S04:E08 Gorgeous Goldenrods

 Hey Listener,

Gold and yellow hues are the undeniable colors of autumn. In this episode, we discuss one of our favorite yellow-blooming perennial plants–Goldenrod. With its pretty yellow flowers, long blooming seasons, and high wildlife value, What is not to love about these fantastic native plants? Michaela also counts down her top pick of goldenrod for different gardens (~17:10). Our goldenrod bloom chart can be found here.

We also have our: 

• Native Plant of the Month - Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) (~22:45)
• Bug of the Month – Goldenrod Bunch Gall Midge  (~33:35)
• Garden Tips of the Month (~39:15)

 If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at UMEGardenPodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcas.

For more information about University of Maryland Extension and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center and Maryland Grows Blog at https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/. 

University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.

 The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Senior Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County), and Emily Zobel-Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

 Theme Song: By Jason Inc 

Transcript

Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript: S4:E08 Goldenrod ( Sept 2023) 

Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.  

:Up Beat Music:

Mikaela: 
Hello, listener. Welcome to the university of Maryland extension presents the garden time podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Mikaela.

Rachel: 

I'm Rachel.

 Emily:
And I'm Emily.

Mikaela:  
And in this month's episodes, gold and yellow hues are the undeniable of autumn by far. We think fall is one of our favorite seasons. Hello, pumpkins and sweaters. 

Rachel
Yay.

Mikaela
And today we're going to talk about one of our favorite fall blooming perennial plants, which are also native goldenrod.

   :Up Beat Music:  

Mikaela
Listeners can't see this, but I'm super channeling my goldenrod today. I just happened to wear a goldenrod colored shirt, so it is meant to be folks. So goldenrods, people probably don't know much about this group of plants, which is pretty much why we're making an entire episode about it, because it has so many benefits and it's so misunderstood. Goldenrod is in the genus solidago, and this is a genus of herbaceous perennials in the aster family. So it's a very large group of plants, but the aster family has a lot of favorite plants for insects. It has up to 120 species and so many cultivars we can't even count.  It displays these small, bright yellow colored flowers in dense clusters on top of usually tall stems from anywhere from July through, I think, even November. It's a very long season, depending on what kind of species we're talking about. 

This plant is mostly native to north America. However, there are some species that are native to Mexico, South America, and Eurasia.  But as we're talking about them being in North America, since that's mostly our focus, we often find them in meadows, prairies, woodlands, thickets, and swamps. So basically, there's a goldenrod for every location, and I'll talk about that a little bit later in the episode.

 Rachel
The genus name solidago is Latin for solidus, which means to make whole this reference to the plant's healing properties. And actually, Native American use this plant for medicinal purposes. Now, that's a rabbit hole I'm going to have to go down.

Mikaela
Yeah. Just as a disclaimer, we are not advocating for the use of goldenrod as a medicinal plant, but it does have a lot of really interesting history.

Rachel
Yeah, it's a great plant. And one of the things that I love the most about goldenrod is that it's really easy to grow. It loves to grow in full sun, and it likes dry to medium, even well drained soil. It's a very forgiving plant and really tolerates poor dry soils that are drowdy. This plant naturalizes very quickly in your garden, and it may be advisable to divide it every two or three years to kind of control the spread. Propagation is accomplished with wind driven seeds or by division of underground rhizomes. So it's very easy to divide and share with your friends who love goldenrod as much as you do. Some of the species produce abundant nectar when moisture is plentiful, and when weather is nice and warm, the nectar will attract bees and wasps and butterflies, while birds are also fond of the seas. Another great benefit of goldenrod is that it's deer resistant, and if there's anything we know about Maryland gardens is that we have a big deer problem.

Emily
Goldenrod is oftentimes confused with ragweed and often wrongly accused of burying the wind born pollen that causes all of our allergies and hay fever in the fall. So ragweed has very small pollen grains, which are often swept up on the wind and are mainly the main cause of your fall allergies. However, ragweed is a very, we'll say, bland plant when it's in bloom, compared to goldenrod, who is bright and colorful, so it's the one that you tend to notice, hence why it gets the blame. But in fact, goldenrod pollen grains are rather large compared to other flowers and are not very mobile. The wind doesn't really sweep them up. It mainly relies on insect pollination, so it's not the cause of your nasal irritation in the fall.

