Seeds of Summer

The aster flowers of late summer and fall have been replaced by seeds attached to fluff poised to catch the wind.


Pokeweed, though its size can make it seem more shrub-like than herb-like, is not a woody plant. The above ground greenery dies and dries out under the stress of fall frosts. The seeds in these berries may find a hospitable site to germinate and survive long enough to make new plants, but this individual plant will have many more chances to reproduce. Right now its thick taproot stores the energy needed to grow a new set of stalks and flowers for the coming summer.



These berry-like structures are reproductive parts of another plant which withers in the fall frosts, a trait reflected in its common name: sensitive fern. The hard fertile fronds of the sensitive fern are easy to see in wet areas during winter since they remain upright, often poking out of the snow. They hold not seeds but spores. Ferns, along with related horsetails and clubmosses, have an extra generation in their life cycle because the spores give rise to something called a gametophyte, which is physically different from our conception of what a fern should look like. It's almost as if our eggs and sperm went on to be beings separate from us before uniting their genes and making a new, genetically normal human being. But relying on the fate of wind-dispersed spores can be risky business, and like so many other native woodland plants, sensitive ferns hedge their bets by spending the winter as a rhizome ready to sprout again in spring.