Robert Frost, the poet who best captured the soul of New England, may have once written that “nothing gold can stay,” but when it comes to goldenrod, the region’s signature plant of the transition between summer and fall, these sparkling members of the genus Solidago are at least bound and determined to stick around for a while. Their reign begins towards the end of July, when the first early goldenrods, known to botanists as Solidago juncea, open tiny yellow flowers packed into plume-like inflorescences, and it won’t stop until November, when the aptly named Tall goldenrods, a.k.
a. Solidago altissima, call a halt to the floral gold show. From warm start to cold finish, I’ll be watching and monitoring — and I won’t, at least from this particular effort, be sniffling.
As I mentioned in earlier journals, goldenrods, persistent bad press to the contrary, are not the cause of anyone’s hay fever; the party responsible for that seasonal malady is a decidedly non-showy plant known as Ragweed. With that important bit of record-correcting out of the way, I hope no one will now hesitate going for the gold. Fortunately, this is easy.
Goldenrods are ubiquitous in our region. To be sure, determining precisely which of the 25 Solidago species listed on the Native Plant Trust’s authoritative Go Botany website you’re looking at can be an extreme challenge — and it’s made more tricky since there are other lookalike former goldenrods that were recently moved into the genus Euthamia. But for the purposes of this journey of discovery, we don’t have to worry about taxonomic hair-splitting (literally, in some cases, since proper identification can require a look at seed hairs).
A generic “goldenrod” is good enough, and if you come across a white-flowered plant that sure resembles a Solidago wannabe, well, that’s probably Silver-rod, which is in fact a bona fide member of the golden genus and properly called S. bicolor, since it’s both silver and gold. Besides their glorious beauty, the thing I find most compelling about the goldenrod clan is the abundance of insects attracted to the flowers.
To term Solidago a bug magnet is the understatement of the year, maybe even the decade. And the only research quality you need to demonstrate this is patience — well, and time. Most formal investigations, of course, require a considerable amount of equipment, and this, sadly enough, can be out of reach of the scientifically curious.
Alas, if the grants don’t come through, it can also be beyond the means of the scientifically professional. But all it takes to become a goldenrod watcher is decent vision and the ability to sit or stand still and focus for a while. This is a fine skill to have and hone, and a patch of Solidago, which is always close to home, is a fine place in which to refine this necessity.
With my wife Pam sick from the latest wave of COVID-19, the Naturalist has had to avoid any long-distance documentation treks, but there is plenty of goldenrod nearby, and every quick jaunt I was able to make both to my barely-managed wildflower gardens and to the meadow margins across the street was an exercise in unmasking biodiversity. In short order, I logged and photographed dazzlers known as a Locust Borer Beetle and an Eastern Hornet Fly, both of which are thought by scientists to gain a measure of anti-predator protection from their resemblances, in appearance and behavior, to wasps. There was an abundance of flower and other flies, the usual plethora of small calligraphers, medium-sized Transverse-banded drones, and the long-awaited appearance of a September stalwart, the Narrow-headed Marsh Fly.
All of these somewhat mimic the yellow and black appearance of yellow jackets and so ward off attacks. Then there are real yellow jackets, as well as a mix of genuine wasps of various shapes and sizes. Honeybees and bumblebees abound.
You don’t have to stay put for very long before numerous butterflies, from the often impossible-to-identify-without-collection skippers, to the easier-to-ID Pearl crescents, swallowtails, almost-done-for-the-year fritillaries, and almost departed monarchs, arrive to fill their tanks with nectar and spread a wealth of pollen between plants. Toss in some caterpillars — alas, so far no representatives of the spectacularly colored and pattern Brown-hooded Owlet persuasion — along with crab, jumping, and Argiope spiders, as well as a perching dragonfly or two, and you have a compelling assemblage worth taking the time to watch. Nor is Solidago the only fall floral group to drink in.
Autumn is also aster season, and I’ll devote an upcoming Journal to this plant family. Then there are the jewelweeds, which made an appearance in this column in August when I discovered that my large patch of Impatiens capensis was serving as a nighttime perch for a young Garter Snake. Jewelweeds, which derive their common name from either the gem-like quality of their leaves when held underwater or the unusual shape of their flowers that are thought to resemble precious-stone-laden earrings, are common denizens of relatively wet meadows.
The blossoms, more orange than gold, are especially rich in nectar, and even though the plants can go over the line from happily abundant to obnoxiously invasive, I tolerate the present of more Jewelweed than I should because so many species, including Ruby-throated hummingbirds, flock to the flowers. Putting my goldenrod-honed observing patience to work in the Impatiens patch often provides rich sightings and images, and last week, I really hit the jackpot. It was mid-afternoon, and I was doing yet another of the flower scans that I do every day.
The hydrangea blossoms were pretty much past and empty, but a large stand of jewelweed nearby was in full flower and, I thought, serving a nectary dessert to what was probably a bumblebee whose long tongue could reach deep enough inside the bloom to enjoy the reward for its effort. (The nectar is concentrated in the spur at the back end of the bloom.) I focused my close-up lens on the scene, inhaled, and then waited so I could take the bee’s picture when she emerged to head to her next dinner.
Jewelweeds have an amazing trick. They’re botany’s transsexuals! I. capensis flowers begin life as males, and then, a day or two later, ditch their gender apparatus and briefly embrace their female side.
So a bee visiting a male flower can leave covered with pollen, and if things go as evolution planned, the next stop might be a trans-bloom in female mode that will become pollinated and, eventually, give rise to those ballistic seedpods that my sixth graders delighted in firing — a dispersal capability that gives the plant another of its many common names: Touch-Me-Not. Well, there was drinking and pollinating going on as I watched, but the perpetrator was not a bumblebee. When the insect emerged and I saw it clearly but briefly, I almost dropped the camera.
It appeared to be a fabulously rare flower fly called a Goldenback. In the many years I’ve been watching syrphids, I’ve seen exactly one representative of Pterallastes thoracicus, and that was on July 30, 2020, at almost nine in the morning. In all the hours I’ve logged since on flower fly patrol, I’ve not been rewarded with another sighting, and I was beginning to figure I’d go to my reward goldenbackless.
I wouldn’t, I was told by other syrphid experts, be alone. But there, unbidden and unexpected, it was, exiting the jewelweed flower. As a gift from the natural history gods, the quite pretty fly spent the next hour visiting other jewelweeds and, from time to time, posing.
Eventually, without taking a side trip to the goldenrods — wouldn’t that have been appropriate — the rare fly departed. Frost’s warning echoed in my ears, but every day since then, I’ve scanned the flowers. Maybe gold can’t stay, but with any luck, perhaps a certain golden species could return.
Bruce Fellman is an environmental photojournalist and educator who lives in North Stonington. He has been writing about the natural world for for nearly 50 years. You may reach him at fellnature@sbcglobal.
net ..
