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A Tribute to Late Bloomers

When most of us think of wildflowers, we think of spring and delicate woodland ephemerals. After a long and often bleak winter season, it's hard not to celebrate the arrivals of trilliums, toothworts, Dutchman's breaches, and their fragile cousins. For me though, the best wildflower season begins in early August and culminates with the turning of the autumn leaves. If nature is the greatest show on Earth, then in my book, the asters are the stars.

The aster family, with the interchangeable names of asteraceae or compositae, includes such favorites as the daisies, sunflowers, coneflowers, tansy and yarrow, goldenrods, and of course the asters themselves. The family is named after the Greek word for star, and with apologies to those who fancy the orchids; it is arguably the largest and most successful plant family on earth, with over 24,000 mostly temperate species growing worldwide on mountaintops, seashores, and along roadsides in in most of the Country. The parade of asters in our area begins usually in July with chicory, a flower with the unique ability to transform miles of barren road edge into a blue-violet ribbon. Soon yellow hawkweeds, white boneset, Joe Pye weed (the very definition of mauve), Shasta daisies, black-eyed Susan's, and even coneflowers begin to make an appearance, with giant, deep purple ironweed and prickly thistles jumping up here and there. As the season progresses through late summer asters provide the last chance for butterflies and other insects to load up on nectar, and the high protein pollen from goldenrod helps honeybees to survive the winter.

The asters finally come to a peak with the cooler winds of September, and in contrast to the subtle and often hidden wildflowers of spring, they paint the landscape in a riot of color. There is just something about the quality of light in September that turns skies to the purest shade of blue, and makes the varying hues of the asteraceae even more vibrant. Just as Virginia creeper vines and sumacs begin to turn to crimson, whole fields are set ablaze with goldenrod, highlighted with the yellow-centered, purple flowers of New England aster (my personal favorite), New York aster, and panicled, calico, heath, and a number of smaller white asters. Ditches are lined with tickseed sunflower and wingstem while Jerusalem artichoke, thin-leaved, and tall sunflowers reach skyward against purpling thickets of grey dogwood.

I went out last September with a camera in hand and tried to capture some of that beauty. The morning was so perfect and the wildflower display so sublime that all I could think of was a line from a Bruce Springsteen song, "the poets down here don't write nothin' at all, they just stand back and let it all be". This year, don't wait until October to take your first autumn color tour. Pick a morning in early September, get up with the sun, and head out into the countryside just as the fog begins to lift; I guarantee the asters of September will not disappoint you.

If you can't make the trip and would like to see photos of asters and other September scenes taken in 2006, please visit Buffalo Audubon's Flickr Page.