 Mikaela
There's a lot of goldenrod hybrids and cultivars that make very popular perennials, not just here, but in Europe as well. They actually were an early adopter of using goldenrod in the garden as opposed to the United States, which I feel looks upon it as more of a roadside or wild plant. But there are a lot of cultivars that have kind of eschewed some of those behaviors that we don't like about wild goldenrod. So they combine well with blue wood asters, which is a symphiotricum, and hardy adurotum, which is a conoclinium, and it also pairs well with some New England asters. It does really well with these late fall blooming plants that have a very bright blue or purple hue. The yellow just offsets them really well. So really it's a missed opportunity if people don't have these in their landscapes, because it does add that late season color, and it is functional. Goldenrod is super functional. We talk about how they look nice and we want people to adopt them because they look nice, but it's got a very functional aspect to this plant. Different species of goldenrod are found in many different environments, so there should be a goldenrod for every environmental circumstance, different soil conditions.

Mikaela
But when you're selecting a plant for your landscape, as usual, it's good to consider native habitat to ensure the most success. So making sure that you're paying attention to how wet the soil is, what kind of soil type, sandy versus clay, how wet it is versus dry. We have a goldenrod that grows basically in straight sand and can tolerate saltwater intrusion and things like that. So paying attention to those different aspects will give you a lot more success. Some species are best not to plant in the garden settings because they are so column aggressive, but they do spread very freely. So they have these rhizomes that go under the ground and make a very strong contingent or population of goldenrod. So we want to make sure that if you're putting it in a smaller garden or landscape, that it doesn't get overwhelmed by that.

 Rachel
I really like the fact that goldenrod not only is an awesome late season nectar plant, but it also produces so many seeds, which are great fall food for our gold finches, our chickadees grousebeaks, nut thatches, and other small songbirds. So they're a great addition for our gardeners that are also birders, I think, all around.

Emily
Goldenrod just has a really high wildlife value that we don't always think about. And the fact that it's mildly deer resistant is also nice.

Rachel
I know.

Mikaela
Yes. And, you know, some taller things in the landscape can flop over as the season goes on. The nice thing about goldenrod is they tend to have very strong stems. In fact, their SAP is one of the few types of plants that can produce rubber. So you can derive rubber from their sap. It's like a milky sap.

Emily
I did not know that. That's really cool.

Mikaela
Yeah. In fact, that's one of my fun facts, I'll tell you

Rachel
Gosh.

Mikaela
Actually, the stems themselves are just very fibrous, and they'll stay very upright, and unless they get flattened by someone falling on them or a bad storm or something, they often will stay pretty upright. All right, let me hit you with some fun facts. During the American revolution, when colonists ran out of british tea, they would make a beverage out of goldenrod, a tea called liberty tea, which I'm sorry, it's a really missed opportunity that they didn't call it libertea, like liberty. 

Emily
Maybe puns weren't a thing back then.

Rachel
They probably weren't.

Mikaela
I'm so disappointed that they did not have the foresight to be funny as well as fight the american revolution. Anyway, well, they were treasonous,

Rachel
Those treasonous colonists. 

Mikaela
So, yeah, it's one of those kind of cool plants that just has so much history, including, I believe, when Henry Ford was making his model t-car, the first edition of the wheels were rubber made from goldenrod sap, which is the only reason I know that it has sap that you can make, like, a type of rubber out of. Obviously, it's not very I know, it's crazy.

Mikaela
So the goldenrod is the state flower for the US. States of Kentucky and Nebraska. It used to be the state flower for alabama, but it later got rejected in favor of camellia, which, frankly, goldenrod was better than that, a way better choice. And I guess it was recently named the state flower or state wildflower for Carolina.

Emily
Oh, what's our state flower?

Rachel
Black eyed Susan.

Emily
Oh, duh. That would make sense.

Mikaela
But there's a whole lot of states where the state flower, I believe, is violets.

Rachel
That's weird.

Mikaela
I only know because we have a puzzle of state flowers and birds. So I know what birds and flowers are for which.

 Rachel
That sounds like a fun puzzle.

Mikaela
It was, actually. So anyways, it just has so many interesting qualities and in fact, we're going to back that up with some more information about how they are so beneficial for insects. Because, like, I believe every plant in the landscape should have a function and supporting wildlife is like number one for goldenrod. In fact, I think Doug Tallamy lists it as the number two flowering perennial that supports insect activity. So that's saying something.

Emily
They are a group of plants that are highly beneficial to insects. So a must have, I think, for any gardener who's trying to attract insects into their garden, both pollinators via bees and flies and beetles and moths. Their tiny little flowers are great for all the little parasitic wasps. You get all sorts of native bees ands well, as bumblebees can be on them, which is always kind of fun because again, they've got a kind of smaller cluster group, so you got a big old chunky bumblebee getting on there. So I love sitting in my garden and just watching all of the bugs flocking to my goldenrod. This is another one where you oftentimes will find the praying mantis egg cases in the fall, getting laid on them, because the praying mantis themselves are on the plants because that's where the insects are. We recommend leaving those egg cases outside all fall and winter and in the spring they'll hatch out and you'll have all of the prayer mantises in your garden. So they support a wide variety of moths and butterflies and are the host plant to several different types of moths. So the brown hood owlet caterpillar is oftentimes found on white goldenrod or zigzag goldenrod, as well as the Dartmouth caterpillar exclusively, only feeds on goldenrods.

Mikaela
The brown hooded outlet caterpillar is a really cool looking caterpillar.

Emily
Yeah, it's neat

Mikaela
Google it because it is really something.

Emily
It's a very striking caterpillar. And it's interesting because I think if you find it in the foliage, you'll notice it. It's basically black and yellow and it's got a band of red on it, which would stand out a lot in green. But I bet you with those yellow flowers, it probably camouflages really nicely.

Mikaela
That's what I was thinking.

Rachel
Yeah, that's a beautiful caterpillar.

Emily
It's a very cute caterpillar and it becomes kind of a drabby brown moth, but that's fine. We can all be very flashy when we're young and a little bit more like business casual when we're adults. So, yeah, it's a very cool little caterpillar to be on the lookout for.

Goldenrod is also one of the common places where you can find spittle bugs, which were a bug of the month, I think I had a few months ago, probably last year or a year before. But these are a small insect that makes kind of a water spit that they hide in. So if you have goldenrods and you go, why is there spit all over them? That's a spittle bud. They're not harming the plants, they're perfectly harmless, they're just kind of cool. But goldenrod is always a good place. I send people when they want to see a spittlebug because there's a few species that are always found on goldenrod.

Mikaela
Or people are hawking loogies into your garden. Let's hope that's not the case. I'd rather have spittle bugs.

Emily
Chances are it's spittlebugs, I think, more than loogies. But the goldenrod soldier beetle is oftentimes another one that's commonly found in the fall time on goldenrod. And it is a very cool beetle. It's that orangey goldenrod color and it's got two big black spots on the back of it. So it's another one that you're going to find there as well, as we do have a few species of mining bees that are commonly found feeding on it as well. So, again, really good for all of this insects.

Emily
An interesting insect fact about goldenrod is that there are over 50 species of gall making insects that are found on goldenrod, and this includes both flies and mice and caterpillars that make some form of gall. And a gall was a swollen form of plant. My bug of the month is one type of gall making insect on them, but the most common one you're going to find is the goldenrod gall fly, which just makes like a swollen clump along the stem of it. So this is another common thing that you can find on goldenrod, and it will kind of stunt or deteriorate that one branch of your goldenrod.

But typically speaking, your plant is healthy enough that you don't really need to be concerned about this. But at least for the goldenrod gall fly, this provides an additional protein source as you go into late fall and winter. There's several species of birds that are specialized into going in and getting that larvae that is in that little gall. So they and their own have their own job in the food chain, which is kind of neat.

