Cirsium pumilum doesn't need moist soil.

"Habitat: Dry meadows, woods and sandy floodplains

Light Requirements: Full to part sun

Soil Moisture: Dry to medium"

I ordered 3 of them so I can collect seeds and start a population.

I do have mock strawberry all over the place.

I didn't have a clear idea as to whether these native thistles are perennial or not. For pumilum ,discolor, and altissimum it says they can be biennials or short lived perennials. Pumilum and altissimum both die after flowering. We have a rare form of pumilym var. hillii, Hill's thistle. I want to grow the pumilum because it's a lot shorter than the discolor, making it easier to blend into a planting.I don't really have room for a chestnut, but it will never become huge in my lifetime.

That’s a pretty thistle. I just have the nonnatives showing up, at least as far as I know. The Monarda punctata has spread a lot. Third year now. Kind of hard to see in the picture, the winter color blends in with the ground. Good thing there is no border around that bed yet.

seek is telling me this is the American field pansy. Correct? Looks like I have the European one, too.

So, that's Viola bicolor and it's native, and you also have tricolor, Johnny Jump Up from Europe?

Yeah its still super early for plants. Supposed to have highs in the 30s until Monday. Waiting for temps to get above 40 at night, around 55 during the day, then I'll spray my cereal rye patch. Planning on spraying around April 10 and planting around April 24th, might be earlier if the warm weather sticks around in mid March.

It will probably be a few more weeks before the nighttime temperatures here stay above freezing. I hope the weather warms up more gradually than it did last year. It seems like last year it went from the 30s straight to the 90s with no in between. It was too hot to work outside right at the very beginning lol, and then for summer it was in the 110s, you could fry eggs on the flagstone, but my plants proved to be very resilient. Then instead of cooling down gradually for fall it went straight from the 90s into the 30s.

It was 70 here today. I am afraid a lot of plants are being tricked again. Plum looks like it wants to bloom within a week. Happens almost every year. I could use my own “name that plant forum”. So much stuff popping up. Trying to figure stuff out with google though.

You can post them here, I need the practice. It's going to reach 60 here Sun., Mon., Tues and Wed.

60 sounds perfect for som e yard work! Ok, here it goes. This one looks like something you might have identified before for me. Looks a bit different, but this one is also on a kind of dry slope. Ranunculus abortivus?

The top plant is Ranunculus abortivus, the second down looks like Verbascum thapsus, and the last plants might be a Silene species, but I'm not sure.

Thank you, Jay!

Hope you all had a nice day. Back to the pepper weed. Is it a good idea to keep it in the flower bed? I found a bunch more at the edge of one bed and pulled some. They have some serious roots! Any of you have them around? Are they going to take over the world if I leave them where they are? I could put them by the brush pile.

Looks really cool. The deadnettle is all over the place around here too. People regard pepperweed as a weed even the it's a native, I don't know if anything uses it. Picked up this to help out my ID skills

This looks like a nice book. I have so many insect ones, but probably need some more. Seek identified a beetle I saw today as common sun beetle. Not native here, but is being studied to be used as pest control. Maybe it got ahead of the study. There have been sightings here in SC on INaturalist. Maybe I should chew on the pepper weed to see if it’s worth keeping around for the salad.

Skip, does that book cover the Illinois midwest too. It sounds like a really good book with keys and everything. That Lawrence Newcomb apparently had an easy system for identifying plants. Lately I've been buying used books in good condition. It's a lot cheaper. That book Braiding Sweetgrass, is there any practical instruction in it, or is it just like prose?

The field guide covers the northeast, so there is overlap with the midwest but it will probably miss a lot of plants. I'm interested in the process it uses to get to an ID. Braiding Sweetgrass is all prose.

I want to learn Newcomb's process too. Anthony the botanist in my NPS group was talking about the unique way Gerould Wilhelm was teaching him how to ID plant species. I want to hear more. Anthony talks super fast, my head spins. Right now I think I'm more into learning more rather than trying to be uplifting by reading prose. I have so much respect for the authors who are giving solid scientific instruction rather than writers doing their prose personal ego trip. Yeah it's my medicine makes me this way. Things I want to be growing by summer.

Wait a minute, its prose in the same sense Nature's Best Hope or a Sand County Almanac are prose. It examines people's relationship to land and each other, and illustrates how that can be re-evaluated for more sustainable and rewarding relationships.

