Winterthur is the legacy of Henry Francis du Pont, American, 1880-1969.

 

Black cohosh (an Algonquin word), bugbane, fairy candle (Actaea racemosa), native to a very large area of  Canada and the United States.  It has a number of medicinal uses on several continents.

 

Black cohosh shoot up in middish June.  They are among the natives with a  fussy reputation: they may or may not take hold where they have been planted.

 

They are interplanted in the Azalea woods with martagon lilies.

 

 

Martagon deadheaded

 

The cohosh begin to bloom as the martagon flowers fade.

 

They are easily four foot high. Sometimes taller. To reach the sun because the high canopy trees are in leaf and there is less sun reaching the ground now.

 

 

 

When they flower, they do so from the base of the flowerhead up to its tip. Fragrant flowers.

No petals or sepals.  Just elongated stamens.  Like little starbusts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asian cohosh flower in these same woods in autumn.      

 

 

 

You will be heading out soon to the open fields. Fragrant milkweed will be in flower soon.

 

 

a variety of large-headed milkweed

 

The many varieties of goldenrod will be in flower soon.

 

 

The grasses will be tall soon; and buzzing. No trees to mute the sound.