Dead nettles (Lamium spp.) look like stinging nettles before flowering, but they don’t have the sting, hence the dead. Some of the species could be confused with other mint family plants; a common example being henbit and purple dead nettle resembling ground ivy/creeping charlie. It won’t take long in a foraging meme group to find …
Common toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) has a much easier folk name to remember: butter-and-eggs. the flowers look just like the breakfast. Around Haliburton this nonnative plant is common on open sandy and gravelly ground. It’s got a lot of aggressive competition in these disturbed areas, but I usually find at least one when I’m walking down …
This isn’t the herb lungwort, which we’ll be covering next month. This is a very special lichen also called lungwort. Tree lungwort AKA lung lichen (Lobaria pulmonaria) wowed me the instant I saw it. This is a large distinct lichen, named after its pulmonary appearance. I first spotted it on a tree in damp woods …
Dear Wood Folk, Buttercups are one of the first flowering plants I noticed when I moved to Haliburton County, Ontario. They have a reflective shininess to them that makes them pop. Buttercups are common in my yard, and common along the nearest trail. These mostly perennial plants show up in varied terrain. Some species are …
Most local knapweeds (centaurea spp.) look similar to bull thistle. However, you’re more likely to find your knapweed in patches instead of lone like bull thistles. Spotted knapweed (c. maculosa) is noted in Haliburton Flora on the edge of the highway, which is where I’ve seen it too. Another centaurea is bachelor’s buttons, as pictured …
Beggarsticks (bidens spp.) may look like flowers to choke on, but they are more edible and medicinal than they appear. We currently have around half a dozen species of beggarticks (bidens spp.) in Haliburton county, Ontario. But the only one I’ve noticed is devil’s beggarticks (bidens frondosa). It’s fairly common in waste areas, sand flats …