Got the Cohosh Blues?

Blue cohosh, Caulophyllum thalictroides, is a woodland wildflower that blooms at the same time as other early spring wildflowers in the forests of the eastern and midwestern US.  We saw it recently in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  Blue cohosh obtained its name from the blue-purple color of its smooth, rather odd-looking stems and its blue, toxic berries.    There are three “cohosh” species in the eastern forest flora – blue, white (Actaea pachypoda) (which we also saw in the Dunes) and black (Actaea racemosa -- formerly known as Cimicifuga racemosa).  They received their names not because they are botanically related – blue cohosh is in the barberry family (Berberidaceae) while white and black cohoshes are in the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae) – but rather from the Native American tribes who used them as medicinals.  Blue and black cohosh in particular are used as labor stimulants, often in a preparation that includes both herbs; white cohosh was more often used for colds and coughs, but it’s also recorded as being a labor stimulant by one tribe.

Blue cohosh has a long-standing reputation among midwives, not only as a medication that can be taken to start an overdue labor or assist a weak uterus in childbirth, but also as an antispasmodic to relieve excessive uterine cramps during menstruation or relieve pain in childbirth.  This dual action, typical of a number of herbs, is described as “tonic” activity, or an action that normalizes body functions.  Tonic activity is also attributed to herbs like ginseng, which is thought to normalize overall body function (blue cohosh is sometimes called yellow ginseng or blue ginseng).  The uterine stimulating and antispasmodic activities are attributed to different phytochemicals in the plant. 

Blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides)

This array of activities makes blue cohosh sound like a very useful plant.  But it has a darker side.  For one thing, it has also been used to cause abortions because of its ability to stimulate uterine contractions.  In fact, herbalists recommend that it be avoided during and up until the end of pregnancy for this reason.  It contains a number of phytochemicals that could cause birth defects, and the plant extract has been shown to cause birth defects in lab animals, so it’s fortunate that it is traditionally avoided early in pregnancy.  It can also cause effects similar to an overdose of nicotine, which was noted in a case of a young woman using it for an abortion.  There are also reports of health problems in babies born after mothers used blue cohosh, though it is still uncertain whether blue cohosh is actually at fault in this case. 

Whether the case reports truly represent blue cohosh toxicity or are simply unfortunate coincidences, the potential for nicotine-like toxicity in blue cohosh makes it something to avoid. White cohosh is also something to be avoided, which you might deduce from one of its other names, baneberry (another name is doll’s eyes, from the fruits, which are white with a black spot).  Although blue and white cohosh are in different families, there are actually some similarities to the way the plants look.  Blue cohosh has very smooth purplish stems, and grows about a foot or two high, with compound leaves and rounded leaflets.  White cohosh is about the same size, has compound leaves, and also has a very smooth stem, which has a whitish tinge.  The actual fruits and flowers are quite different, of course, but it was rather amusing to note the two species growing right across the trail from each other in one of our trips to the Indiana Dunes.  Both are early spring wildflowers, though the white cohosh blooms a week or so later than the blue.  Black cohosh, although related to white cohosh, has a very different look, and blooms much later in the summer.

While blue cohosh is not the most scientifically validated herbal remedy, it is a lovely plant to encounter in the forest, and it can be grown at home if you have a moist and shady area.  It may take a while to germinate, and it takes two years before the plant matures, but it has a unique presence.  White cohosh, another very attractive plant, can also be cultivated, in shady areas with rich soil. Do keep your kids and grandkids away from the berries of either of these, though!

White Cohosh or White Baneberry (Actaea pachypoda)

Charlotte

In the eastern US there is also a very close relative of white cohosh, or white baneberry, known as red baneberry (Actaea rubra).  The only really obvious difference is the red fruit, in contrast to the white fruit of white cohosh, though there are subtle differences, such as the thickness of the flower stalks (pedicels and peduncles) and other minor aspects of the small flowers.  Vegetatively, they are virtually indistinguishable.  (The matter is even worse -- the fruits of red baneberry are white on rare occasions, and those of white baneberry are rarely red).  In the Indiana Dunes, red baneberry is extremely rare, while white baneberry is fairly common.

