northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a native wildflower I don't see very often, a Blue Mistflower . Architecturally it looks a bit like a White Snakeroot ; they have clusters of small hairy flowerheads and similar leaves but with light purple flowers. The hairiness of the flowers gives it an unclear look that someone thought was like looking through mist, inspiring the mistflower name.  Similar to White Snakeroot and the Joe-Pye Weeds , Blue Mistflower has also been reclassified out of the boneset/thoroughwort genus . That genus used to have over 800 species but is now down to at most 60; that's a lot of reclassifications. October 6, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 249884740, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's a White Snakeroot from last autumn. At least I'm pretty sure it's a White Snakeroot; it has a few similar-looking relatives in the area: The flowers are white, unlike the pink/purple Joe-Pye weeds  or the blue mistflowers . None of the leaves are lance-shaped like most of the bonesets/thoroughworts . I think if this was a Smaller White Snakeroot (AKA Lesser Snakeroot or Small-leaved White Snakeroot), the leaf stems would be shorter and the plant would look a bit sparser.  As I alluded to in this post , busy botanists have been reclassifying this plant and its relatives. Back in the naive 1970s the bonesets/thoroughworts, snakeroots, Joe-Pye weeds, and mistflowers were all one happy genus, but sometime over the last half century each has gotten its own genus (though there's no denying that all these plants are fairly closely related). White Snakeroot has a dark side. It's poisonous, and if cows or goats eat it, the poison gets into their milk, potentially ca...