Wildflowers: Yellow « Wildflowers of the West Village

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Wildflowers of the Winter Solstice

December 22, 2011 at 6:39 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Groundsel, Nature, New York City, West Village, Winter Solstice

Wildflowers of the Winter Solstice . . .

Groundsel, Senecio vulgaris, blooms in the West Village on the Winter Solstice and, though wild, often grows in evenly-spaced patterns as if planted by a gardener. (Photo taken 12 22 2011)

“Mild.”

The 2011 Winter Solstice arrived like a lamb, to put it mildly. Manhattan enjoyed one of those calm, cool, balmy days that cultivate the impression of an indeterminate time of year; a kind of day that almost shouts for one to take the opportunity – the gift – to enjoy the outdoors before the traditional weather sets in, or roars in, for the season.

I listened to that call.

Outside and above, the sky resembled a portrait painting of multiple cloud types, including cirrus and cumulus, floating by at different levels of altitude, passing by at different rates of speed, forming a variety of picturesque motion patterns that took the sun in an exceptionally sparkling way during this shortest daytime of the calendar year.

Back on the surface, a short walk around the West Village revealed nature was still in an active phase. Gulls, mallard ducks, cormorants, brants, and Canada geese mingled along the Hudson River where several anglers squeezed in one last session of casting for striped bass.

Back on city land, many of the common wildflower species remained unfazed by last week’s first frost of the season. The basal rosettes of Sow Thistle, Dandelion, and Common Plantain were fresh and green, not deflated and gray as they were by this time last year. White Snakeroot, Common Chickweed, and Shepherd’s Purse remained in bloom in several sheltered spots.

Shepherd's Purse blooms beside a tree on a December day. (Photo taken 12 22 2011)

None of these plants could match the vigor and numbers of the winter annual Groundsel, Senecio vulgaris, a diminutive member of the Asteracaeae family. Just as the Dandelion will carpet lawns in spring, the Groundsel can proliferate in late fall. Find it thriving around the bases of trees and within the thinned out spaces of bare shrubs. Individual plants resemble a tiny evergreen bush and look so self contained as to appear planted by a gardener. The yellow inflorescences of this cosmopolitan ruderal never seem to open into full golden blooms like its springtime cousin, but it does go to seed in distinctive white balls that in combination with its sharply-lobed leaves look rather festive in light of the season.

Holiday Ornaments: Groundsel goes to fluffy seed like its other cousins in the Asteraceae family. (Photo taken 12 22 2011)

Happy Holidays . . .

– rPs 12 22 2011

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The Quest for the Goldenrod

October 28, 2011 at 2:37 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Connecticut Botanical Society, Nature, New York City, Seaside Goldenrod, Solidago, West Village

The Quest for the Goldenrod . . .

Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) blooms near the corner of 10th Avenue and West 13th Street. (photo taken 10 26 2011)

Like some contemporary Pindar, I find myself reflecting on a recent experience that by its end had me feeling akin to Jason during his quest for the Golden Fleece. The prize in my case took the form of a species of goldenrod (genus Solidago) I discovered in bloom near the corner of 10th Avenue and West 13th Street. The quest was the search for an exact identification.

The goldenrod name applies to the Solidago, a large group of some one to two hundred distinct and native flowering plants, most of which bloom yellow gold in color beginning in late summer. From there opens a wide and diverse set of differences, which include:

Leaf shape and venation – Many goldenrod species have an aristate or ovate leaf with a dentate edge that resembles a serrated spoon, while others have more narrow lanceolate leaves, also serrated, but sometimes entire (completely smooth), often with three parallel veins, although some possess a single central one. A majority of these leaf structures and their supporting stems are hairy, but a few are glabrous (completely smooth). Some varieties sprout leaflets from the leaf axils where the primary leaf meets the stem.

