Wild and Fancy Daisies
… Before we lose touch with nature
Diligent followers of my posts since arriving on the Substack shores a couple of months ago will be aware that apart from unconventional gardening, the main purpose of my articles is usually to introduce interested readers to a select few species of animals and plants that still surround us in our town and suburbs. A couple of weeks ago, I added a “Bonus” to one of my posts about the importance of knowing the names of the creatures we encounter … if you missed it, have a look at the last couple of paragraphs of:
https://1001species.substack.com/p/garden-spiders
After all – “Knowing the names of things is useful if you want to talk to somebody else – so you can tell them what you’re talking about.”
Richard Feynman
And so … serendipity happens. I was pointed in the direction of a professor of landscape ecology at the University of North Carolina. Sara Gagné who it seems once lived across the street from where I live today, though that was before we arrived in 1998. She studied biology at McGill around the turn of the century and has just published a really good book entitled “Nature at Your Door” (Stackpole Books, 2023). It seems she shares some of my concerns. Her book is all about getting and keeping in touch with the natural world near to where we live – urban nature. She is concerned that many people have lost touch with nature, and she writes:
Our indoor culture has led us to lose touch with nature, like a friend that you haven't spoken to in a long time and you no longer know where they live, what they do for a living, or whether they have a partner or kids. We can no longer name the species around us. Case in point, few if any of my students year after year recognize the House Finch, one of the most common species on campus that they surely would have seen at home as well since childhood.
Today’s chapter of 1001 Species is in the same vein as last week’s introduction to garden spiders. I will take a brief look at something seasonally botanical that surely everyone is familiar with and which can be seen close to most of our homes if not actually in our gardens. All the species I present in this and future articles are ones which we can see by looking around us - we can see, but too often do not observe.
ASTERS (well, still Asters but no longer the genus Aster)
Asters, along with golden rod, are arguably THE most important garden and roadside plants that support wildlife at this time of the year. Specifically, in this part of the country, the Common Blue Wood Aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium) and the New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae).
But before we get down to specific flowers, a little taxonomy. Why? Because the North American “Asters” as we know them are no longer members of that genus any longer, while remaining in the familyAsteraceae. Wikipedia summarizes the issue thus – “The genus Aster once contained nearly 600 species in Eurasia and North America, but after morphologic and molecular research on the genus during the 1990s, it was decided that the North American species are better treated in a series of other related genera. After this split, there are roughly 180 species within the genus, all but one being confined to Eurasia. The New World species have now been reclassified in several other genera”. The flowers in our garden and local parks I am talking about are now Symphyotrichum spp. for the most part.
Confusing is it not? Needless to say, we still call them Asters but really, they are not.
Having got that nerdy bit off my chest, here are today’s subjects of interest. Common flowers you will pass along the way from here to there. Too often dismissed as weeds, like so many other plants, but worthy of stopping to enjoy.
Common Blue Wood Aster (Symphotrychium cordifolium)
For most of the year these are decidedly unimpressive, rather stick-like perennial plants that unless you know what is coming in the autumn you might pull out as “weeds” and certainly pay little attention to. We have a ditch full of them at the front of the house, and I am sure many passers-by are less than impressed and consider our gardening style to be scruffy at best … but now they are starting to come into their own. When flowers do eventually emerge in late summer – and these flowers are not very large - they are mostly bluish daisy-like in colour and form. The first blooms are usually welcomed in early September in my corner of the world. Oh, and they are not always blue …
New England Aster (Symphotrychium novae-angliae)
These are very striking plants and, naturally, the plant breeders have been at work trying to “improve” them. This always makes life more complex than it needs to be. These are really what garden designers call Michaelmas Daisies because they flower at that time of the year. They were long ago imported to European gardens, but are natives of North America. Over 70 cultivars have been developed by gardeners but here in eastern Canada I am focussing on the wild forms … at least, I hope so, but you can never know when subtle hybrids have crept into a patch.
Fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus)
These flower in late spring and early summer right through to fall. Annuals, with spray-like heads of 30 or more flowers, mostly white, sometimes pink. A nice plant to encourage in your plantings as it nestles in corners around the edges. A catch-all common name as there are 170 species of Fleabane.
Just Daisies
Needless to say, the species above are “just” daisies to most people. A group not to be dismissed lightly though.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ASTERS
The seeds of the Asteraceae such as S. novae-angliae are an important fall and winter food source for songbirds. It is important, should you have them in your garden or round the margins of fields and roadsides under your control, that they be left to stand tall after seeds have set. The tidying of fall gardens can be pretty bad for wildlife … but I will save that discussion for another post. Many nectar-feeding insects take nectar from the flowers – butterflies, moths, ants, flies, and bees. Later the birds get the seeds and we all have something lovely to look at. Everyone wins if we just stand back. Do leave the tidying until spring.
Where is this newsletter going?
Jolly good question – basically wherever it leads me but guided by your feedback and suggestions. The basic topics are clear. I know that already I have over 100 signed-up subscribers, plus a considerable number more who come and read my pieces if I share the links or if readers share them for me. Presumably you are all interested in the themes of urban nature and wildlife gardening, or you wouldn’t be here. Topics about which I have much more to say. But then, another newsletter writer on Substack whose work I enjoy (he writes about "sciency things" for a rather larger readership than I have yet accumulated) posted the following in the last few days. Made me think. He noted that the advice usually given to writers is to "stay in your lane" and “only write about what you know about". Mostly I do that because facts matter ... but he also went on to say the following:
Write what you want to learn.
The trick is to be open to being corrected – which is a great way to build trust and engagement in readers because if they see you're humble enough to be publicly corrected and own up to your mistakes, they will consider your voice a more credible presence in their Inboxes.
The other thing about this is – it lets you invite your readers on a journey with you. A journey of learning. You're guiding them, but you're learning alongside them. That is a really compelling value proposition in a newsletter. You just need to share the excitement of learning something you're both interested in.