Michael

On the Heron Rookery Trail

On our trip to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on Mothers’ Day weekend, we walked on the Heron Rookery Trail.  This trail runs along the east arm of the Little Calumet River, some distance inland from the large sand dunes by the lake.  On the north side of the river is the rookery, home to the nesting sites of about 100 pairs of great blue herons, which have come to this area for 60 years.  On the other side of the river is a trail, from which visitors can look for the herons, and enjoy a lovely stand of bottomland forests.  The trail runs through a fragment of forest that is about a mile long and half a mile wide, situated in the middle of agricultural land a couple of miles away from the main body of the National Lakeshore. The Indiana Dunes area has been conserved by purchasing patches of habitat that have been knitted together into one administrative unit, and there are a few other outlying patches of the park like this (another one is Pinhook Bog, a quaking bog that we have also visited).

We’d been on this trail last year in the summer and found it had a number of interesting wildflowers.  It also has a reputation as a good place for spring wildflowers. We started out at the east end of the trail, as we had last summer, where there are numerous large sycamores, and some savanna-like patches quite near the river.  We didn’t manage to see any herons (I think you need a ranger along to point them out).  There were a lot of wildflowers to look at, though – 3 species of violets, purple deadnettle, spring beauty, lots of bedstraws, woodland phlox, cow parsnip starting to come up but not blooming yet.  But the weather was a little dicey, and there wasn’t quite the profusion of wildflowers that we’d been expecting.  So we walked back to the parking lot, by which time the weather cleared up a little.  On the spur of the moment, we decided to try starting at the west end of the trail, where we’d never been before.

Purple Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum) and Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia)

After a short drive, we came to the west end parking lot and got out the camera gear. Right away it was obvious we were in a very different environment.  There was an absolute riot of typical Midwestern spring wildflowers all over the forest floor.  Three Trillium species, rue anemone and false rue anemone, mayapple, dwarf ginseng, blue cohosh, wild ginger, more spring beauty, wild ginger, and jack-in-the-pulpit were in bloom.  We found leaves of Hepatica, though the early-blooming flowers of this species were already gone. Bloodroot fruits were in evidence, but the plant was no longer in bloom. The contrast with the west end of the trail was striking.  We also noted that the tree species had changed. Instead of sycamores, there were beeches and maples, as well as tulip trees.  Beeches and maples are characteristic of the final stage in succession in this area, which suggests this area has been undisturbed for a long period. 

Declined Trillium (Trillium flexipes), Red Trillium or Prairie Trillium (Trillium recurvatum)

and False Rue-anemone (Isopyrum biternatum)

Dwarf Ginseng (Panax trifolium)

The soils along the Little Calumet River are all poorly drained and flat.  Different soil types appear in different parts of the area, which may account for the contrasting forest types at the different ends of the trail.  We had noticed last summer how wet it was at the east end of the trail, although the west end also had some large areas of standing water on this trip.  These wet soils are likely what has saved this patch of forest, and others along the Little Calumet River.  They are simply too damp for farming, so they have not been cut down, which has been the fate of most of the native forest.  Because the forests were relatively undisturbed, this rich spring wildflower community has been allowed to grow into its present diverse and highly developed state. The lovely scenes in this habitat fragment are a reminder of what can happen when we leave natural areas undisturbed.  It stands as an inspiration for all our conservation and preservation efforts.

Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense)

Charlotte

The Wet Smokies

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park gets 85 inches of rain a year – quite a bit more than Chicago, for instance, which gets only about 34 inches.  The substantial rainfall and cool mountain temperatures encourage a profusion of moss. Mosses grow on dead logs lying on the forest floor, rocks and boulders along mountain streams, around the bases of large trees, and on cliff faces and the faces of the many road cuts that were made through the mountains when the Park roads were built.  The moss is quite thick in areas, and not infrequently small plants and wildflowers take root in mossy areas.  In fact, the decaying, moss-covered logs are such hospitable places for small plants to take root that they are commonly called “nurse logs,” and play an important role in forest ecology.  The deep green of the moss brilliantly sets off the colors of the flowers.  The setting of small flowering plants growing on mossy logs and cliffs, and at the mossy bases of trees, makes for excruciatingly cute photographs.