Flower shape – Even the casual outdoor observer is familiar with the graceful, spreading, pyramidal panicles that, like golden ostrich plumes, decorate autumn roadsides. Widespread species such as the Canada Goldenrod exhibit this flowering form. Others have a stiffer, broad, horizontal inflorescence that from a distance resembles an upturned push broom; a few standouts bloom straight and narrow, resembling a golden wand.

The most common species of Solidago found in the New York region include the Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), Early Goldenrod (Solidago juncea), and Late Goldenrod (Solidago altissima). During my walk home from my wildflower encounter, I assumed a comparison of my close observations with the details of one of the above would give me a quick and easy identification. The example I had photographed was easy enough to describe in words. The plant grew from a basal rosette and possessed smooth lanceolate leaves with a single central vein. The leaves and the stem were glabrous and supported a panicle of flowers that upon close inspection possessed the distinctive calyx and daisy petal appearance, which in part explains why the goldenrods are included in the vast Asteraceae family.

The goldenrod's flower is actually a tight cluster of tiny, yellow, daisy-like blooms. (photo taken 10 26 2011)

Like Jason, I set sail – on the internet – and waded through my print resources and found a winding adventure. Each of the three common species of goldenrod possessed some, but not all, of the physical characteristics I had documented in my observations. The entire and glabrous leaves of my subject put Canada Goldenrod and Late Goldenrod out of contention. Early Goldenrod, my early favorite, has smooth leaves with a single central vein, but the example in question lacked leaflets at the leaf axils, so that species, too, was dropped from the list of candidates.

I continued to tread water until I found the website of the Connecticut Botanical Society. One of the features of this comprehensive online resource is a detailed advanced search function that allowed me to select several specific physical features into my search. The result produced twenty potential species, which by the end of my survey produced a clear standout –

Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens)

Seaside Goldenrod has glabrous leaves and stems adapted to coastal salt spray conditions; it sprouts no leaflets at the leaf axils; it blooms in plumed panicles as late as November. The time, place, and physical description all fit; I believe I have found my golden fleece!

Like Jason, my quest became connected to the sea, in this case the Hudson River estuary. I have often used the phrase “where nature and the city intersect” as a central element of my artistic mission statement and here again is a vivid example of just such a meeting. Manhattan has undergone a massive transformation over the last three centuries, becoming one of humanity’s most consciously constructed areas on Planet Earth, yet still there remains the natural environment that continues to dictate what adaptations will allow an organism like the goldenrod to survive and thrive. Fresh salt air still permeates the west side of the island where in autumn the goldenrod, the Seaside Goldenrod, dressed in its hardy green leaves, blooms in a mellow gold plume, even in the contemporary stone, glass, and steel shadow of the West Village.

My Golden Fleece: The inflorescence of a Seaside Goldenrod. (photo taken 10 26 2011)

– rPs 10 28 2011

Postscript: The homepage of the Connecticut Botanical Society can be found at http://www.ct-botanical-society.org/

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The Breakfast Bloom

October 16, 2011 at 5:45 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Butter-and-Eggs, Nature, New York City, West Village, Yellow Toadflax

The Breakfast Bloom . . .

A patch of Butter-and-Eggs, Yellow Toadflax, Linaria vulgaris, blooms beside the bike path along the West Side Highway. (photo taken 09 17 2011)

The story of many immigrant wildflowers begins with imported seed that arrived laced with a hitchhiker, a plant variety that over time would go against the grain in a very different sense of the phrase. Once established in some New England field, the rest of the tale became the incremental spread of a European or Asian green immigrant from one blue sea to the other. Escaped and naturalized, some have become part of home remedies, regional folklore, even the incidental detail of fine artworks. Of these, one of the most notable, and beautiful, is what I like to call “the breakfast bloom” – Butter-and-Eggs, known also as Yellow Toadflax, Linaria vulgaris.

Yellow Toadflax is a perennial and a ruderal of European origin, which together explains the familiarity of this wildflower. One sees it appear every year as summer passes into autumn and the plant blooms in those under-grown areas where it can stand out such as roadsides, which is where I found a patch growing, and blooming, in the West Village: beside the bike path that parallels the West Side Highway.

