies and other smaller insects.  And each type of vegetation produces tiny, brown seeds, many of which are eaten by sparrows and finches.

     Indian strawberry flowers are flat and face up, as if looking for sunlight.  Each of those pretty blossoms is three-quarters of an inch across and produces, when pollinated, a red berry, with several seeds on the surface, but otherwise resembling a true, wild strawberry.  Indian strawberry's red berries are attractive when peeking out from green lawns.    

     Each yellow wood sorrel grows a few heart-shaped leaves, each with clover-like leaflets, and a few tiny blooms.  Those leaves fold for the night, but open the next morning to carry-on photosynthesis.

     After being pollinated, each blossom develops an upright seed capsule on a bent stalk.  When seeds are mature, each capsule opens explosively and shoots its seeds up to three feet.  

     Indian strawberry and yellow wood sorrel flowers and fruits add more beauty to many short-grass lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere in the eastern United States.  And these plants offer food for birds on those lawns.  They are small, but wonderful, wild vegetation for people and wildlife right at home.  

        

    

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