Wait Skip, I think it's just the author's personal style, because I love reading everything Doug Tallamy says and he makes it very enjoyable. I think maybe I'm just not in the mood to read a book right now. I'm going to start the online training to be a monitor. I don't know how much all my knowledge will help? I might pass on the Arboretum class, maybe too much to be doing at 1 time. I never even heard of Sand County Almanac wow. I'm not looking it up lol.

I don’t have the Braiding sweetgrass book, but have to say I rather read the books like Bringing Nature Home than the scientific textbooks. This one inspired me to try to do better. And that’s really all you can hope for with the average person. I don’t think many go into this as deep as you two are. Well, Dandy, too I suppose. I have some books, but they all have plenty of sticky notes with stuff I mean to google to understand. So normal kind of Field Guides is what it is for me. I do go down the rabbit hole of Google with some insects though. Meanwhile the nightly happenings 10 feet from my front door :)

Jay, did you plant the Buffalo clover already? Looks like this one is native here, too.

There is a trail with natural land next to my subdivision and the deer have started coming out and looking for food in the neighborhood. They were eating my birdseed and I saw their tracks in the snow. There might be more of them out there at night once I start planting more natives in the front. I wonder if they will eat the Aralia racemosa? They completely devour my Aralia spinosa. I haven't got the 2 Buffalo Clovers yet.

Sedge ID is dedication. You're one of the sedge people now, a whole new level. Carex brevior can take full sun off the top of my head. A bunch of the pond margin and wet soil sedges can take full sun too.

Braiding Sweetgrass isnt as scientifically grounded as Nature's Best Hope, but that's the point. It's based on the authors revelations and experience with native american culture, and as a university professor and practitioner of restoration ecology. The message is similar but the actions to take aren't as clearly defined, and the data and citations aren't at the center of the argument. The writing is a lot more poetic and illustrative.

I potted up 24 Liatris scariosa var. nieuwlandii from last year's tray into 3.5" square x 5" deep pots. I don't know if this is the regionally appropriate variety. The species was extirpated from NJ so I don't think it really matters. I have some Liatris scariosa from Bowman Hill too, it will be interesting to compare them side by side.

My Liatris still potted are all unlabeled. Not sure what is what. I think I might have some scariosa var nieuwlandii somewhere. They all look similar when they're little.

Nice pictures! Looks like you can’t wait for Summer. Since you are practicing, know what this is? I saw it first last Summer, but since it was buried under another plant and didn’t bloom, I forgot about it. Looks like some bugs or slugs are eating it.

Iris, it looks like an Erigeron to me, but I would leave it to see the flower.

Erigeron philadelphicum is a favorite of mine. I noticed it did multiply a lot in the area near the base of the plant.

Cropped your image, snakey purple flower might be Liatris spicata, I'm growing this from Pinelands Nursery seed this year. I have, I think, even more corms I grew from Liatris spicata 'goblin' seed last year than the 32 Liatris scariosa. Goblin is another name for the 'Kobold' cultivar they sell everywhere; so size-reduced it might as well be a different plant.

Unrelated, does any grow any Lespedeza? Lespedeza virginica is really nice looking.

Yes it is Liatris. I think I have a couple spicata kobold plants. I sowed some of it's seeds. I wonder if they could revert to growing taller. There's also Asclepias syriaca and looks like Rudbeckia hits in there. I would like to grow our endangered Lespedeza leptostachya. Hopefully I might soon find out where it's growing so I can visit it, or monitor it.

Link tells how to know the difference between caroliniensis and strepens.

https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/woodland/plants/sm_petunia.htm

I am not growing Lespedeza virginica. But need to look since I think I should :)

Jay is it warming up in your area yet? Was beautiful here today. Tree pollen is certainly starting up. First of the Chinese Praying mantises hatched today.

It's warming up Iris. Nothing is emerging yet. I went to the woods and the Skunk Cabbage isn't showing either.

Love the moss! Looks like you still have a bit of snow hiding. Well, ordered myself some Lespedeza virginica seeds. Thanks, Skip!

My petunias are not showing themselves yet.

Nice, Iris. Where did you get seed? I was trying to order Lespedeza virginica, VA Ecotype from Ernst Seed. Their pics of it are really nice https://www.ernstseed.com/product/slender-lespedeza-va-ecotype/, but it was out of stock. Maybe later in the year they'll have it again, or I'll find a live plant somewhere else local. Need to put the Asclepias quadrifolia and amplexicaulis seeds in for cold moist stratification now.