This wildflower is easy to identify. The leaves are linear, thin and spiky, and alternate up the stem to the blooms. The individual flowers are irregular, end in a long spur, and are butter yellow with palates the color of egg yolks. There is a close resemblance to cultivated snapdragons. In fact, that is an apt comparison, as both belong traditionally to the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae. The snapdragon has been moved recently to another, Plantaginaceae, based on DNA sequence analysis, but like the snapdragon, the flowers of Yellow Toadflax grow in clusters, in terminal racemes, which can last a long time set in a centerpiece vase on the breakfast table.

A terminal raceme of blooming Yellow Toadflax, close up, reveals the Butter-and Eggs coloration. (photo taken 09 17 2011)

– rPs 10 16 2011

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An April Shower’s Wildflowers

April 29, 2011 at 2:58 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflowers: Blue, Wildflowers: Green, Wildflowers: Pink, Wildflowers: Purple, Wildflowers: Red, Wildflowers: White, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Chickweed, Dandelion, Ground Ivy, Heartsease, Marsh Marigold, Nature, New York City, Red Deadnettle, Shepherd's Purse, Siberian Squill, West Village, Wild Violet

An April Shower’s Wildflowers . . .

A view of Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn captures the cold colors of early April. (photo taken 04 10 2011)

The transition from winter to spring really does resemble the way a rainbow emerges from a storm. First, there is the monochromatic gray sky, opening up with wind and water until it begins to thin out. A hint of pale blue emerges, followed by the electrum sun and the full spectrum of visible light manifested by the prism of that same rainfall, now receding.

April 2011 followed this manner of blooming, at least in New York City. A season opening fly fishing trip to Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn was accompanied by the somber colors of early spring. The lake itself was charcoal grey and surrounded by the tan stalks of last year’s cattails and the brown mesh of tree branches just beginning to bud. A week of cold rain followed. The spring season appeared to be as late as the Passover and Easter holidays.

When Easter Sunday did arrive, it turned into the first balmy warm day of the year. The humidity appeared in an instant, bumblebees filled the air, robins and purple finches trilled in the trees, which like the grounds all around town had gone a bright pastel green. The wildflowers, too, had arrived, including . . .

Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)

Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)

Heartsease (Viola tricolor)

Heartsease (Viola tricolor)

Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris)

Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris)

Red Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum)

Red Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum)

Shepherd’s Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)

Shepherd’s Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)

Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica)

Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica)

Wild Violet (Viola papilionacea)

Wild Violet (Viola papilionacea)

The first act of Manhattan’s spring blooming is complete. The stage is now set for May’s flowers.

– rPs 04 29 2011

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The Easter Egg Effect

March 14, 2011 at 3:24 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflowers: Purple, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Crocus, Friends of the High Line, High Line, Nature, New York City, West Village

The Easter Egg Effect . . .

Easter Eggs: a group of Spring Crocus, Crocus vernus, emerge from the undercover on The High Line. (photo taken 03 14 2011)

The emotional appeal of wildflowers, especially those found growing in an urban setting, can to me be summed up in something I like to call “The Easter Egg Effect” – that feeling of excitement, instigated by discovery, akin to a child finding a pastel egg hidden within the grass in the backyard. I began Wildflowers of West Village just under a year ago after one such pivotal moment. I was walking with my wife on a pleasant Sunday afternoon on the first day of spring. The Hudson flowed to our right as the park on our left became bathed in the thin setting sunlight of the Equinox. My eye caught sight of a patch of pale blue Siberian squill flowering at the base of a tree. The rest of the surrounding parkscape remained primarily brown, so the presence of living color stood out even more distinctly. We headed home, feeling rejuvenated by the first visible sign of the natural world’s reawakening, and simultaneously the idea for a new nature writing project began to bloom.

