Photos from a late summer bike ride on the Mon River Trail. With autumn just around the corner, the climatic, life-sustaining ceremonies of the season have taken on a frantic, bittersweet urgency, from the proliferation of late summer blooms to the frantic chirrups of insects in search of mates before they succumb to the first frost of October. As the deep greens of summer fade and begin to sacrifice themselves to a fiery self-immolation, I salute Nature’s relentless push to plant the seeds of next year’s renewal.
From top: broadleaf arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), also known as duck-potato and wapato, an attractive aquatic plant whose edible tuber was an important source of starch for Native Americans; great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica); a showy relative of cardinal flower with blue, split-lip flowers; blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum), also known as wild ageratum and blue boneset, an unusual late summer aster with disc flowers only; tall coreopsis (Coreopsis tripteris), also known as tall tickseed, a grand, stately perennial up to 8 feet tall with distinctive tripartite leaves; a goldenrod soldier beetle (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus) navigating a wingstem flower (Verbesina alternifolia); northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin), a colonizing shrub whose luminous yellow leaves in fall contrast with its brilliant-red, aromatic berries; and pale-leaved sunflower ( Helianthus strumosus), a perennial sunflower whose leaves are mostly opposite in arrangement with long petioles and pale undersides.
