YELLOW CARPETS IN FARMLAND

     Four kinds of flowering plants, including lesser celandines, common dandelions, buttercups and field mustards, carpet many fields, meadows and country roadsides with their yellow-petaled blossoms in southeastern Pennsylvania in spring.  Though adaptable, alien plants from Eurasia, their lovely, decorative and abundant golden blooms, that contrast well with grass and their own green leaves, cheer many people in those human-made habitats during April and May.   

     Lesser celandines bloom during April in sun-filled, grassy openings in wooded bottomlands thinly-bordering streams in cropland.  Celandines are flat plants with glossy, deep-green leaves and shiny, golden flowers that dominate, and brighten, the floors of riparian woods.  Some patches of celandine blooms are also pocked with the purple blooms of blue violets, creating a lovely contrast of colors, free to see.  

     Most everyone knows dandelions as the scourge of many lawns, which is unfortunate because of this plant's pretty, cheery flowers.  But dandelion also covers much of many pastures, fields and roadsides, lending bright, cheering yellow to those built landscapes.  

     Dandelions are not only attractive, but feed man and beast as well.  Wood chucks, cottontail rabbits and people can ingest dandelion leaves.  And a variety of colorful, small, seed-eating birds, including, northern cardinals, American goldfinches, house finches, indigo buntings and a small variety of sparrows consume dandelion seeds, adding their feathered beauties to those of dandelion blooms.  Interestingly, those birds make silky-white parachutes fly away on the wind, without their cargoes, when they consume dandelion seeds.

     Glossy-yellow buttercup blooms abundantly carpet many meadows and roadsides by mid-April into much of summer.  Some pastures look completely yellow from the abundance of this species.  Their flowers are cheery to see in pastures, again contrasting well with the green of grass and their own shredded-looking foliage.  Buttercups, however, are poisonous to man and beast.

     Wild mustards grow up to three feet tall and have bouquets of yellow blossoms on top of their stems.  These plants are able to grow above high grasses, where they can show off their ample beauties.

     Created by God, these plants, with their masses of golden flowers, are cheery to see during spring, into summer in southeastern Pennsylvania, as elsewhere.  They lift many human spirits, and are free for the viewing, close to home. 

       

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