WiseAcre Gardens

These native annual wildflowers are growing on a mud flat along the Leonard Brook in the Town of Pierrepont. They prefer wet mucky soil and often forms dense colonies but I only found a few scattered plants on the mud flat. I imagine the wet rainy weather this summer kept the water level too high for them to get a good start.

Burr marigold seeds germinate on moist soil or under water. If buried, seed dormancy can be induced by a lack of oxygen. The dormant seeds remain viable and persist for years waiting for the right conditions to germinate. Those I found seemed to be growing in the footprints I and a couple of deer had left behind some weeks ago.

Bidens laevis

‘New’ to my collection, they at first gave me a hard time when I attempted to ID it. The flower I photographed had 5 petals and that was enough to send me in the wrong direction. Peterson’s Field Guide categorizes plants by petal number (within a color) which can be misleading at times. It wasn’t the first time this year an unusual petaled flower left me scratching my head a for a while. I had to go back and look again to see if I could find more clues. Luckily I came across more typical flowers. You can see here that the flowers are daisy like composites. Once I had this photo getting an ID was easy.

Don’t let the perspective fool you. The plant is smaller than it looks. They can grow 1 – 3 feet high but most of those on the mud flat were smaller. I was holding this one up to get a better shot of the overall appearance.

Bur Marigolds’ range includes the entire eastern and southern states all they way to California. In frost free areas the plant grows as a perennial. New York State lists this as a threatened species.

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This spot on the Leonard Brook is located at the end of the northern section of the Post Road. Long abandoned the road isn’t much more than a dirt track ending at a dead end where once stood a bridge. The land surrounding the road is posted but if you stop at the Power’s home (on the Powers Road) you can get permission to explore the area. The area is world famous for the Tourmaline crystals found there and they ask for a small fee to wander and dig. I don’t suggest looking for minerals unless you want to dig a deep deep hole with a screwdriver. You’ll see what I mean when you meet the couple of prospectors working a couple of claimed spots.

They’re not nut cases – this is

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