I ordered them on Etsy from Seedville. Not the first time I ordered from them. I would rather go with plants. Can you start the cold stratification this time of the year and plant the seeds when it’s already hot?

I'm going to get some little condiment cups and do all my CMS in those from now on. I had Asclepias seeds wrapped in moist paper towels for 2 months without changing the towels. Then I left the baggies out for 3 days and when I opened them bam they were sprouted, but I lost about 3 because the roots were snagged in the paper towel. The nivea seeds are on the way , cool!

The Lespedeza virginica seeds only need 10 days of CMS. They should be good to go after that. I don't think it will he too hot yet, so I would plant them. You will have to scarify the seeds. Prairie Moon removes the hulls on their Lespedeza virginica seeds, so their seeds don't need to be scarified. I'm going to ask a guy how he germinates the Frasera caroliniensis.

I put my milkweed, and other seeds earlier, in damp coffee filters. Once the CMS time is up, I'm going to plant them in trays and pots of soil, don't want them to sprout on the paper. It will be around early-mid April when the seeds are done with CMS which is perfect temperature-wise for putting seeds outdoors. Although, I do plant to start the milkweed indoors, then move outdoors to the hoop house, before finally planting in the fall.

So Skip, what's the advantage of using coffee filters over paper towels? I'm guessing the radicals won't dig into and get snagged in the coffee filters? I ordered a hundred 2 oz. condiment cups with tops. They should last forever. No more snags. They're useful for germinating legume seeds so you can easily see what's going on. Some of my quadrifolia seeds from Mike looked small and thin, and germination was low, like 50% or lower. I got my seeds a while after you got yours, so maybe you got a better batch than me. I only ended up with 2 quadrifolia plants last year. I would have had more, but they got messed up in the tiny 72 cell trays. Normally I soak the milkweed seeds in water for a few days after CMS. A few species didn't sprout after 3 days in wet paper towels, so they are sitting in water now.

I don't know if there is actually any advantage to using the coffee filters. I figured it would be easier to get the smaller seeds off the coffee filters. The quadrifolia seeds were kind of small compared to common milkweed but there were 16 in the package.

I have a couple clear plastic containers with lids, left over from salads, I'm going to put some soil in the bottom and keep it covered until they germinate and grow some. Then I can pot them up.

I'm trying to find some Danthonia compressa seeds, you reminded me of it with the Danthonia spicata picture. I just asked Cornell botanical gardens if they knew where I could get some haha. They have it in their native lawn https://cornellbotanicgardens.org/explore/on-campus-natural-areas/native-lawn-demonstration-area/

Wavy hair grass is nice too, Deschampsia flexuosa. They sell that at a nursery nearby.

Half my milkweeds are popping, and there's not much happening to the pots that were on the right side of the T5. I'm worried that the light was too close to those pots and they cooked. I took the baggies for humidity off of those pots. It looked and some amplexicaulis seeds were still good, and the pot tipped over and a bunch of soil spilled out. LOL Another mishap. I just packed everything back in and sprinkled sand over the top for good luck.🙏🙏🙏

There's at least 1 fungus gnat flying around. Maybe if I run the metal halide light when the T5 is off, any fungus gnats will fly unto it and get fried. Is there a dunk or something I could use when watering that would kill them naturally? So I'm worried and I just put more seeds into moist coffee filters for 30 more days CMS. This is backup in case the other ones never pop up. I give people who sell plants or run nurseries a lot of credit, because it's a lot of time consuming work, taking care of plants. I'll check out those grasses you mentioned. I wanted to do about 50 percent of the front lawn in shorter grasses and sedges, and I want different textures intermingling, so these curly grasses can help do that. The garden half will be all crazy, imagine having Prairie Dock with its ginormous leaves in the front yard.

Skip, have you ever seen or heard about an almost true red flowered Asclepias tuberosa species out there by you? I was wondering if there really were any, and this guy told me there are some in New Jersey

I've seen the plants at the old track section at Monmouth battlefield, they were definitely not red. It's the only place I've seen Asclepias tuberosa growing wild around here. Unless there is another population I didn't see somewhere else. I didn't explore the north section which is completely separated from the main park by an orchard and a road.

Why don't you try the sticky tape fly traps?

I started a new thread. This thread is over 400 now.

I'm still following along...name of new thread, please? :)