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.

BYGL readers should be familiar with the Basswood Leafminer (Baliosus nervosus; previously Baliosus ruber).  We've reported on the skeletonizing and leafmining activities of this native beetle for years.  High populations cause entire trees to become reddish-brown, usually in mid-to-late August.

I was recently in New York City, 15 years after the 9/11 tragedy, and was reminded of that day. We were on our BYGL call back here in Ohio and Dave Dyke of OSUE, Hamilton County broke into a plant report with news that a plane, possibly a small plane had flown into the World Trade Center. We took it in and continued our reports.

 

  Minutes later he burst in that another plane had hit the other tower and that these were large passenger planes. Now we knew something was terribly wrong and yet, like many people, we tried to continue with our scheduled activities for a while....

 This plant is not a fern. Rather, Sweetfern is a native woody shrub. According to E. Lucy Braun (The Woody Plants of Ohio), it is only found in a few counties in Ohio where it inhabits open oak forests, pastures, and roadsides. This plant fits into the category of small shrubs that many homeowners are looking for, maturing at a height of 2-4’.

As I was driving along the roadways of Geauga County, I suddenly noticed the upright pillars of changing color wrapped around tree trunks.  Yes, I believe that it is most likely, that autumnal color is the ONLY redeeming quality of Toxicodendron radicans, commonly known as Poison Ivy!  At this time of year, the fall colors of this rash inducing woody vine, are unparalleled for their stunning reds, oranges, yellows and every color mixture in-between.  It almost makes one want to go up to collect some leaves to put in a fall color collage between pieces of waxed paper to hang on the...

Small white masses appearing in late summer on redbud stems have become a common occurrence in recent years.  The masses look like a soft scale, mealybug, or perhaps an insect egg mass.  In fact, they are the sticky, frothy "egg plugs" of a treehopper and they may also be found on black walnut, wafer ash, and viburnum.