This pleasant smelling perennial vine is blooming in northwest Ohio. American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens) is less aggressive than the Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis).  Blooms are a source of nectar and are attractive to butterflies.  The plant is also a larval host for marine blue, zarucco duskywing, and skippers.  An added bonus for gardeners is that it appears to be tolerant to deer. 

The vine's flowers give way to narrow, flattened, smooth seed pods (to 5” long) which ripen in summer. Pods typically split open in fall. Compound, odd-pinnate...

Recently, Todd Hicks and Joe Rimelspach with the OSU Department of Plant Pathology posted a "special edition" of Turf Tips. 

Topics covered in this video included:  what is happening in high-cut turfgrass - leaf spot, dollar spot and red thread; fungicides for residential turf; prevention is key; granular application best practices; and safety and first aid.   

Click here to view the video:  http://turfdisease.osu.edu/turftips_May25

Cressleaf Groundsel in the Field.  Image by Steven Smith.

The weed that is currently gracing the landscapes and farm fields in southern Ohio with a smattering of canary yellow is cressleaf groundsel (Packera glabella).   Cressleaf groundsel, which is also known as BUTTERWEED (Senecio glabellus), is a member of the aster family (Asteraceae; a.k.a. Compositae), thus the weed sports flowers that are daisy-like and seed heads that look like miniature dandelion puff-balls.  The flowers are borne at the ends of thick, erect, stems that are green with reddish-purple streaks. ...

In Northeast Ohio this year, and specifically Chardon, Ohio, had a snowfall event on May 15, 2016 and anywhere from 0.25-0.5 of an inch accumulated across the area.  While flying snowflakes were startling enough, the real concern and fear involved the impact of the projected low overnight temperatures.  The first night on May 15, the temperatures dropped to right around freezing (34-32°F) and then on Monday evening, May 16, temperatures dropped below freezing (31-29°F) and as low as 27°F in low lying areas.  While some plants had their tender foliage and new twig expansion killed outright...

Shakespeare used the term ”trippingly” to refer to a lilting or nimble effect as in “trippingly on the tongue” rather than bombastic speechifying referenced in his Hamlet directives. The Latin name of tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) should thusly be spoken trippingly. Try saying it out loud; very elvish and fairy-like trills, as befits the “trippingly” term he first used in “Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

And what a tree this is: large, lobed tulip-shaped leaves. The flowers are wondrous:  cup-shaped with yellow-green petals with orange flares at the base.  The tree grows...

How soon the glorious starch-white blossoms of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) are gone for another season, even this year when the blooms of this native dogwood lasted longer than usual. Yet this short season is only a page in the book that is the genus Cornus (30-60 species). Corneliancherry dogwood (C. mas) was first, with chartreuse-yellow flowers arriving long before leaves in late March and early April. For rich northeast Ohio woodlands and some cultivated gardens, the herbaceous groundcover wildflower, bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) est arrivee...

One of my all-time favorite beetles is beginning to showing-up on trees and shrubs in southwest Ohio.  This is the time of the year when populations of many soft-bodied insects such as caterpillars and sawfly larvae begin to rise.  It's not coincidental that this is also the time of the year when Fiery Searcher Caterpillar Hunters (Calosoma scrutator) begin to appear.  This colorful predacious beetle feasts on free-range caterpillar meat as well as on any other soft-bodied insect that it can clamp its mandibles on.  Indeed, this beetle is considered one of the more significant...

I have a prized Canaan fir (Abies balsamea var phanerolepis) in my backyard.  It's prized because I'm a native West Virginian and so is the tree.  My wife knows that if we ever move, the tree is coming with us!  The common name of this balsam fir variety is based on its first discovery in the once isolated, high-mountain Canaan Valley in northeastern WV.  Jim Brown (another native West Virginian and Professor Emeritus, OSU School of Environment and Natural Resources) spent much of his long career sorting out the five natural seed sources (provenances) of this tree.  The...

Hickory petiole galls produced by Phylloxera subelliptica (family Phylloxeridae) are appearing on hickory in southwest Ohio.  The single-chambered, ball-like galls range in size from 1/4 - 1/2" in diameter and arise from leaf petioles as well as along leaf midveins.  They may occur singly or in clusters to hang grape-like from their namesake host.  The galls range in color from solid greenish-white to bi-color forms involving splashes of reddish-pink.  Fully mature galls split open at to release the phylloxeran adults through a longitudinal slit.  Spent galls either dry out to...

Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) plants that are infected with the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae pv. tagetis (PST) develop "bleached tips."  The bacterium produces a chemical called tagetitoxin that is a RNA polymerase III inhibitor that blocks the production of chloroplasts.  Symptoms could be mistaken for exposure to a member of the photosynthesis inhibiting class of herbicide such as the triazines (e.g. atrazine) and nitriles (e.g. bromoxynil).  Of course, the herbicides would tend to affect the entire plant whereas PST only affects the upper portions of...