This year I first felt The Easter Egg Effect on the opposite end of the Christian Lenten calendar; during its opening week, just after Ash Wednesday. I was out for a walk yet again, this time along a unique Manhattan greenway: The High Line, one of the most popular public destinations in the West Village. Once an abandoned elevated railroad spur, the former West Side Line was converted over a decade into a belt stretching from its terminus on Gansevoort Street north to West 20th Street. After opening in 2009, the response was immediate and enthusiastic. Flanked by impressive architecture like the Standard Hotel and Frank Gehry’s futuristic IAC Building, the park’s benches, art installations, and plantings attract models, rock stars, and tourists from around the globe. They can be found daily socializing as well as photographing and filming themselves, distant views of the Hudson River, and close up portraits of this unique urban green space, which also happens to be my front yard.

As a writer focused on outdoor sports and nature, I find it ironic that Fate has me residing around the corner from this premiere example of urban nature. Beyond that, the greenway provides me a quick and traffic-free route uptown. Often, to the bemusement of international tourists, I can be found carrying dress shirts and spare hangers in hand on the way to my dry cleaner on 18th Street. I like to think the sight of me going about my mundane daily business portrays me as a goodwill ambassador from the neighborhood, a reminder to visitors that regular people with daily lives – and chores – reside here, too.

So it was that during a run to the dry cleaners I caught sight of an initial sign of the impending spring: a pastel purple crocus, Crocus vernus, starting to flower beside the rust brown rails of the High Line. The blooms, still cupped and closed, even resembled colored eggs.

Crocus vernus sprouts from the repurposed railway of The High Line. (photo taken 03 14 2011)

Later in the week I found another variety, the Dutch Yellow Crocus, Crocus flavus, coloring the gardens of St. Luke in the Fields.

Dutch Yellow Crocus, Crocus flavus, blooming in the gardens of St. Luke in the Fields. (photo taken 03 13 2011)

Along the hedge line of Hudson River Park I found an entire croci community of white Crocus vernus about to flower.

A colony of white Crocus vernus about to bloom in Hudson River Park. (photo taken 02 28 2011)

While not wildflowers in the pure definition, most varieties in the Crocus genus have gone feral or become naturalized to the extent that the distinction between wild and cultivated has become blurred. The presence of their blooms in unexpected places – like an elevated railway or a corner of a vacant lot in Manhattan – appears like a shiny penny in the gutter, or a decorated egg in the backyard. Embodied in such sudden wild flowering, the joy of spring is evinced by The Easter Egg Effect.

– rPs 03 14 2011

Postscript . . .

The High Line and Friends of the High Line maintain a website for more background information – http://www.thehighline.org – and remember, if you do visit, look don’t touch. As the sign says . . .

Sign on The High Line. (photo taken 03 14 2011)

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The Yellow Centerline

October 6, 2010 at 11:05 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflower Books, Wildflower Illustrations, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Nature, New York, Roger Tory Peterson, Thistle, West Village

The Yellow Centerline . . .

Stands of Yellow Sow Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) paint the West Side Highway's median bright yellow. (photo take 06 08 2010)

The search for wildflowers within city limits leads the urban naturalist to the edges, the fringes, and the medians.

Median strips are one of the best places within a city to find wild plants in bloom. Variety and quantity are both possible because the green strips between roadways are often public, yet maintained only sporadically, two factors that allow wild plants to reach the flowering stage.

The borders I drew for the Wildflowers of the West Village contain two sizeable median strips. The first is located east to west on West Houston Street. The other one runs north and south between the frantic lanes of the West Side Highway.

I was exploring the middle oasis of the latter when I discovered scattered stands of plants about waist high with sharply lobed leaves that displayed the chalky blue and green coloration of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and kale. The upright blooms borne on sturdy smooth stems consisted of yellow gold florets supported by a ribbed calyx shaped like an urn. There were so many opening buds that the median had become a living yellow centerline.

