PATRIOTIC MEADOWS, HAY FIELDS AND ROADSIDES

     Certain meadows, plus red clover and alfalfa hay fields, and rural roadsides in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland appear patriotic to me because of their pink red clover and common milkweed flowers, white Queen-Anne's-lace and daisy fleabane blossoms, and blue chicory and alfalfa blooms, mixed in with a few kinds of tall grasses.  These human-made habitats are either grazed or mowed, but the stunted plants grow back and produce new flowers through summer.  And those lovely blooms attract many insects who sip their sugary nectar, pollinating them in the process.

     Attractive red clover and milkweed blossoms draw many nectar-seeking bumble bees, carpenter bees and a variety of butterflies to sip their nectar.  And female monarch butterflies spawn eggs on milkweeds, which is their caterpillar's only larval food. 

     Queen-Anne's-lace is the ancestor of carrots.  Carrots produce flowers that resemble those on 'lace.  And carrots smell like 'lace.  Many tiny, white blooms, clumped together, create a lovely composite of flowers, two inches across, that resemble a doily.  And each plant has several clusters of blossoms.  By fall, those clumps develop seeds that mice and seed-eating birds ingest.  And by winter, each composite curls upward and beautifully looks like a bird's nest.

     Chicory plants have beautiful, sky-blue blossoms that, together, look like a blue sky mirrored on the ground.  And when chicory and Queen-Anne's-lace blossoms are mixed, they resemble a blue sky puffed with many, white, cumulus clouds.                

     Alfalfa hay plants have lovely, bluish-lavender, sweet-smelling flowers that attract bees and butterflies in big numbers.  Alfalfa and red clover fields are both interesting because of their pretty blooms, and the many insects attracted to them. 

     Monarchs, silver-spotted skippers, cabbage whites and clouded sulpher butterflies are some of the more common butterflies in red clover and alfalfa hay fields, and for good reasons.  Monarch larvae feed on milkweed leaves and adults sip the nectar of hay plants.  The skippers' caterpillars consume the innumerable soybean leaves in cropland.  Cabbage white larvae ingest plants in the mustard family, and clouded sulphur young eat the foliage of red clover, alfalfa and soybeans, all common crops in Lancaster County cropland.  No wonder clouded sulphurs are so common in hay fields by late summer.

     Clouded sulphurs have yellow wings, adding much color, beauty and cheer to local farmland.  When thousands of them flutter lightly among red clover and alfalfa blossoms to sip nectar, whole fields seem to shimmer yellow.  They and their food flowers are lovely before the deep-green of red clover and alfalfa foliage.     

     Look at patriotic meadows, fields and roadsides more carefully.  They offer much beauty and intrigue to those who do.

     

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