Mikaela
And they are, I guess, fleshy enough during the growing season, but you notice them a lot more in the winter after everything. And they're very woody like, they're super tough. I would overwinter in that too. And just for the record, galls are a reference to any kind of proliferation of plant cell growth, where a swelling occurs, but it's prompted by different things depending on where it is and what species it is. So trees can get galls usually from a different kind of mite, or they can actually get it from a bacteria as well. But in this case, it is because of this fly.

Emily
And there are some insects and mites that will make leaf galls, so these would be little tiny growths on the leafs as well. Goldenrod is kind of unique in this. There's a really cool type of spider that's called the golden ride ambush spider that is bright yellow because it hides amongst those blooms and ambushes its prey. So really neat beneficial plant, lots of good insects. If you just want to sit outside with a nice apple cider and just watch it for an hour or so, you're going to see all kinds of neat things coming and going.

Rachel
That's one of my favorite things to do in the fall, is just like, sit out, watch my goldenrod, see what insects are like hovering around or playing around on it. I love to find the locust boar. Have you guys seen that before? That really beautiful beetle that's like black and yellow. That's a favorite of goldenrod for them, but just a different type of wasps that are always on goldenrod. Just tons of soldier beetles. It's just a great plant.

Mikaela
Yeah.

Emily
Mikaela, do you have your top picks for goldenrods in the garden?

Mikaela
That's right. And these are what I consider, like more tameable species, so to speak, because as we mentioned before, sometimes they can be a little overwhelming for home landscapes or too aggressive for, like, a smaller garden. But these would be great options, I think, for any garden, as long as the conditions are correct. 

So for shade, I recommend wreath goldenrod. I think it's called blue goldenrod as well. That's another name for it, and it's saladegosia. This is a much smaller goldenrod. It doesn't get very tall, but it does really well in the shade, and it grows well in between large tree roots. So this is a great option for more of like, a woodland garden or even like a kind of sloped garden in the shade. My best pick for maybe, like, the home garden in terms of appearance and height and just attractiveness is probably sweet goldenrod, which is Saladego adora. It's also called anis goldenrod because it does have a smell when you crush the leaves. So it's kind of like an anisey kind of smell. It's got a really nice flower. It's like the perfect size, kind of the right disposition, you could say, for the home garden. 

Mikaela
And for those of you who live on the seashores or you have very sandy soils or you're working with, like, saltwater inundation seaside, goldenrod is definitely one of my top picks of plants, period, for those kind of conditions. This is solidago sempervirons, and in fact, this might be my favorite goldenrod. It's a lot different in appearance as opposed to the other goldenrods, which have, like, narrow leaves, and sometimes they're kind of rough. It still has that really beautiful yellow flower, but the leaves are what we call basil, so it almost grows from the ground. And the leaves are much thicker. They're almost like succulent. And so they just have a really nice appearance. And it's a little bit different than the other golden rads, which is why I like it so much. And like I said, it grows in some pretty harsh conditions. Salt and sand, not a lot can tolerate that. So there you go. That's great for like a living shoreline, too, to kind of beef it up if you're not into grasses. And in terms of what has the longest bloom time or what might have the best commercial variety, what you can find most commonly at nurseries is probably wrinkle leaf goldenrod.

Mikaela
In particular, the variety fireworks, which is often featured in many floral arrangements. And a lot of flower arrangers or flower growers around here will grow it because it does make a really excellent cut flower. And that's just because it has these wide spreading branches for flowers. And it really does look like a firework. It looks like something has exploded. So that is a really nice pick for the longest bloom time and best commercial variety. And those are my top picks. Men.

Emily
So basically there's a goldenrod for every garden is what I'm hearing

Mikaela
For sure. And in fact, there's a goldenrod that isn't even golden. There's a white goldenrod, which is solidago bi color. So even if you don't like yellow, guess what? There's still a goldenrod for you.

Emily
Is there a smaller goldenrod that would work okay in a container? Do they typically need like, a deeper tap root kind of thing?