My first reaction was to find a name for the colorful faces I was greeting for the first time. The quick reference I carry is Wildflowers by Roger Tory Peterson, the condensed version that is part of the Peterson First Guides series. This edition is narrow, perfect for the back pocket, and the species are arranged in color-coded sections, which is probably the single-best organizing principle for flowers.

My personal copy of Wildflowers by Roger Tory Peterson. (photo taken 10 06 2010)

Peterson and his books have been a part of my life since I was a grade school nature boy. He himself was a native New Yorker, born in Jamestown in 1908, and later a resident student in New York City proper. His body of work is extensive, earning him a rightful reputation as one of the greatest naturalists and outdoor artists of the Twentieth Century. Peterson is regarded primarily as an ornithologist and illustrator; his Field Guide to the Birds being the standard of the genre. He authored, co-authored, and illustrated numerous other titles, including the vast Golden Guide series: little hand-sized books I read and reread, with images I contemplated so often and long I could, in some cases, see and read the pages in my mind’s eye.

I have not internalized my condensed version of Wildflowers to such a degree, so I flipped through my copy right there between the lanes of the West Side Highway. The yellow section lead me right to an exact match on the bottom of pages 52 and 53: the Sow Thistle, Sonchus oleraceus.

As with most thistles, this one is a Eurasian immigrant from the extended daisy family. The basal rosette from which the plant rises, its toothed leaves, and the composite bloom of yellow florets all bear a close resemblance to its cousin, the dandelion. Both wildflowers are members of Asteraceae.

The Sow Thistle’s blooms are hermaphroditic and go to seed in the familiar form of white parachutes that take to the wind and spread far and wide. Like other ruderal species, the plant can take root wherever a seed lands, including the often neglected narrows of roadway medians.

Close-up of a Yellow Sow Thistle bloom, which is a composite of hermaphroditic florets. (photo taken 06 08 2010)

The cruciferous look of the sow thistle’s leaves advertises its edibility. Serve fresh with balsamic vinegar for a mildly bitter salad green akin to endive. When steamed, the flavor becomes closer to Swiss chard. As with most wild greens, the younger leaves near the top of the plant possess the most palatable flavor and texture. Those near the bottom, although more substantial in size, become stringy and bitter with older age.

An individual Yellow Sow Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) stands in Hudson River Park. (photo taken 08 16 2010)

– rPs 10 06 2010

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A Gentle Giant

July 23, 2010 at 4:59 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Nature, New York City, West Village

A Gentle Giant . . .

A single Common Mullein, Verbascum thapsus, takes center stage in Hudson River Park. (photo taken 07 14 2010)

This is the short story of one plant; one very large plant.

Early in May I spied a single rosette of huge, fuzzy, ovate leaves sprouting behind the wall of the AIDS Memorial in Hudson River Park. I knew right away what I was seeing because of the sheer scale of the plant –

Common Mullein, Verbascum Thapsus

This biennial resembles a wildflower on steroids. The base can cover a full square yard and the flowering phase of the plant can extend its height up to six or seven feet.

Being a biennial, I was not sure if this particular specimen was in its first or second year of growth. The common mullein does not go beyond the rosette phase in its first year. I also feared I might never know. The plant could have been removed outright, or at least trimmed back by gardening staff, so as not to flower, ever, even if it was ready and able.

A basal rosette of fuzzy, ovate leaves is all that appears in the first year of the biennial Common Mullein, Varbascum thapsus. (photo taken 05 13 2010)

I was delighted to see the plant remained unscathed. Its height increased incrementally, leaf by leaf, like the stories of a skyscraper-in-progress. When I returned from a short vacation in the beginning of July, I visited the site and found its spike had shot up and had begun to flower. The large yellow blooms consist of five petals surrounding five stamens. These appear in a rough sequence, slowly working up toward the tip, as the summer passes.

