Green in Winter: Oregon Grape Holly

Mahonia repens is a sprawling shrub that has escaped from cultivation in northern Indiana. It produces bright yellow flowers in early spring.

Green in Winter: Pennsylvania Bittercress

Cardamine pensylvanica is a native, white-flowered mustard that sometimes grows in the shallow water of a roadside ditch, especially where the water is somewhat clean. Photographed in a shallow, frozen ditch in Porter County, Indiana, on January 1, 2013..

Green in Winter: Partridge Berry

This small native is locally frequent in wet, hummocky forests behind the dunes near Lake Michigan. Photographed in LaPorte County, Indiana on December 27, 2012.

Green in Winter: Small Geranium

This attractive little weed, Geranium pusillum, is very common in St. Joseph County, Indiana, especially in sandy lawns. Photographed in a South Bend city park on December 23, 2012.

Green in Winter: Birdseye Speedwell

This is probably Veronica persica, a common lawn weed in South Bend, Indiana. It is interesting to note that three flower buds (with rolled up blue corollas) are visible in the left third of the picture. The flower buds already have peduncles and the leaves are a bit too large for V. polita. Photographed in a South Bend city park on December 23, 2012. 

Green in Winter: Trailing Arbutus

This rare little shrub, Epigaea repens, can be locally frequent in the high dune country near Lake Michigan. Photographed on December 30, 2012 in Porter County, Indiana.

The pictures below show the spicy-fragrant flowers that emerge in spring.

Green in Winter: Ebony Spleenwort

This little fern is native in northern Indiana, but it is not very conservative. It tends to show up in degraded sites, often on sandy acid soil and steep, north-facing slopes. It also can be found in high quality sites. The stipe and rachis are black or purple, and each pinna bears a small auricle near its base. Asplenium platyneuron is usually dark green during the growing season but tends to be pale in winter. 

Green in Winter: Goldthread

Coptis trifolia is occasional in swamp forests near Lake Michigan. It often grows on mossy green hummocks or fallen tree tip-up mounds near shallow pools of water. The common name makes reference to the bright orange-gold colored rhizomes.

Green in Winter: Round-leaved Pyrola

Listed as State Rare by the Indiana Dept. of Natural Resources, Pyrola rotundifolia americana is very difficult to find. There is a thriving colony in a preserve in northern Indiana, where this photo was created on December 27, 2012. Some are now calling it Pyrola americana.

Green in Winter: Spotted Wintergreen

Chimaphila maculata is not very common in Indiana, but in northern Laporte County it is locally frequent in acid sandy flats with partial shade.  

Green in Winter: Spinulose Wood Fern

Dryopteris spinulosa is common in northern Indiana woodlands. It sometimes grows at the base of a tree where water is funneled down along the bark. It is now being called D. carthusiana.

Green in Winter: Common Speedwell

The text and picture below were posted earlier as a plant quiz. The plant was correctly named by Scott as Veronica officinalis, Common Speedwell. Good call, Scott!   This attractive little garden escape has a definite preference for dry, eroded clay slopes in partial shade. 

Posted previously: This plant was growing on a forested clay slope in St. Joseph County, Indiana. Do you recognize it? Feel free to name it or just take a guess. Good luck!

Green in Winter: Cursed Buttercup

This is probably Ranunculus sceleratus, fully green in a frozen woodland pond at Potato Creek State Park. In getting this picture, I stepped on a small log in the shallow pond. The log broke, and I went into the icy muck up to my knees. Fortunately the camera and tripod stayed upright on the ice. I was reminded of the time Scott Namestnik and I were botanizing a frozen, degraded wetland near South Bend, Indiana. Scott went through the ice and overtopped his boots, but by the time I got my camera ready, he had climbed out. I tried to talk him into getting back in for a picture, but he wouldn't cooperate!   

Unusual Ice

On a steep clay slope at Potato Creek State Park (North Liberty, Indiana), I found these unusual ice formations right on the surface of the ground. My guess is that moisture was seeping out of the clay and freezing.

