Wildflower Wednesday: Bear's Foot and a walk on the wildside

We walked the Richland Creek Greenway with our toddler granddaughter this past weekend. It's a 4 mile loop around a local golf course and is frequented by runners, walkers and bikers. We love the greenway and often use it to access favorite coffee shops and restaurants, but it's also a fantastic way to connect with nature. It's exciting to see so many parents and children there each time we go.  I imagine that for a lot of urban children greenways are their first introduction to nature. It's a pretty cool resource and it's exciting to see that Nashville is continuing to expand its greenway system.

Bear's foot/Hairy leaf cup leaves are giant sized

The greenway has a wide asphalt path that crosses Richland Creek several times and since we've had a lot of rain this spring the creek was flowing. We were excited to show our granddaughter the turtles basking in the sun and minnows in the deeper water, but, the biggest excitement came when a black snake crossed the path in front of us on its way to the water's edge. There are several open fields where we saw bluebirds, cardinals and other familiar birds. There's plenty of wildflowers like our Wildflower Wednesday star, Smallanthus uvedalius, along the path to attract butterflies and other pollinators. It's a good place to connect with and watch nature.

Hairy Leafcup/Smallanthus uvedalius grows along the greenway path

Our cities need to make sure there are greenways, parks and woodlands. Wilderness is disappearing and human-dominated landscapes of houses, businesses, parking lots and roadways are expanding and displacing living/nesting spaces for butterflies, bees, songbirds and other creatures. This is not good for the critters or for us.

I want a world where my granddaughter and other children don't have limited opportunities to connect with nature. Too many children already are nature deprived. Children spend more time viewing television and playing video games on computers than they do being physically active outside. Richard Louv called this phenomena, ‘nature-deficit disorder’ in his book, The Last Child in the Woods. He wrote about how significant the developmental effects of nature are for children. Although, it's not a medical term, he said it's "a metaphor—to describe what many of us believe are the human costs of alienation from nature: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses, a rising rate of myopia, child and adult obesity, Vitamin D deficiency, and other maladies." (source)

Researchers are discovering all the different ways that nature benefits our well-being, health, and relationships. Those benefits will be irrelevant if we cannot get people to reconnect and value nature. You don't have to take my word for it...Just do a little research and then get out there and push to make sure there are parks, greenways and school programs so that everyone can connect or reconnect to nature. The future is at stake.

The number one reason I garden for wildlife is to make a difference. The number one reason I continue to blog about my beloved wildflowers and critters is to demonstrate to others that we can make a difference. I believe that with all my heart...It's what keeps me going despite the assault on nature that is happening all around us.

Without further ado...Here's our Wildflower Wednesday May star, Smallanthus uvedalius, it was showing off all over the greenway this past weekend. You may know it by one of its common names: Bear's foot, Hairy leaf cup and Yellow flowered leaf cup.

it's hairy

The first time I saw Hairy leaf cup the giant leaves made me think of an Oakleaf Hydrangea.  Smallanthus uvedalius is a perennial, not a shrub, although, it can get almost as large as a small understory shrub. The plants along the greenway average about 4 to 6 feet tall, but it's not unusual for them to get even taller. It has stout stems with opposite leaves that form a small leafcup. The leaves are palmately lobed and green with fine hairs scattered across the veins and both leaf surfaces. Leaves are 4 to 12 in long and are the most striking thing about this yellow flowered aster! Each flower head has 7 to 13 yellow ray flowers to the outside and 40-80 yellow tube-like disc flowers to the inside. The ray flowers produce seeds and from my observations, this wildflower does a nice job of reproducing.

Steven J. Baskauf http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/

This large wildflower grows best in moist, part shade. It is found naturally occurring in moist to dry, lightly shaded, open woodlands, savannas, thickets, fields and bottomlands.  If it's happy it can become tall (up to 10 feet) so plant it in the back of a perennial border or woodland garden. This species is found from Michigan southwest to Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, south to Oklahoma and Texas, east to New York and New Jersey, and, south to Florida. It is beginning to flower in middle Tennessee and will continue to bloom until late summer keeping bees and wasps very happy.

it can get tall~on average it's 4 to 5 feet but, I've seen it taller

The particulars
Smallanthus uvedalius/Polymnia uvedalia
Family: Asteraceae — Aster family
Common names: Yellow-flowered Leafcup, Bear's foot, Hairy leafcup

Range:  In the U.S., it is found from central Texas to southeastern Kansas to Michigan to New York, then southward to the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts
Habitat: Moist soils in partially sunny thickets, woodlands and fields.
Leaf: Green with very large opposite petiolate leaves that form a small cup around the stem and hence the name leafcup.

leaves decrease in size and become less complex up-stem

Flower: yellow rayed flower
Bloom: Anytime from now to early summer in our neck of the woods
Propagation:  Seeds should be sown in fall or spring.
Comments: This is a big guy and needs room to spread. Might be appropriate for a naturalistic and woodland garden.The leaves really bring another dimension to a woodland garden. The flowers are pollen and nectar rich.

Some folks might think this is a course looking flowering plant, and it may well be, but, I still like it! I think it's an honorary rough and tumble wildflower!
xoxogail

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Welcome to Clay and Limestone and Wildflower Wednesday. This day is about sharing wildflowers and other native plants no matter where one gardens~the UK, tropical Florida, Europe, Australia, Africa, South America, India or the coldest reaches of Canada. It doesn't matter if we sometimes share the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most.



Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.