Sandy clean-up and some puzzling Lysimachia Loosestrifes

The aftereffects of Sandy will be with us for a long time but we have finally managed to remove the mini-mountain of debris deposited by the storm across the open meadow in front of the house. This line of driftwood, decaying seaweed, broken-off reeds, flotsam and jetsam was already sprouting new growth and threatening to become a permanent feature of the landscape. We had to hire a piece of machinery (essentially a small bull-dozer) to clear it off and it has left behind a swath of dark earth that is in sharp contrast to the sandy soil around it. I can only assume that the new, richer soil was formed by the rotting organic matter which sat there like an unintended compost heap for the past few months. It'll be interesting to see what comes up now.

Most of the ground scoured by Sandy is now covered with vegetation -- mostly Seaside Orache but also including Poison Ivy and other late arrivals. A flowering plant with four-petaled yellow flowers is one of the cresses or mustards, a strange plant to see coming up and flowering in the woods. As I mentioned in a previous e-mail, there are many blooming plants now appearing and I'm trying to keep up with them. In addition to the ones mentioned in previous posts, I can add the tiny white flowers of one of the creeping rubus or dewberry vines; another four-petaled flower, somewhat similar to Evening Primrose (Sundrops, a garden escape, I assume); and Daisy Fleabane, an ugly name for a common wildflower with many small daisy-like blossoms. Common Mullein, which has a striking yellow flower that blossoms from a spike jutting up from a wooly leaf rosette, is just starting to go into bloom.

A couple of stands of Wild Rose are blooming profusely. As I said previously, I'm unsure of the species but I notice that the common alternative to Marsh Rose, Rosa palustris, is not properly called Virginia Rose (as I wrote yesterday) but Carolina or Pasture Rose (Rosa carolina).

I got an e-mail from Polly Weigand who works for the Suffolk County Soil & Conservation District about the identity of the two Lysimachia loosestrifes mentioned in yesterday's post. That sent me back out to look at them more carefully but I'm still not sure exactly what they are. The one with larger blossoms has more than a dozen plants about 1-2 feet high. The bright yellow flowers spring from the base of the leaf whorls on about half a dozen of them (everything mostly in threes and fours); the petals are curvy and the flowers have strong red centers with yellow stamens. Whorled Loosestrife (L. quadrifolia; not a garden escape) fits best. The other stand is a distance away and both plants and flowers are more delicate with smaller, less curvy petals and only tiny dots of red at the center. The leaf whorls are in fours and fives. These look like two different species but they both appear to be closer to Whorled Loosestrife than anything else. Beats me.

Eric Salzman