The towering flower spike of a Common Mullein, Verbascum thapsus, reaches new heights in Hudson River Park. (photo taken 07 14 2010)

The Common Mullein is a member of the figwort family and a naturalized immigrant from Europe. The plant does not take over quickly or indiscriminately and should not be considered an invasive species. The plant is best described as a pioneer ornamental, as it often takes hold in areas recently disturbed by construction. One such place is along roadsides. Loose groups in their second year resemble clusters of rockets ready for launch and can be seen flanking, and flowering, the state highways of the American northeast.

The plant possesses some astringent qualities that have been used for skin care. Otherwise, the Common Mullein is just a very large, unobtrusive, yellow wildflower; a gentle giant.

– rPs 07 23 2010

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Bloomsday

June 16, 2010 at 6:11 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflower Books, Wildflower Related, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Bloomsday, James Joyce, New York City, Philadelphia, West Village, Wildflowers

Bloomsday . . .

BLOOM, close up, of a Yellow Wood Sorrel (Oxalis stricta) growing in Hudson River Park. (photo taken 06 16 2010).

June 16th is Bloomsday, the date immortalized in Ulysses, the epic novel by James Joyce.

Joyce’s Bloom is not a flower; he is a character, an Irish Jewish everyman whose day-in-the-life in Dublin on June 16th, 1904 turned into material enough to sustain an 800-page narrative that shaped the course of modern fiction.

Joyce wrote two slim collections of poetry Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach), a play (Exiles), a collection of short stories (Dubliners), and three novels (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegan’s Wake), each one more ambitious in scope and scale than the last. His total published output was modest compared to some other literary giants, yet the quality and depth of his poetry and prose has more than made up for his paucity of titles.

My own relationship with the writing of James Joyce has brought me to the point I am now making. I have had several literary influences during my personal evolution as a writer, and of these Joyce remains the one at the head of the stairway: Joyce is Hemingway without the shotgun, Fitzgerald without the crack up, Ellison without the creative block, McCullers without the tragic Southern Gothic streak.

I first encountered James Joyce during my junior year at North Catholic high school in Pittsburgh. I took him on in the form of a spring term paper for AP English class. I chose to compose an essay based on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man because the theme of an alienated Catholic school boy’s maturation was one with which I could readily identify.

I enjoyed the novel and found the atmosphere of the book influencing my budding aesthetics. I began to think more broadly and started to view language as a kind of clay that I could sculpt. Despite this new view, careful research, and earnest writing, I had trouble typing up the final draft of my masterpiece. What a pothole for a young prose writer to encounter: technical difficulties. I had no typewriter of my own at the time (1984), and the one my grandfather provided me at the last minute was a manual antique with a worn ribbon. The machine was in such a poor state of repair that I spent more time extracting my fingers from between the sticky keys than I did making clean copy. The ten or twelve pages of the final legible draft took me three days to complete, which was two days too late for my English teacher’s deadline. He gave me a final grade of 67 for the paper, and the term, which was three points below the minimum passing grade of 70.

I had failed . . . failed at writing.

Twenty years later, I was living, and writing, in Philadelphia, where I had also become a member of the Rosenbach Museum and Library. This institution happens to own the original handwritten manuscript of Ulysses and holds an annual day-long reading in front of its building along the 2000 block of Delancey Place in Center City Philadelphia. Each June 16th, various regional politicians, business leaders, and cultural figures take turns reading passages from Ulysses in chronological order. The day finishes with an intimate call-and-response performance by the blind poets and brothers, David and Daniel Simpson, who recite, by braille, Bloom’s slipping into sleep, followed by Molly’s erotic closing monologue, performed in one-of-a-kind dramatic fashion by actress Drucie McDaniel.

