ROADSIDE GRASS BEAUTIES

      During late summer, through autumn and into winter, I see lots of attractive grasses along roadsides, and in pumpkin and soybean fields, abandoned fields and excavation sites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  Most of those grasses are green foxtails, yellow foxtails, timothy, goose grass and purple tops, the last kind being the prettiest in fall in my mind.  

     All these abundant grasses have characteristics in common.  They are all adapted to disturbed soil and full sunlight.  All are originally from Europe, except native purple tops.  They can be up to four feet tall, have long, slender leaves and decorative seed heads, loaded with small seeds, on top of thin stalks.  These grasses help hold down soil in cropland, and provide food and shelter for a variety of wildlife, from grasshoppers to cottontail rabbits and white-tailed deer that ingest their foliage, and mice and small, seed-eating birds that consume their seeds through fall and winter.  And they offer beauty in autumn when the sunlight is lower in the sky, illuminating these grasses from behind.  Then one can see the beautifully silhouetted details of their seed heads.    

     Green foxtail grass is one of the first volunteer plants in a disturbed patch of soil, developing along with lamb's quarters, redroot and velvetleaf plants.  The seeds of this omnipresent, annual kind of grass are green and its seed heads do appear bushy, like a fox's tail, which is this species' beauty, particularly when several of these grasses have grown together in a patch of themselves.  The attractive fluffiness of this species' seed heads comes from the long, green hairs extending out from between the seeds on each head.    

     Annual yellow foxtails have yellow seed heads because of the golden hairs growing out from among the seeds.  Those hairs are especially lovely when glowing before the low-slanting sunlight behind this type of grass.  

     Timothy grass is a kind of hay cut to feed farm livestock through winter.  This perennial grass has a slender seed head and more visible pollen than the other kinds of grass discussed here.  Some seeds of this grass fall on roadsides and become part of the flora of those human-made habitats.  

     Goose grass, also called wire grass, for its very thin seed heads and tiny seeds, is an annual species that is common in Lancaster County farmland.  This plant forms seeds in seed heads on regularly mowed human-made habitats because it adapted to the mowing by growing short stems that produce seed heads and seeds close to the ground.  This species' seeds feed birds where, otherwise, there may not be any seeds to eat.    

     Purple top grass is an attractive, perennial plant native to North America, and, I think, the prettiest of all the grasses in Lancaster County.  The seeds in the drooping, arced seed heads perched on top of these lovely grasses are purple, which creates a purple sheen when clumps of this grass are seen from a bit of a distance, particularly when low-slanting sunlight shines through them from behind.  The seeds are a bit greasy, which adds to the beautiful, purple shine of the seeds.  

     This fall, look for these grasses when out for a walk or ride in farm country.  They are attractive in their own subtle ways.  And they feed small, seed-eating birds through winter; birds that offer their own beauties to admire.       

         

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TWO GULLS AND A TERN

     Via a live camera and our computer screen, I saw flocks of post-breeding ring-billed gulls, Franklin's gulls and Caspian terns resting together, in early autumn of 2021, on mud flats and in inch-deep water on Lake Onalaska, a large, shallow back-water off the Mississippi River in northern Wisconsin.  These attractive birds are noted for regularly flocking together because they share inland, large-water habitats for nesting and wintering, and scavenge and catch fish and other aquatic creatures.  But each species also has lifestyles of its own, which sets it apart.             All these handsome, easily-seen species are graceful, buoyant fliers, quite adaptable and common across much of North America.  They are interesting to watch going about their daily activities, including nesting, getting food and loafing in big gatherings on rivers and larger lakes.      Ring-billed gulls, so-named for a black ring ...
Read more

MATS OF WATER PLANTS

     By August, varying-sized, green mats of algae, duckweed and water stargrass float together on the surfaces of certain ponds and still backwaters of creeks in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Algae grows in long, matted strands, and duckweeds are tiny, flat plants that grow in colonies on water surfaces.  Stargrass colonies root in muddy bottoms.  Each plant's long leaves undulate in currents and the single yellow flower barely emerges from the water's surface to be pollinated.       Together, those mats of algae, duckweed, and stargrass in bloom, look like tiny islands in the water, and remind me of lawns with dandelion flowers flourishing in them.  And, those mats of small, aquatic plants create niches that several kinds of small creatures use for a variety of reasons.      Certain kinds of attractive and entertaining damselflies and dragonflies rest on those mats, after aerial feeding forays on small, flying in...
Read more

WINTERING BIRDS ALONG STREAMS

      Four kinds of mostly-brown, small birds, including permanent resident song sparrows and killdeer plovers, and wintering Wilson's snipe and American pipits, winter regularly, but sparingly, along streams and brooks in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland meadows.  But, being beautifully camouflaged on mud flats, gravel bars and shallows on the shores of those small waterways, these adaptable, interesting birds are nearly impossible to see, until they move or fly, and then they are quick to duck out of sight on brown flats and gravel bars, and among tufts of vegetation along shorelines.       In winter, all these birds ingest invertebrates from waterway shorelines where the running water doesn't freeze and thaws the flats and bars it laps over.  Each bird species snares invertebrates in its own way.  (Song sparrows also consume weed and grass seeds.)  The sparrows, killdeer and pipits pick up invertebrates from the surfaces of the...
Read more