March 2024:  Moss

When we think of plants, we most likely picture those with trunks or stems attached to roots.  Indeed, a dazzling array of species fall into the several divisions of vascular plants in the Plant Kingdom under the Linnean classification system.  But one division—Bryophyta—is reserved just for the world’s more than 12,000 species of mosses, which absorb moisture directly through their leaf cells and therefore stay low to the ground or other moist surfaces. 

In New England, mosses perform important ecological functions.  As anyone who has seen moss growing on rock can appreciate, mosses are pioneers of barren terrain.  The New York Botanical Garden notes that mosses can combine with lichen to stabilize sand dunes and provide the necessary conditions for successive vegetation. 

Moreover, mosses act as sponges, retaining many times their own weight in water and then releasing it slowly, helping to curtail flooding and runoff in wet periods, and providing moisture in drier spells.  While mosses prefer moist, shaded conditions, they can go dormant during droughts, and swell into green color once rain returns. 

A carpet of moss has a timeless, primeval quality, as if we sense that mosses were on the earth tens of millions of years before the first mammals and flowering plants appeared. 

In Japan, a proper reverence for moss is a requirement for entering Koke-dera, the famed “Moss Temple.”  Arriving visitors must kneel at a low desk to copy the brushstrokes of a Buddhist sutra with a quill pen as monks chant; only then do they gain admittance to the temple’s velvety, mysterious, moss-covered grounds.

Luckily, as these photos show, we can find our own mossy worlds here on Mayflower Point with a casual walk; reverence is optional but encouraged. 

October 2023:  New England aster, Symphyotrichum novo-angliae.

New England aster ranges far beyond the region of its name: it is native to a broad swath of the United States sweeping west from the northeast and mid-Atlantic states to the eastern edges of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado and even to pockets in New Mexico.

Its rich purple color, a vibrant complement to goldenrod, which also blooms in the fall, captures our attention in meadows, roadside verges and cultivated gardens. 

New England aster prefers relatively sunny locations that retain some moisture.  When these conditions are met, it can grow as tall as six feet. If that is too obstreperous for your garden, you can cut the plant back by half on Memorial Day and then again, if you’re so inclined, on July 4, to produce a bushier plant. 

But you might want to go easy:  the pearl crescent, a pretty orange butterfly with black edges on its wings, lays its eggs on the undersides of the leaves from spring through fall.  Once New England aster flowers, its nectar attracts many other pollinators, including bees and the monarch butterfly.

Four other asters in the Symphyotrichum genus are native to Cape Cod and also beloved by pollinators:  S. cordifolium (blue wood aster), S. laeve (smooth aster), S. novo-belgiae (New York aster) and S. puniceum (purple-stemmed aster).  They, too, bloom in autumn but generally in paler tones of lavender and blue. 

September 2023:  Goldenrod, Solidago. 

This month, our fields and roadsides take on a golden tinge, thanks to the blossoms of the many goldenrod species that thrive on Cape Cod.  While some species can tolerate more shade than others, most revel in bright sun. 

What all these goldenrod species have in common is their status as “pollinator powerhouse plants,” the designation the Native Plant Trust gives native plants that “support a proportionally large number of caterpillar species.”  For herbaceous plants like goldenrod, the label means that they host caterpillars of more than 15 insect species.  (Caterpillars, in turn, often serve as food for birds and their young.)  Adult bees, butterflies and moths also visit goldenrod blossoms for nectar.

Goldenrod’s reputation has suffered in the past because it blooms at the same time as ragweed, the bane of allergy sufferers.  However, whereas ragweed pollen is dispersed by the wind, which is how it ends up in human nostrils, goldenrod’s sticky pollen requires bees and other pollinators for dispersal.

Goldenrod is sometimes considered weedy because it can opportunistically take advantage of disturbed soil to take root, but its exuberance is much more restrained in stable areas. 

Nonetheless, a strong argument can be made for exuberance, as demonstrated by this field of goldenrod at Fort Hill.