Many Eye-Catching Seeds And Weeds This Time Of Year The beautiful but acrid-testing red fruits and green leaves of these jack-in-the-pulpit wildflowers decorate the fall woods. Charlotte and I spent a few hours last Saturday afternoon with our friend, Bettina, hiking in the Lois Almon Memorial Northern Forest and Bog near Rhinelander, one of the best nature trails that we’ve ever had the privilege of enjoying. The easily-traversed bog was in prime condition and the trails leading to it also produced many interesting things to observe and photograph. The brilliant red fruits of several Jack-in-the-pulpit wildflowers caught our eye and proved to contain some of the largest leaves of this plant we’ve ever seen anywhere. Those in our woods are only a small fraction of the size of the giants growing along that northern trail. Naturally each of the spikes of red fruit arose from a pair of three-lobed leaves, characteristic of the female plants. Those plants producing no fruits this year were all males and each had only one three-parted leaf. Included in the small patch were over a dozen small leaves each looking from a distance surprisingly like poison ivy plants. What interested me is that ring-necked pheasants, turkeys and wood thrushes eat both the leaves and red fruits of the Jack-in-the-pulpits. Both the leaves and rootstalks, and for all I know, also the red fruits, are rich in calcium oxalate crystals. When even just nibbled by a person, these sharp pointed crystals lodge in the mucous membranes of the mouth and throat producing an incredibly intense burning sensation. I know! I was tricked into sampling a half-inch of one of the roots a long time ago, having been told that it was also called Indian candy. Candy my eyebrow! In fact I nearly choked to death. Chances are that the wild creatures known to eat parts of this beautiful plant are totally immune to its disagreeable properties. However, the gorgeous fruits at this season always attract our attention and deserve a few photographs. Other seed-producing plants with eye-catching fruits along the trail included the blue-bead lily, wintergreen, partridgeberry and Solomon’s plume. The change of leaf color of the blue bead lily, also called the Clintonia lily, always catches our eye at this season and invariably proves to us that large patches of them existed in various places in the woods this past summer that were too often overlooked. Now their bright yellow-green leaves shout for attention. One of my favorite seeds of the forest floor in autumn reaches its peak of perfection in our woods during late September and early October, the wild leek. Three very well defined and prominent states of development occur during its growing season. The wide rich green leaves carpet the ground of many deciduous woods in eastern North America in early spring. By mid-summer the delicate but typical onion-like flowers appear and mystify most people who don’t realize that the leaves, which are nowhere in sight, have simply died back after having been so extremely abundant a few months ago. Slowly the tiny round green seeds harden and now resemble shiny black buckshots about one-eighth inch in diameter. Between 10 and 20 grow on each plant which stands about eight inches tall. I have absolutely no idea which creatures consume these seeds other than perhaps small rodents. I look at the weeds in our garden now and more fully realize that so many of them produce astounding numbers of nutritious seeds that are of extreme value to numerous forms of wildlife. One pigweed plant, for example, is capable of producing as many as one million seeds. It is quite exciting to see several hundred wintering common redpolls feasting in a snow-covered field decorated with the rigid upright stalks of last summer’s pigweeds. It is said that the weed that exceeds all other weeds of this country in food value for various forms of wildlife is the bristlegrass. One species is the familiar "foxtail" grass that also does extremely well in our garden. Some of the birds of this region known to consume great quantities of these seeds include the mourning dove, gray partridge (Hungarian partridge), bobolink, horned lark, meadowlark and grasshopper sparrow. Several other upland weeds and herbs that benefit wildlife are the ragweed (a favorite seed of the 13-lined ground squirrel or gopher), sedge, crabgrass, panic grass and clover. Go to a marsh or pond and there you’ll find smartweed, occasionally wild rice, pondweed and wild celery. These seeds are frequently scattered from one pond to another by being stuck in the mud on ducks’ feet or imbedded within their wet feathers. Woody plants produce many larger seeds. They include the oak, beech, pine, maple, ash, basswood, birch, serviceberry, hazelnut, blueberry and blackberry. A chipmunk’s winter cache will contain many of these seeds. It is not every year that the trees or shrubs produce heavy crops of fruits or nuts. This fall appears to be very poor for serviceberries, black cherries, chokecherries and acorns in our woods due in part to the drier-than-normal summer. To say the least, people today would perish without seeds. There aren’t many foods we eat that aren’t directly or indirectly related to seeds, that which grows from them or feeds upon them. Most seeds are small, but they hold the promise of the future in their thin cases. Don’t underestimate the power of a seed! This column appeared in the Door County Advocate on 09/27/2003. © Copyright 2003 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.