It was a colder than usual March day, and I was teaching a plant walk at the edge of a farm. We had just had 10 inches of snow, and whilst digging through a drift to get at some burdock, several students suddenly stepped back with a squelch and a chorus of “ewwwwws!!!”. They had found the storm broken branches of Siberian elm. The cracked bark, when meeting the melting snow, had begun to ooze mucilage onto their boots, leaving 8-inch strings of slime as they lifted their feet. At the time I remember thinking, Now that’s a moistening herb.

Doctor Seuss was definitely consulted when this plant was created.

From the fluffy, alien looking fruits, to the scraggly antler-like fuzzy branches, this plant is straight out of the Lorax.
 
Its also one of our more charismatic New England plants, and makes one of my favorite teas for hot weather.

The other graminoids, while not true grasses, are truly beautiful, and full of fascinating flowers and uses.

Of course, 'graminoids' would also be the perfect name for the main characters of a plant based alien movie "The Attack of the Graminoids"-someone should get on that.)

Bread! Beer! Sugar!

Without grasses, these rather delightfully corrupting substances wouldn’t even exist.

Invasive. Exotic. Introduced.

These are dirty words in the lingo of many botanists and naturalists. The division that this creates in the botanical/herbal world is astonishing.

Parrots beak. Lousewort. Elephantella.

With common names like these, it’s hard not to be interested in this plant.

Cyme comes from the French word cime, meaning ‘top/summit’. This one is a bit more capitalist, as the flowers on cymes essentially bloom from the top down.

Spike, Solitary, and Head may all sound like biker gang nicknames. But in fact, these are some of the delightfully nerdy terms used to describe flowers.

Take away the mint family and your spice rack becomes a very boring place. Many of the most common cooking herbs are in this family. Not so coincidentally, they are also some of our most common medicinal herbs.

Like so many fragrant herbs, spicebush is a carminative. Carminative comes from the Latin carminare, meaning ‘makes you fart’. Okay, so not really. But it’s actual translation comes to something along the lines of ‘remove impurities’, so in essentials it comes to the same thing.

Pancakes. Fall. Canada. 

None of these would be quite the same without maple trees. From delicious syrup, to habitat for a host of native critters, maple trees are just plain magical.

Alpinus: Pertaining to the Alps. When you see this one, don’t think Julie Andrews in a nun outfit. Some plants with this species name have never even heard of the Alps.

Alien space pod. Harbinger of spring. Stinky. Miraculous.

All across the Eastern US, people are feeling the stirrings of spring.  Sun on our faces. Birds singing merrily. And the pungent skunk cabbage, giving us a sense of hope for the new season, and eliciting the common, “Is that a skunk?” argument.