Changing nature and the nature of change

It's a new season. Spring has morphed into summer, but you knew this change was coming. The temperature is rising and the rains have ceased. Happy ticks and chiggers invite you to join them outside for lunch and dinner.

The Summer Solstice has slid by unnoticed by many, but the days now grow shorter; a sure sign of continuing change. Gone are the colorful spring wildflowers, replaced by the nascent blooming stages of what botanists call "GDYCs" -- the gosh darned yellow composites.

I have never heard a botanist say "gosh darn" but children may be reading. The yellow composites which dominate the summer wildflower festoon are aster family members (Compositae or Asteraceae).

Plants in this family such as sunflowers are a composite of two types of flowers -- ray flowers and disk flowers. Ray flowers are the "she loves me, she loves me not" petals plucked from a daisy. They are mostly for show, attracting attention, but neutered for the practical purpose of reproduction.

Disk flowers are the many individual fertile flowers (where the business of pollination occurs) in the middle of the flower head. Among the GDYCs are black-eyed Susans (or other Rudbeckia species), Mexican hats, gray-headed coneflower (both Ratibida species), sneezeweed (Helenium), compass plant, cup plant and prairie dock (species of Silphium), the goldenrods (Solidago), and many others. Their seasonal appearance is a predictable change.

Other changes are not predictable. You looked forward to Z Reeder's column in the Citizen. Now she has decided to spend more time in nature and less time writing about it.

Unpredictable change occurred at our collective Eureka Springs heritage, the Spring Reservations. The Grotto Spring slide changed the view across the street, and will change the plants that can be grown in the Grotto gardens.

Last week's windstorm and a downed red oak changed the look of Sweet Spring, destroying some of DonE Allen's well-established perennial plantings, statuary and fencing. Like much change, these altercations with nature will go unnoticed by many.

In a world of change, we simply adapt or simply forget. It's a part of human nature that doesn't change, predictable like the seasons.

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