Outdoor Elements
The Unique Flowers of Buttonbush
Clip | 3m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Evie finds Buttonbush at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve
Evie finds Buttonbush at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve, with its round, spiky blooms and love for wet areas. This native shrub is a favorite among pollinators. Find out what Evie thinks these flowers resemble! 🌿🌼 #Buttonbush #NativePlants #SpicerLake #PollinatorFriendly
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Outdoor Elements is a local public television program presented by PBS Michiana
Outdoor Elements
The Unique Flowers of Buttonbush
Clip | 3m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Evie finds Buttonbush at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve, with its round, spiky blooms and love for wet areas. This native shrub is a favorite among pollinators. Find out what Evie thinks these flowers resemble! 🌿🌼 #Buttonbush #NativePlants #SpicerLake #PollinatorFriendly
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipI'm at the boardwalk at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve in New Carlisle, Indiana.
It's a steamy July day, but it's a perfect day to spot this shrub in flower.
It's called button bush, and I love these spiky white flowers.
It's, Sometimes they hang down almost like little pendulums or Christmas ornaments.
And they are really, really attractive.
Button Bush is Latin name.
Is Cephalanthus occidentalis.
Some people pronounce it sefanthos, but Cephal in Latin means head and anthos means flower.
So a big heady round flower.
occidentalis.
meaning western as opposed to eastern European or what have you.
So Latin names can sometimes be fun to decipher.
To help us learn a little bit more about the plant and its characteristics.
It is found in the wild, in wet, soggy places.
So here at the wetland at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve.
But more and more plant nurseries are selling this native plant enthusiasts often add this to their yards.
It does really well in wet, soggy conditions or just keep it well watered.
Flowers a little bit more when it gets some sun, so keep that in mind.
But it also can get really, really tall.
So make sure if you add this native shrub to your yard, make sure you've got enough space for it to spread out or keep it well pruned.
If you take a look at the flowers up close, you can see that its unique characteristic is the little spikes that come out all the way around the flower.
Those are styles, part of the reproductive organ of the plant, and each little stile or tube connects the pollen part of that structure to the ovary.
Down in the center of the flowers.
There's lots of little like flowers, tubular flowers actually, where the.
If the pollen gets transferred down there, it will make a seed.
When it does make seeds, they are brown and will be in a tight little sphere that can eventually break apart if it falls down into the water.
It's great food for mallards and Canada geese and other waterfowl, so it serves a lot of purposes for supporting wildlife, which makes it such a great native shrub in our landscape.
When I look at this, being of the generation that I'm in, it often reminds me of the very first satellite that was ever launched by Russia in 1957, called Sputnik.
And Sputnik satellites had like, little spikes that came out around the sphere.
Today, that shape reminds us an awful lot of what we remember as the Covid virus.
And those little spikes are really, really similar in shape.
I can also see here on this one that the green buds haven't opened on all of the shrub yet, so this one will flower for many more weeks and be a great pollen source for lots of little pollinating insects, sweat bees, etc.
so it's a really valuable wetland species here at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve and many wetlands around the Great Lakes.
Remember, you can find your own outdoor elements when you visit area parks and natural areas.
We'll see you soon.
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