There’s something special about the true blue colors of fall.
By Marilyn Rehm
The sky blue is captured and held on the ground in two of our late fall roadside wildflowers. Cornflowers have been blooming since July, but the plants outlast many of their contemporaries, even through a frost or two, and offer a subtle contrast to the red, orange, and yellow of the tree foliage. The wiry stems of the cornflowers hold the flowers separate and well-spaced. Only a few flowers on a given stalk bloom at a time, and each flower lasts only one day. Buds or spent blooms may appear pinkish since the blue pigment in flowers is not stable, and the acidity of the cell sap will influence color.
The Old World name for cornflower is chicory, and the plants were brought to this country for cultivation. The basal parts of the plant are eaten in salads like dandelion leaves, and the roots are ground up and roasted as a coffee substitute or additive. Like so many other plants, they escaped the cultivated fields and are now common along our country roadsides. Another nickname for cornflower is “blunt sickle” which explains why once they are established, they tend to remain.
The wetter and shadier roadsides may have large patches of blue cardinal flowers standing four feet tall by late fall. Blue cardinal flowers sounds rather nonsensical, like saying “yellow violets”, but it is often the case with flowers where color variations occur within a given family of flowers. The common cardinal flowers are red as the name suggests, but referring to the color of the robes worn by the Roman Catholic cardinals not any resemblance to our state bird. The five lobes of each flower spread out gracefully, but it is a real stretch of the imagination to see them form a bird – or a hand either, making a mystery of the nickname of “kings’ fingers”.
© 2004 Traveler Publications
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