Vicia villosa

This is Vicia villosa. You often find this vetch spread like this over the top of tall grasses on roadsides. Often it will be these purple flowers stretching for hundreds of feet. Once I stopped at a stand of this vetch in Vermillion County and tried to find where the stem was rooted in the ground, I couldn't find it. It just seems to grow out of the air. The Vicia villosa in this picture is along a roadside near Fox Island near Fort Wayne. Picture taken June 17, 2009.

Link to Vicia villosa:

Link to Vicia villosa:

Link to Vicia villosa:

Link to Vicia villosa:

Blue Cross Tree

The three blue crosses painted on this tree have been there for many years. This is in White River State Park in Indianapolis, on the river trail, behind the track and field stadium. Thirty years ago, this was a mean and dangerous neighborhood, and this tree and the blue crosses were here then. Since that time Indianapolis has changed radically but this tree remains as a relic of the past.

Why were blue crosses painted on this tree? That's something I don't know. If you know the story please post it here.

The blue cross tree is a Japanese pagodatree (Styphnolobium japonicum). It will be flowering later in the summer.

These pictures were taken June 13, 2009.

Link to Styphnolobium japonicum:

Link to Styphnolobium japonicum:

Butterfly weed

This is butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). The above picture is at White River State Park, Indianapolis, June 13, 2009. The picture below is at Lafayette on the trail between South 9th St. and Beck Lane, June 14, 2009.

Butterfly weed is native to Indiana, but these plants in the photos are there because someone decided to put them there. At White River, the original flora has been radically altered by the moving of earth and the building of levees and other urban activity over the last couple hundred years. Someone decided this would be a nice place to see butterfly weed, so some seed was scattered here and the plants successfully grew. At the trail in Lafayette, growing with the butterfly weed are other plants that inhabit Indiana prairies, but these were put there by some official decision to create a new flora there. There are dandelions there, and they are true wildflowers, and this butterfly weed is not a wildflower. The water willow pictured in the previous post is a true wildflower, nobody put it there, it got there to its right habitat on its own.

Link to butterfly weed:

Link to butterfly weed at Purdue campus:

Link to common milkweed:

Water willow

This is water willow (Justicia americana). It's a familiar plant to those who canoe on Indiana streams. It grows in streams where the water is a couple inches deep. These pictures were taken at White River State Park in Indianapolis, at the place where the canal water falls into White River, June 13, 2009.

Link to Justicia americana:

Link to Justicia americana:

Goodyera pubescens

This is Goodyera pubescens, an orchid, along the trail at Pine Hills Nature Preserve in Montgomery County. Even though there are no flowers when the picture was taken it's still easy to know what it is from the white veins in the leaves. Picture taken June 13, 2009.

Link to Goodyera pubescens:

Link to Pine Hills Nature Preserve:

Mulberries are ripe

Mulberries are ripe. Not the best fruit to eat but plenty edible and good for a snack. Easiest way to find these in the city is to notice where the ground is stained from mulberries fallen out of the tree. Mulberry trees are common in the city and in the country, nobody plants them, they just sprout up on their own.

This mulberry tree is along the river trail at White River State Park, Indianapolis. picture taken June 13, 2009.


This mulberry tree is in a fencerow in Shelby County, picture taken June 11, 2009.

This mulberry tree is on a roadside in Montgomery County, picture taken June 13, 2009.

These mulberry trees are Morus, probably Morus alba.

Link to Morus sp.:

Link to Morus alba:

Sometimes you find a mulberry tree with white fruits; they look like maggots but they taste better than the more common purple fruits.

Juneberries are ripe

This is a juneberry tree (Amelanchier) at Neil Armstrong Park in Lafayette, June 11, 2009. Dozens of juneberry trees were planted in this park and they are now all full of fruit.

Link to Neil Armstrong Park:

Link to juneberries on Purdue campus:

Another link to juneberries: