Darling Dahlias

The title of this post comes from a charming mystery series by Susan Wittig Albert, featuring members of a ladies' garden club in Darling, Alabama, during the Great Depression. Dahlias are not a major feature of the books, just the name of the club, but today the dahlia bed at the Toledo Botanical Garden became the center of my attention for a while.

Dahlias are not plants that I have grown much (anything that requires staking, regular feeding, and digging up in the fall not being something that is likely to live long in my yard), and these beds are not the sort of garden that generally appeals to me, but some days, you have to love sheer exuberance, and that is something that dahlias have.

Where does one even begin to describe such a ridiculous explosion of a blossom? Dahlias have come a long way from the daisy-like wildflowers "discovered" in the mountains of central Mexico in the seventeenth century (though flowers similar to wild species are available to gardeners in the US). Today's dahlias come in a range of heights, shapes, and bloom sizes, from miniatures that hug the ground to plants taller than my 5'6".

This gorgeous thing is called "Spartacus."

The dahlias to which I am drawn tend to be the gaudy ones, dahlia genes allowing for a greater variety of petal shapes and flower forms than most plants. The old-fashioned daisy shapes and the two varieties above are just a few of the existing dahlia types. Some form nearly round pompoms

while others grow quilled petals

and some put their energy into making their fertile flowers the eye-catching part of the blossom. (No, those large petals that draw the human eye are not the business end of a flower, which is, after all, a sex organ. The important parts are often the tiny, inconspicuous ones.)

Looking at some of the blooms on display had me wondering how these things get pollinated. More importantly, do they do anything for pollinating insects? On many of the blossoms, nothing that resembled a stamen or a pistil is immediately observable, though the plants are obviously managing to reproduce. 

Looking closely, I did finally manage to see a few insects drawn to the plants, some tiny black things in this pale yellow giant,

something on the petals of this red collarette type,

and finally, a bee finding something to her liking.

Our cultivated dahlias are unlikely ever to be major players in a wildlife garden, but once in a while, there is something to be said for pure fun.

Underestimating meadows

When most people think of dramatic landscapes, mountains or deep forests probably come to mind. A few may envision the wide-open spaces of the midwestern prairie, but I doubt that many people automatically get excited about the smaller patches of grassland we call meadows. (A young relative once referred to our meadow planting as "a weed bed.") A healthy meadow, however, is a thing of subtle beauty and, more importantly, a small-scale biodiversity hotspot.

This meadow, part of Wildwood Preserve in Toledo, was livelier this morning than either the trail through the floodplain forest or the Window on Wildlife this park uses to lure birds and other creatures close enough for easy observation. Because the bur oak on the edge of the meadow is one of my favorite trees, I generally take advantage of a well-placed bench to sit and commune with this old tree that I sometimes call the Prairie Sentinel (even though this area is not technically prairie as it is not dominated by tall warm-season grasses).

The most noticeable creatures were the goldfinches that seemed to be alighting in droves on every patch of thistle. This particular plant,

which looked perfectly ordinary to my human eyes, at one point had four male goldfinches (and probably a female or two that I did not see, seated as I was some distance away) darting in and out, as well as two hummingbirds (at the same time--not typical behavior for these aggressively territorial little birds), bees of various species, and several hummingbird moths.

The sea of goldenrod (which actually contained at least three species of Solidago) was providing hospitality to hordes of monarch butterflies, tanking up before their long migration to a Mexican forest they have never seen. Sulfurs, whites, and skippers were abundant, and one lovely ailanthus webworm moth was hanging out right next to the trail.

Yes, that little creature is a moth, and its caterpillars eat the ironically-named tree of heaven, so even though the extension of its range (formerly the American tropics from South Florida to Costa Rica) may be a troubling sign, any insect that will eat a noxious weed of a tree is in my estimation a good bug.

Goldenrod was not the only flower blooming today. Ironweed was going strong, accompanied by asters just starting to bud, a few liatris hanging on, and numbers of smaller, more subtle blooms interspersed among the dominant yellow. And while they were not noticeable, the grasses were there, sending their roots down several feet into the soil and helping to create the soil matrix that is the basis for all other terrestrial life. Some bird species require landscapes like this one, nesting on the ground and depending on the thick vegetation to protect their young and provide the insects that will feed them. Even birds we normally associate with trees make use of grasslands. Today, this scruffy cardinal (either molting or a particularly unfortunate adolescent male just getting his adult coloration) spent a good bit of time calling from the shrub dogwoods that form part of the edge between Wildwood's meadow and forest areas, then more time investigating the seed selection in the meadow plants.

Meadows may not get much press as exciting places to visit, but they should not be underestimated. Spending a little time in a meadow reveals much more than is visible at first glance.

A marsh reborn

Definitely not the stately home of E. M. Forster's classic novel, Howard Marsh is the newest Toledo metropark, which opened just this year. Formerly Howard Farm, the 1000-acre property has been restored to a functioning wetland adjoining Metzger Marsh and not far from the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge and warbler wonderland Magee Marsh. The park boasts a quarter-mile boardwalk and several miles of hiking and kayaking tails.

Because the park is so new, I wasn't sure what to expect, and at first sight, it is not immediately awe-inspiring.

The trees are youngsters, still needing protection from browsers, and most of the grasses are European, but the old farm is definitely coming back to life.

They were too far away for photography, but the entrance pond was hosting a number of waterfowl, including one of my favorites, the American coot with its ridiculous-looking white feet. Ducks were everywhere, as were seagulls which, as seagulls do, were taking advantage of human-made structures. This one seemed to have something to say about everything.

 Great egrets were everywhere, indicating that the fishing in the marsh is already pretty good, at least by their standards.

For those who enjoy peaceful landscapes, the views are already worth viewing,

and lots of life was happening everywhere.

This particular blob of floating muck (some sort of aquatic vegetation)

was the site of a lot of activity by a variety of small creatures, with life and death dramas being played out by dragonflies and whatever the tiny silvery things were--tadpoles, maybe?

Perhaps the most exciting resident of Howard Marsh, however, is one of which I did not get a good look, although my binoculars were strong enough to confirm that ospreys were indeed using the osprey platform. I suspect that these apex predators of the marshlands will be increasing their numbers.

This old farm, reborn as newly-protected wetland, is likely to make the western shore of Lake Erie even more of a wildlife mecca than it currently is. Kudos to the visionaries of the Toledo Metropark system for their ambitions plan to have a metropark within a five-minute drive of every county resident.