Plants Archives - Heartland Safari

A green, columnar plant sends triangular branches up from a central stem. Short spines line the edge of each lobe. Triangle cactus or Dragon Bones or any of numerous other names, it makes a great house plant.

Living Sculpture: Dragon Bones

Updated October 23, 2025

About fifteen years ago, I went to a fundraiser and bought, for $10, a little cactus. It was an odd little thing, about six inches tall with a triangular stem and a weird head at the top. It looked like a deformed little tree with spines on it. I decided I didn’t like it much […]

Twenty or more fived-petaled blossoms burst from green foliage in this photo from the fencerow. The blooms of Bouncing Bet are small, a little over half an inch across. Long white petals and short stamens splay from atop tube-shaped flowers.

What’s in a Name?: Bouncing Bet AKA Soapwort

Updated October 23, 2025

Often a well-chosen turn of phrase, or a name, can immediately conjure an image. These are the jewels that writers look for. And they’re the names that last through the centuries because of their aptness. And yet, as language changes, the name may be retained without the surrounding context to provide that image. Knowing where […]

Plants

Brown Eyed Susans are in profusion in the prairie garden. Karen is surrounded by the riotous horde of yellow inflorescences with dark brown centers. Each flower-unit is actually a mass of dozens of separate flowers. Ringing the edge are ray flowers, each bearing exactly one of the long yellow petals. At a distance, it resembles a single, daisy-like flower about an inch and a half across.

Yellow is for Fall: Brown-Eyed Susan

Updated October 5, 2025

On a sunny fall day, our prairie garden is calling all bees, flies, butterflies, wasps, beetles, and anybody else who wants some nectar and pollen for dinner. A bunch of brown-eyed susans (Rudbeckia triloba) vie for their share of pollinators by waving their flowers above the fray. They have come into their own now that […]

Plants

Late summer extravagance in the prairie garden. Stiff goldenrod stands tall, its dense cluster of tiny yellow flowers promises (and delivers) feast for all.

Late Summer Extravagance: Goldenrod

Updated September 11, 2025

As summer slides into fall, the array of flowers in our prairie garden and along the ditch shifts to yellows. One notable species is the stiff goldenrod (Oligoneuron rigidum). This late bloomer is native to North America and holds a versatile and important place in our landscape. First of all, because it blooms in late […]

Not strawcolor, but green. Not flat, but triangular. Not grass, but Sedge. Strawcolor Flatsedge displays a tangle of long slender leaves and bristly flower/seed stalks in the margin of the yard next to the sidewalk.

Sedges Have Edges: Strawcolored Flatsedge

Updated August 31, 2025

We’ve had a very wet summer. More rain than we’ve seen in years has fallen periodically an inch or two at a time–including those weeks when we’ve been away on vacation. The result is that the yard has remained green and lush all summer, and places normally dry are a bit soggy. The peppers have […]

Plants

You might think this an ordinary weed, climbing over the sidewalk, but it’s not. It’s knotweed.

Prostrate Knotweed

Updated July 20, 2025

Last fall we had some cement work done on the sidewalk leading to the deck. The ground had settled significantly in the 20 years since the house was built, and the cement sidewalk settled with it. This project was to correct that. In the process of completing the work, the ground next to the sidewalk […]

Plants

Plate-size umbels of tiny white flowers stand atop canes of Elderberry growing next to an Iowa cornfield. More flowerheads have yet to erupt.

Community Living: Elderberry

Updated July 11, 2025

On a bright, cool morning in early July, the landscape is a vibrant, nearly uniform green. We’ve had lots of rain this year, and everything is lush and growing. Against this backdrop of vibrant green, plate-sized clusters of tiny white flowers buzz with happy pollinators. The flowers are arranged in flat-topped umbrella-shaped clusters ten to […]

Iowa’s State Flower is a ditchweed. Flat, open pink flower with five petals and yellow center, it blooms on a stout shrub by a dusty roadside. Wild Prairie Rose is a hardy native, adapted to its sometimes-harsh habitat. Even though the virgin prairie is long gone, the area near the gravel road mimics the wild rose’s preferred conditions, and the plant flourishes here.

State Flower: Wild Prairie Rose

Updated June 9, 2025

On a beautiful spring day in late May, we took Dave and Clancy out for a nice long walk. Along the gravel road, we noticed a variety of little flowers adorning the ditch at the edge of the road in front of Owl Acres. One that caught our attention was the wild prairie rose (Rosa […]

Plants

Large pink flower stands out from dark green foliage. Peony blossom has dense, crepe-paper-like petals that form a soft ball atop a short stalk.

Protection Racket: Peonies

Updated June 9, 2025

Once when I was about eleven, my friend and I were walking to Mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church when we realized we had forgotten our chapel veils. These circles of lace were mandatory as head coverings for girls at Mass. What to do? We spied some flowers growing next to the sidewalk and picked […]

Plants

Light purple, 4-petaled flowers grow in a cluster among green foliage in a close-up image of lilacs on Owl Acres.

The fragrance of Mother’s Day: Lilacs

Updated May 12, 2025

When I was a kid, we had a big lilac bush in the corner of the yard. You could crawl into that bush and hide. You could be just about guaranteed to get ticks in your hair if you did, though. Every spring around Mother’s Day, that bush would burst into purple booms that smelled […]

Plants