Ipperwash Dunes Pt. II

If the picture of june grass in my last post didn't grab your attention, hopefully you'll find this post a little more interesting...like this picture of a pre-flowering wild wormwood (Artemisia campestris)!  Wormwood is a fairly common dune species, generally considered a biennial or short-lived perennial.  Plants in the genus Artemisia are hosts for a rare parasitic plant called clustered-cancer-root (Orobanche fasciculata), it's listed as "SH" or occurring historically in the province, from the Bruce and Manitoulin.  Common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) is a European species occasionally found growing wild in Ontario, it is the herbal ingredient which has made absinthe famous for it's hallucinogenic properties.  I went to a bitters distillery in Vienna once and watched some Australians drink a bunch of it, I couldn't tell if they were hallucinating or just being Australian backpackers.

The site has plenty of cylindric blazing star (Liatris cylindracea) which produce beautiful mauve flowers by mid-summer.  This species remains fairly short, maybe knee high while dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) can push 1.5m+ under ideal conditions.  I'll post some actual flowering shots on another post. 

Lack of flowers bugging you?  Check out this stink bug (Banasa dimidiata)

Maybe this will cherry you up?  Sand cherry (Prunus pumila).  There has been research into different varieties and even separate species, it gets a little confusing.

This is more like it, here we have wood lily (Lilium philadelphicum) and hairy puccoon (Lithospermum caroliniense) teaming up for a photo-op. 

These next two are slender arrow grass (Triglochin maritima).  I found these growing in an interdunal-swale full of goodies and warranting another trip back!  It produces cyanide when chewed so don't try anything.