CATTAIL AND MILKWEED BEAUTUES

      When colored leaves dominate landscapes in southeastern Pennsylvania in October, the fluff of cattails and common milkweeds add more beauty to country environments.  The fluff of both kinds of plants are most lovely when the sun shines through them from behind.

     Stands of cattails and milkweeds add their beauties to winter.  A long, brown seed head, with some extended fluff, perches on top of each cattail plant.  And groups of several gray milkweed seed pods, each with a pale-yellow, inner lining, resemble sculptures on their gray stems.    

     Each tuft of fluff is a tiny parachute that carries a seed away on the wind, often some distance from its parent plant.  And seeds that survive the sharp eyes of hungry, seed-eating birds, may sprout and grow the next spring, if the habitat is right for each kind.  

     American goldfinches, ruby-throated hummingbirds, and other kinds of small birds, use some of that fluff to line their nurseries.  And those birds use spider webs to bind their fluffy cradles together, and attach them to twigs in trees and bushes.

     Cattails flourish in marshes, the shallows of ponds, retention basins, and roadside ditches that collect water run-off; and dominate some of those habitats.  Every spring, each plant sprouts from perennial, ever-spreading, underwater roots, grows a few long, lean leaves, and a longer stem, with tiny, green blooms on top.  Those green tops, when fertilized by cattail pollen blowing on the wind, turn warm-brown, are loaded with tiny seeds and parachutes, and look like decorative, fat hot dogs into fall, through winter and into the next spring.

     Cattail seeds are wasted if they don't fall into moist or wet habitats.  Only cattails in wet places flourish and reproduce. 

     The aquatic muskrats eat many cattail roots and use cattail leaves to build shelters in shallow water.  And some muskrats are caught and eaten by mink, foxes, great horned owls and other predators, demonstrating food chains of who eats whom.

     Red-winged blackbirds and marsh wrens raise young in cattail-leaf nurseries, built above the normal water level, among standing cattail stems.  It's a delight to hear the songs of these handsome birds.

     The perennial, common milkweed plants beautify country roadsides and meadows.  They sprout in May and have pale-pink, sculptured-looking blossoms by early July, just when monarch butterflies are in eastern North America.  Female monarchs lay eggs, one at a time, on milkweed foliage, and monarch caterpillars only eat those leaves until they pupate and become mature butterflies.  

     Milkweed plants feed a variety of wildlife, other than monarch larvae. Lovely, sweet-scented milkweed flowers attract bees, butterflies and other kinds of pollinating insects that sip the blossoms' nectar.  And two, attractive kinds of milkweed bugs ingest the developing seeds in green milkweed seed pods.  Those true bugs have striking red and black markings on their wings that make them stand out on opened, gray seed pods.  And mice consume many milkweed seeds that land on the ground during autumn and winter.

     Cattails and common milkweeds present many beauties that we humans enjoy.  And they provide food for a variety of wildlife.  Both plants are an autumn treat that help inspire our souls.