AUTUMN BEAUTIES ALONG COUNTRY ROADS

      Late September into October is a pretty time of year in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Orange pumpkins decorate their fields, a variety of colorful flowers bloom along rural roadsides, and in fields, and red berries and colored leaves are striking along country roads.

     Rural roadsides are about six feet deep, on average, and innumerable miles long.  Some are mowed occasionally, but none are plowed, allowing several kinds of wild plants, and wildlife, long narrow homes between roads and fields; habitats we can readily see from passing vehicles.    

     Local country roadsides are covered with a variety of lush vegetation, wall to wall.  Some are dominated by two kinds of foxtail grass and redtop grass, all of which are pretty to see, and loaded with seeds on their tops.  Redtop grass seeds have a red or purple sheen that is most attractive in sunlight.  Many foxtail and redtop seeds will be eaten by mice and seed-eating birds through fall and winter.  

     Several kinds of flowering plants bloom profusely, and beautifully, along country roads at this time of year, including goldenrods, and aster species that have white, or pale-lavender, blossoms, and smartweeds with tiny, pink flowers, and bur-marigolds and sneezeweeds that have yellow blooms in constantly moist roadsides.  The tiny, innumerable flowers on goldenrod stems and the small, white, or lavender, blossoms on asters, all species in numerous, varying-sized clumps, dominate and decorate many rural roadsides.  And those flowers are swarmed with honey bees, bumble bees, yellow clearwing butterflies, pearl crescent butterflies, meadow fritillary butterflies, skipper butterflies, hover flies and other species of nectar-sipping insects.  Goldenrod and aster blooms are the last big source of nectar each year that those insects take advantage of.

     Attractive pearl crescent butterflies are most numerous on aster blossoms because, as larvae, they ate the leaves and stems of asters.  Later they pupated in the soil under aster plants and later emerged as full-grown, beautiful butterflies ready to feed on nectar and seek mates for reproduction.

     Multiflora rose bushes and deadly nightshade vines have attractive, red berries along rural roads by late September, into October.  These alien plants offer shelter, and food, in berry form, to a variety of berry-eating birds, including American robins and cedar waxwings.  Those birds, and other species, digest the pulp of those berries, but pass the seeds far and wide as they travel about.   

     Six-foot-tall, bushy pokeweeds are appealing along roadsides in autumn.  Their stems and foliage turn red by late September, and they have many juicy, deep-purple berries that are eaten by a variety of berry-eating birds that, again, digest the berry pulp, but pass the seeds in their droppings.  

     The stalks and leaves of redroot and lamb's-quarter weeds turn red in fall, which add more beauty to farmland  roadsides.  Many of the seeds on top of these weeds are eaten by mice and a small variety of seed-eating, cropland birds, including horned larks and mourning doves, through fall and winter. 

     Field crickets and a small variety of grasshoppers shelter in and eat the grasses along country roads.  One can hear the delightful fiddling of these insects during warmer afternoons in September and October.  Some of these little hoppers are eaten by striped skunks, red foxes, common toads and a small variety of farmland birds, including house sparrows and horned larks.

     A small variety of deciduous trees grow, here and there, along certain rural roads.  Multitudes of mulberry trees that are repeatedly mowed continue to survive in stunted conditions.  Other trees, including staghorn sumac, sassafras and black walnuts grow from parts of roadsides that are not mowed, including around signs and poles.  Sumacs have striking, red leaves in fall that blow in the wind like banners.  Sumacs also have fuzzy, red berries in pyramid-shaped clusters on top of each limb, berries eaten by mice and berry-eating birds through autumn and winter.  Sassafras has lovely orange and yellow foliage of three different shapes, one lobed, two-lobed liked a mitten, and three-lobed like a fork.  Black walnut trees drop their large, green nuts onto rural roads, and passing cars.

     Poison ivy vines have attractive red, orange and yellow leaves in fall.  This plant is most noticed where it climbed roadside poles all summer to reach sunlight.  

     The numerous, roadside common milkweed plants have attractive gray pods, and white fluff that carry seeds away on the wind during September and October.  

     Enjoy rural roadsides when riding in the country in autumn.  Many of those cropland roadsides are beautiful and intriguing at that time.        

         

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