I've received some helpful educational feedback in response to my BYGL Alert posted earlier today extolling the virtues of Maximilian Sunflower  (Helianthus maximiliani) [See Hort Shorts; Perennial of the Week:  Maximilian Sunflower  (Helianthus maximiliani)].

This native member of the Aster family (Asteraceae) has become one of my top favorite plants for naturalized areas.  Of course, there are no perfect plants; Maximilian Sunflowers mix a multitude of virtues with a few imperfections.

It is a weed of waste places, which turns wherever it grows into a yellow-gold slice of sunshine on the ground, is Solidago spp. or more commonly known to many as the annoying weed, Goldenrod.  While it is known as a weed, it also provides a vibrant splash of color to the edges of fields, in ditches and other abandoned or disturbed sites.

  Tonight I am doing a program at Secrest Arboretum in the Ohio Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture series for arborist certification. We will be learning together about “Tree Biology”, so let’s remind ourselves – and teach others – about “the root of the matter.”  Here are four maxims about the critical, but often overlooked by many, key to plant health: roots.

  Flowers are, of course, wondrous, the birds and the bees and all that, the pollen grain germinating on the receptive stigma with the pollen tube then delivering sperm nuclei to the ovules below, with the thus fertilized eggs becoming seeds surrounded by the ovary ripening into the fruit. Flowers may be inconspicuous, but they may also may be beauteous; here are a few captured by camera this past week

Here at the Medina Extension Office, we have Ironweed (Vernonia spp.) planted among other native and annual flowers outside.  And every year people visit our office just to ask, "What is that giant purple flower!?"  Its purple flowers are quite an eye catcher and, despite having "weed" in its name, ironweed's late blooms in summer to fall and brilliant color make it an attractive native wildflower for many gardeners.

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A number of interesting plant galls look so much like fungal structures that for years they were misidentified as a fungal plant disease.  Such is the case with the goldenrod leaf galls associated with the midge fly, Asteromyia carbonifera.

  One of the joys of horticulture is the variety of people all of us meet and all of our different experiences and knowledge. With that in mind, earlier this year I learned about the world of truncated domes and tactile paving. 

  On Vesey Street in downtown Manhattan, between the 9/11 memorials and the Irish Hunger Memorial along the Hudson River, is a row of Chinese elms in a streetscape. Recently, as I was walking there I noticed two of the elms with thinning foliage, and for that matter they were set apart by big-time protective railings and stakings and alone among the row, Treegators, extra factors that turned out to be mostly non-sequiturs, but did initially catch my eye.

  Earlier this week Extensioneer Erik Draper featured poison ivy foliar coloration as a Harbinger of Autumn (http://bygl.osu.edu/node/567). As we approach September 22 and the Autumnal Equinox, here are a few more visuals of the changing of the guard.