During 2004, the centenary year of Bloomsday, I was invited by the Rosenbach to read a passage from the “Proteus” section of Ulysses as part of the Bloomsday 100 celebration. I had just signed a contract for my first book, Philadelphia on the Fly, so I was listed on the bill as “Angler & Author” . . . a rather unique reader’s bio. How sweet this last literary laugh was for me, the English class failure, the Joycean failure; a Dedalus who was now also a Phoenix who had become a published author and a reader at the 100th anniversary of James Joyce’s high holiday, Blloomsday.

How this anecdote relates to wildflowers can be found within the layers of language art Joyce built into the name, Bloom: a pun, a literary device, an exercise that holds the skeleton key to the writings of James Joyce, and to much of my own. His writing, and this holiday in honor of that writing, both allowed my own writer’s life to take root, to grow, and to bloom into this latest incarnation . . . Wildflowers of the West Village.

– rPs 06 16 2010

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NYC Wildflower Week

May 28, 2010 at 5:11 pm · Filed under 1, Wildflower Related, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged Nature, New York City, NYC Wildflower Week

NYC Wildflower Week . . .

The native perennial, Yellow Wood Sorrel (Oxalis stricta), is just one of the many wildflowers that adds a glow to Manhattan during the month of May. (photo taken May 13, 2010)

The 2010 NYC Wildflower Week was celebrated between May 1 and 9.

The NYCWW sponsored numerous free events on various wildflower and gardening topics, including botanical walks and classes in the cultivation and cooking of native species. Several were hosted at Union Square with others spread across the five boroughs of the city. The organizers supplemented the activities with an excellent website loaded with resources for those interested in both wildflowers and New York City gardens. The mission statement of the NYCWW, available also on the website, sums up their intentions well . . .

“NYC Wildflower Week presents a full week of free events to showcase the 53,000 acres of open space and 778 native plants in NYC’s 5 boroughs. The goal of the week is simple: to encourage New Yorkers to get to know the nature in their own back yard and to inspire them to protect this natural heritage for future generations. In 2010 we are transforming the organization from an all-volunteer one-week annual event into a full-time, year round resource that empowers all New Yorkers to cultivate and preserve a landscape that is beautiful, sustainable and ecologically sound.”

More information and resources are archived on the NYCWW website. Here is the URL . . .

http://www.nycwildflowerweek.org/

Meanwhile, The New York Times sponsored a call for photo submissions in conjunction with NYC Wildflower Week. The May 6 post of the City Room Blog – ”Let’s Create a Magic Garden” — stated . . .

“And just as wild plants make this most built-up of cities a more habitable place, we are looking to florify City Room”

Like potted plants spaced outside of an office tower entrance, or flower boxes adorning the facade of a brownstone tenament, this blog post injected a wash of color into the online component of the newspaper once known as “The Gray Lady” . . .

“Let’s Create a Magic Garden”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/lets-create-a-magic-garden/

I considered participating myself and, after some deliberation, decided to shelve my ego and submission plans. Wildflowers of the West Village is a forum best designed to report and comment on the intersection of Nature and New York City, and so I therefore recused myself and focused instead as a journalist in order to report on this good urban wildflower news.

The results of the submission call culminated in a May 13 post on the City Room Blog — “A City in Bloom” — that took the form of a slide show. The City Room Blog editors did bend their own rules and allow some domesticated flower photos. They claimed the season was still too early for a variety of wildflowers. Perhaps I should have directed them to Wildflowers of the West Village for some reference points. Such is the internal debate of a nature writer trying to write, promote the writing, while staying at the same time somewhat objective and out of the subject’s light.

I’ll sign off here and allow the featured photos themselves speak for the Wildflowers of the West Village, and for all five boroughs of New York.

“A City in Bloom”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/a-city-in-bloom/?scp=1&sq=city%20in%20bloom&st=cse

– rPs 05 28 2010

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Wildflowers of the West Village

Archive for Wildflowers: Yellow

Wildflowers of the Winter Solstice

The Quest for the Goldenrod

The Breakfast Bloom

An April Shower’s Wildflowers

The Easter Egg Effect

The Yellow Centerline

A Gentle Giant

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