Sometimes the best fall colors come in tiny packages.
Look at the forest floor and you may see this Indian Cucumber. It’s all decked out in green, red and blue to attract passing birds. The colors are arranged like a bull’s eye, circling the berries. “Eat me!” it says to the birds. And they oblige.
(photo by Dianne Machesney)
Saw some of this at Laurel Hill State Park last weekend when I was on a field trip with a native plants class I was taking at Phipps Conservatory. I love walking in the woods at any time of year…there is always something interesting to see. We saw Jack in the Pulpit seed heads, witch hazel in bloom, lots of wintergreen with berries on it (the leaves smell great), partridge berries, and some interesting fall flowers. The instructor broke off a small twig of yellow birch and showed us how it smelled kind of like root beer…it’s what they use to make birch beer, which I think is more popular in eastern Pennsylvania.