Green in Winter: Plantain-leaved Sedge

The large, straplike leaves of Carex plantaginea are especially noticeable in winter. This plant is frequent in mesic forest remnants in northern Indiana, most commonly under beech and sugar maple. Photographed at Bendix Woods County Park near New Carlisle, Indiana on February 4, 2012.

Plantain-leaved Sedge is one of the earliest sedges to flower in spring, and also one of the showiest. Sedges are wind-pollinated and don't need to attract insects, and as a result, the flowers are apetalous (without petals). Even so, the flowers of this plant are very attractive. In the picture below, the pale yellow feather dusters are the staminate ("male") flowers; the transparent structures along the culms (stems) are the stigmas of the pistillate ("female") flowers. The photo below was created on April 9, 2011 in a privately-owned forest near Rolling Prairie, Indiana.

This is just a beautiful plant in every season!

Green in Winter: Sharp-lobed Hepatica

With its distinctive three-lobed leaves mottled with purple, Sharp-lobed Hepatica gives the winter explorer something extraordinary to admire. This plant has a special affinity for steep, wooded slopes on clay soil, but it occurs in a variety of woodlands. Long known as Hepatica acutiloba, it is now called Hepatica nobilis var. acuta. Photographed on December 24, 2011 at Potato Creek State Park near North Liberty, Indiana.

     "We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must take root, and send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind." Henry David Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1856. 

When it flowers in March and April, the plant looks like this. Flower color can range from white to pink to purple, and many shades in between.

Really??

Gotta read these to believe it...

http://today.duke.edu/2012/10/gagafern

http://novataxa.blogspot.com/2012/10/2012-fern-gaga-monstraparva.html

Do You Know This Plant?

I recently posted the following as a plant quiz...

 

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I've taken a lot of photos this year, and I hope at some point I'll be able to catch up on posting some of them here and at Through Handlens and Binoculars.  In the meantime, here is a fun plant quiz.  Good luck!

 

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As Ben said, the plant looks very "Pedicularis-ish," but A.L. noticed the inflated calyx with four lobes and correctly identified the plant in the photo as Rhinanthus minor.  Based on the whitish teeth on the corolla and the lines of hairs on two sides of the stem, as well as the mostly dentate leaves, I would call this Rhinanthus minor ssp. groenlandicus based on the most current understanding of the species.  Like other plants in the Orobanchaceae, this species is a hemi-parasite that can sometimes obtain nutrients from the roots of nearby plants.   "Rhinanthus" means "snout-flower," a reference to the nose-like appearance of the flowers.

 

Yellow Rattle, as it is commonly known because of the rattling sound made by the seeds within the inflated calyx when the fruit matures, grows in a wide variety of open habitats, ranging from wet to dry.  It sometimes grows in calcareous situations.  In this instance, Bruce Behan and I found it growing in moist shallow soil in an open area within a sandstone pavement community in Clinton County, New York. 

 

There is apparently some disagreement on whether or not Rhinanthus minor is native in New York.  Some authors consider it native in most of Canada and in the Pacific Northwest, as well as in one county in New Hampshire, but non-native throughout the rest of its range in the United States.  Other authors seem to consider it to be native where it occurs in the United States.

 

Congratulations, A.L., on correctly identifying the plant in this plant quiz!

Purple Love Grass

This attractive grass is frequent in dry sand throughout much of Indiana. At maturity the panicles break free of the plant and tumble their way around the sand country,  dispersing seeds as they go.

In the book, "Grasses of Indiana," Charles Deam wrote this: "The panicle of this species breaks off easily at maturity, and it is a common thing to see great heaps of them piled by the wind against a fence. Hence it is often called a "tumble-weed."

Arrow Feather

This extremely attractive native grass, Aristida purpurascens, is occasional in dry, sandy places that are not too disturbed. 

Photographed at Ober Savanna Nature Preserve near Ober, Indiana, on November 4, 2012.