Sweet White Violet (Viola blanda)

Broadleaf Toothwort (Cardamine diphylla)

We stopped by a wet cliff along the Newfound Gap Road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to photograph Crested Dwarf Iris, which proved to be past their prime.  While looking at a patch of moss, I thought I spotted a Hepatica in bud.  On a closer look, though, there were no Hepatica leaves around – in fact, no leaves at all associated with the 4-inch tall plants.  Michael came over and told me it was an Orobanche or Broomrape, a parasitic plant growing in only one or two places in the Park.  This species absorbs nutrition from the roots of nearby tree and shrub species, rather than making its own through photosynthesis.  Because it does not photosynthesize, the entire plant lacks chlorophyll, and is white to purple in color, rather than green.  The Broomrape was growing on a steep wooded bank, and getting a photo of it required a little creativity in setting up the tripod!

Cancer Root or Broomrape (Orobanche uniflora)

Charlotte

Puddling Behavior of Butterflies

During the first 2 ½ days of our spring Great Smoky Mountains trip, I was perplexed to see Tiger Swallowtails and Spicebush Swallowtails flying down the Newfound Gap Road, the main road through the Park.  Every 5 minutes or so, one of these large butterflies would sail by. I simply could not figure out the attraction of all that pavement.   There was a hint two days into the trip when I spotted a Tiger Swallowtail flapping its way along the course of one of the many mountain streams common in the Smokies. 

The problem of the pavement-seeking butterflies was solved in our third day when we stopped at a stream at the base of the mountains so that Michael could photograph it.  Some fifty Tiger and Spicebush Swallowtails were roosting on the ground, crammed into a wet area by the side of the stream, all in the space of about a square foot.  What were they doing there?  It’s called “puddling,”and is a behavior observed in butterflies all over the world (we’ve also seen it on a trip to Vietnam years ago).  Just taking their usual diet of nectar, butterflies can’t get enough sodium and minerals to reproduce.  So in many butterflies the males flock to shallow puddles or moist soil and sip the nutrient-infused water they find there through their long, tubular proboscis.  They seem to like to do this in groups, and the sight of butterflies already puddling may attract other individuals.  And indeed, every few minutes, another butterfly would flap its way down the stream and land in the puddling area. Of course, this was quite a photo opportunity, and Michael took advantage of it immediately.  The butterflies must have been quite concentrated on their drinks, because we came quite close to them without scaring any off.

Further up the trail we came to a very shallow streamlet crossing the gravel, with a few individuals puddling.  There were lots of puddles and streams along the Newfound Gap Road, so I guess that was what all those road-hugging butterflies we saw were looking for.  Perhaps the road itself resembles a stream course for the butterflies, and cues them to search along it for puddles, as they certainly were doing along the stream where Michael photographed them.

Charlotte

Finding Orchids in the Great Smokies

There’s something special about encountering a native orchid in a temperate forest woodland.  Part of it is the sense of surprise at finding a lovely and often rare plant in the middle of more familiar flora.  At our first stop in our Great Smoky Mountains National Park spring trip in mid April this year, I was wandering around a slope covered with early spring wildflowers when I spotted a Showy Orchis.  This rather squat orchid sports a light purple flowercap and a white lower lip, and is fairly common in the Park.  We found them at many of the stops on our 3-day trip.

Showy Orchis (Galearis spectabilis)

Michael says that part of the specialness of orchid species is the habitats that many of them grow in.  These environments often have a magical and mysterious quality.  The orchid I found at our last stop on the trip was certainly an example of this.  I went off the trail into a small grove of trees strewn with moss-covered boulders shaded in soft, filtered light.  Perched on one of the rocks was a Pink Lady’s Slipper orchid, a member of the royal family of US orchid species, the Cypripediums.  It proved to be one of a small colony, just coming into flower, with one of the individuals in nearly full bloom.  The flower stems were nodding and strongly arched.  Michael took some lovely photos of these.  He’s hoping to get a picture of one in full bloom later, so he can put together a set of three or four showing the flowering process. 

Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)

Definitely a good trip for orchids!

Charlotte

Introduction

We are starting this new blog to share our adventures searching for and photographing wildflowers, other plants, birds, butterflies and anything found in nature.  One of our projects is writing and taking photographs for a book showcasing the wonderful diversity of wildflowers and other plants in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, the Indian Dunes State Park, and the southern Lake Michigan area generally.  Though the blog will follow our work on this book, we will also be posting reports from our wider botanical travels.  We look forward to your comments -- please keep them coming!


Michael Huft and Charlotte Gyllenhaal