In winter, goldenrods are not golden. They are brown or pewter gray, the seeds lingering or gone, the cells dead, with no green remaining.
Yet they stand – at least some – and remind us of the tall weeds of summer. They stand because they are strong, as solid as their name Solidago. This winter in New England, one of our early snowfalls was wet and heavy, dragging many of the goldenrod stems to the ground. But not all. Some could withstand a weight that bent birch trees low.
Alas, these dead stems will not sprout again. They were the growth of the past year, not the future stems of the goldenrod. As the seeds mature and the stems die, the plants turn brown. Then they slowly fade to gray as the seeds disperse and the fragile remnants of the flowers fall away.
But spring will bring another chance for the stems to harbor life, another year to be part of the field community.
Once it becomes sufficiently warm (a warmth that you might consider cold), spiders will emerge from their winter dormancy and use the bare branches of dead inflorescences to build their webs. Two kinds of spiders use old goldenrods frequently, small orb weavers (the spinners of stereotypical spoke-and-spiral spider webs), and dictynids, a family of small, inconspicuous spiders that construct a tangled mishmash of a web and hide in the middle. I will try to get pictures of these spiders in the spring and share them. For now, imagine what they might look like on a dewy morning, the silk supported by the branches of dead flowers.
For much of the summer, dead goldenrod stems are among the tallest structures in a field, and there sit the spiders, waiting for their food. Flying insects, rising above the bulk of the green and growing plants, occasionally blunder into their webs. For a small spider, even a small insect is a good meal. Tall, dead stems give these spiders an excellent location for feeding.
There is another advantage for being on dead stems. They don’t attract one of the major enemies of spiders: spider-hunting wasps. Some wasps grab spiders and paralyze them with a sting. Then they store the helpless spiders in nests or cells where the wasp’s young will feed on the defenseless prey. Quite a few spiders live on flowers of goldenrod, and the wasps also feed on nectar, so blooming goldenrods provide one-stop shopping for the wasps.
But dead goldenrods have no nectar, and few spiders, so they are likely to be overlooked by the wasps. That’s a good thing if you’re a small spider.
Late in the summer, another kind of creature will sometimes climb up on dead goldenrod stems. These are the immature stages of small beetles in the genus Exema. The larvae feed on goldenrod leaves, but they look like the turds of large caterpillars because they use their own turds to build a dark brown case around themselves for protection (visual and physical). They hide inside their own excrement and grow slowly during the summer. As the season wanes, they are ready to pupate, and that’s when they seek a location that won’t be disturbed. Some of them wander on to the dead stems of goldenrods from years past. Perfect. The gray stems don’t have pollen or nectar to attract parasitic or predatory insects. While the enemies of the beetles go elsewhere, the pupae on the dead stems can develop in peace.
Standing dead stems do not remain standing forever. When they finally topple – and they all topple eventually – they will decay back into the soil. It’s part of the life cycle of a perennial herb.
Utricularia has been in the pond for years, but I didn’t notice it until 2016, when it was superabundant. There are multiple species in the genus, and I’m not sure which one(s) constituted the near carpet on the pond back then. At least some of them were Utricularia inflata, but most were probably something else.
In their realm, they are dark, fast and unpredictable. Sometimes they make ripples, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are alone, other times in groups or queues. The family name is Gyrinidae, and they do gyrate. And then they immediately do something else.
The eggs hatch in ponds or streams and the nymphs are serious predators, even those of delicate damselflies. Most have one generation a year, staying safely in the water in winter. At the right time and the right size, they crawl out of the water and transform, in a single molt, to winged jewels.
Every year, there are yellow globes just above the surface of the pond. Flowers. There are at least two kinds of lily pads in the pond, and this one blooms first. There were not many of them in past years, but they are more abundant this spring than before.
After several years of being conspicuous but sparse, Nuphar is increasing in the pond. I have no idea why. Perhaps the pond is a bit shallower every year, filling up with sediment from upstream, and finally, that is favoring them. I doubt that they like the warmer weather because they are found up to northern Canada but don’t make it south beyond Maryland. Maybe it just takes them a while to get established.
They don’t have to reach up far, but reach up they do, to greet the light.
They all send flowers into the air, beautiful flowers coveted by botanical gardens for their pond displays. Brilliant colors rising out of the muck. The metaphors are endless. And insects covet the flowers up there above the water. The insects pollinate the flowers. Adaptation.
Owen Sholes 