Quiz: Wild About Wildflowers By Michele MacDonald, HGTV Ideas magazine
Wildflowers: you gotta love 'em. They provide a short-lived explosion of color in the desert, a crazy quilt of blooms along a woodland walk and a pleasant change of scenery along a highway. Admired for their beauty, wildflowers also have biological, medicinal and economic value.
To check your knowledge of wildflowers (and whether you know the difference between a wildflower and a weed), read on.
1. Which state did early Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon name, and what does the word mean?
2. What protective adaptations have evolved in many alpine wildflowers?
3. Which park might aptly be named "The Wildflower National Park ?"
4. This wildflower may have been used for more ailments than any other plant in the U.S.
5. The Appalachians are home to some 40 wildflowers that are exclusive to these ancient mountains. Where in the world are their closest plant relatives?
6. Which First Lady founded the National Wildflower Research Center in 1982 "to educate people about the environmental necessity, economic value and natural beauty of native plants?"
7. Texas leads the nation in roadside acreage dedicated to wildflowers, in part because of bountiful native bluebonnets. Which state comes in second?
8. What is the optimum way of managing native prairies and the broadleaf flowers and grasses for which they are noted?
9. The blossom of this plant is the state flower of Arizona.
10. True or false. There is a presidential memorandum directing that native plants be used to landscape federal facilities and federally funded projects?
11. Some 2,000 flowering plants are indigenous to Hawaii. What is the main threat to surviving ecosystems?
12. What makes a weed different from a wildflower?
Answers
1. Florida; Land of Flowers.
2. Felt-like coatings; dense, communal growth; silver foliage; compactness; and reproductive cycles that begin before snowmelt.
3. The Great Smoky Mountains-with some 1,500 native flowering species, more than any other national park in North America. And so abundant are the springtime blooms, that an annual wildflower pilgrimage was begun 50 years ago, the first of its kind in the country. The three-day program features nature walks and driving and photographic tours.
4. Echinacea, or purple coneflower. Plains Indians used it for stings and snakebites, as well as a treatment for headache, toothache and enlarged glands. Its beneficial properties include antibiotic effects.
5. Asia.
6. Lady Bird Johnson. Now bearing her name, the 42-acre Austin-based native-plant botanical garden displays more than 500 Central Texas species. The institution has over 100,000 visitors annually, and its plant experts fulfill more than 15,000 information requests per year. www.wildflower.org.
7. North Carolina. In 1985, the state's department of transportation began seeding wildflowers as part of its highway beautification program, one of the earliest such programs in the country. More than 25,000 pounds of seed are used annually to cover 3,000 acres of beds with 22 varieties of wildflowers.
8. By burning-every three years or so. While natural prairies require fire for maintenance, an annual mowing in the case of meadow gardens is an alternative that works as effectively.
9. The saguaro, whose U.S. range is restricted to portions of Arizona and California. First blooms appear on half-century-old plants. Individual flowers last only 24 hours and will become, if fertilized, edible fruit.
10. True. Where practical, these grounds are to include regionally native plants, thus protecting an area's natural heritage and preserving wildlife habitat . In addition, landscaping practices are to incorporate water conservation and pollution-prevention techniques.
11. Human-introduced plant and animal species. Island vegetation evolved without the large mammal populations that are now scattered throughout the islands. Ecosystems can't withstand the destructive rooting and trampling they cause. Some non-native plants are rampant with no natural biological controls. And over half the land area has been lost because of development.
12. A weed may bear flowers in the wild-and may be native or non-native-but it is growing where it is not wanted. In Minnesota, a particularly troublesome example is purple loosestrife. Although an attractive wildflower hybrid, it's creating problems by crowding out less aggressive wetland plants.
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