Summer, Solanum . . .
New York City wakes to the light of August and the news of fifty days and counting when temperatures have held at 80 degree Fahrenheit or more.
Humidity feeds the air and makes the air felt. The act of breathing becomes an even damper labor requiring calories if on a run to survey wildflowers along Manhattan’s banks of the Hudson River.
Inland, the islands holds tree pits colonized like a kind of microcosm of monoculture. Within squares sprout Galinsoga, Lady’s Thumb, Yellow Sow Thistle, and Marestail.
Not so much the Asiatic Dayflower. Commelina cummunis, which appreciates seasons of high water and a more modest light.
This season being dry, and hot, one of the most common sights are of tiny black tomatoes hanging in sparse clumps from vigorous stems and ovate green leaves supporting also tiny flowers that resemble sunnyside eggs shaped into five petals arranged as a star.
Solanum nigrum, the Nightshade. August in the Nightshade, or . . .
. . . a Summer, Solanum, with some others remains the steady news of the day.
– rPs 08 26 2015
Leave a Reply