Mikaela
No, I think you could probably, as long as they aren't like the rhizome forming ones, and actually, maybe that's a good place to put them because then they don't spread as much. I think any of the smaller ones would probably do well. Although I mentioned wreath goldenrod likes shade, so that might be a better preference for shade. I don't think unless you could get the growing medium correct, that the seaside goldenrod would probably not work very well. I think wrinkle leaf goldenrod, which can be somewhat aggressive, would probably do well in a container large enough. You know.

Emily
You'd need a large enough container to compensate for it, but you could potentially try it.

Mikaela
Yes, And I think one of the issues I could sort of have with putting natives in a container is you're only capturing a short window of opportunity that they're more showy unless you're incorporating several things into it. You know what I mean? So I did actually make up a bloom chart.

Rachel
Of course you did.

Mikaela
Of course I did. And these are species that are, I say, commonly found in Maryland. And basically I just looked for records over numbering over 50 specimens across the state, and I forget how many I have there, but they range wildly from July even through November. And I think seaside goldenrod has probably the longest bloom time of all of them, and that's probably due to the fact they're in more temperate areas, being next to the ocean right, or being in more coastal areas. But wrinkle leaf goldenrod is is probably the next best that has the longest season. So you can have things blooming as early as July or enjoy them into November. And in fact, these are one of those critical plants for monarchs that are preparing for that migration and need that late season source of both nectar and pollen.

Mikaela
Even though they don't lay their eggs on goldenrod, it's often a companion plant for milkweed, which is the host plant for the monarchs.

:Bird Sounds: It's the Native Plant of the Month with Mikaela.

 Emily
Okay, you ready to do your native plant, Michaela?

Mikaela
I'm so ready. And actually, I don't know why I didn't pick a goldenrod. Maybe I felt we were talking so much about goldenrod that I was like "Let's bring in some variety". Also, this pick very specific to September in terms of when it is. So the native plant of the month is pawpaw, Asimina triloba. And the problem with this plant is not what do I say about pawpaw, it's how do I shut up about pawpaw, because it is an amazing plant. This is a very unique native tree, and I'm sure we've talked about it a lot in previous episodes, but now I kind of get to spotlight it. This is the largest native tree fruit in terms of the fruit itself is the largest in the United States. So this tree is smaller than many of the other towering hardwoods in the forest. And they grow natively as an understory tree in thickets, and they usually grow through suckering. And they have branches of very large leaves, in fact, longer than my forearm that turn yellow in the fall. So they actually really do have pretty fall color. But that's not why it's my pick. It's because this tree produces a really interesting fruit. And they're large. They're like how do I phrase it? They're shaped kind of like a bean shape, but they're enormous. They're like the size of your palm.

 And they produce this fruit that tastes like a cross between mangoes and bananas. Is that how you guys would describe it?

Emily
It's weird because it's native, but it has a very tropical tasting.

Rachel
It's kind of hairy like papaya to me. I don't know, but papaya feels hairy on my tongue. I don't know how to explain.

 Mikaela
No, I know, exactly. And I feel that goes but the texture of paw paw is more like a banana, I guess. So it's very soft, and it comes into fruition right, in September. And it's a very short window. So the time period to find paw paws is very brief. The fruit bruises very easily, and you know, it's bruised because the skin will actually turn black. Now, if it's completely black, maybe don't eat it, but a few spots of black or a little bit of bruising is just fine. It's just like a banana, right? So it kind of elicits that same behavior. But they do make really good, like custards. And it's a very creamy fruit. Some people just eat it straight up. Some people make it into bread, sort of like banana bread. And it freezes pretty well, which is usually how you can find it out of season, is somebody has frozen it. But you have to watch out. The fruits do produce giant seeds, and they might be one of the largest seeds that you will encounter as far as eating things other than avocado. And they're really dark seeds. You can try and grow them from seed, but they're a very complex thing that needs to be kept moist until it's ready to germinate it and everything like that.

Mikaela
So I don't usually encourage trying to grow them from seed, but you can try. They do have a very unique flower which flowers very early in the season, and you probably won't notice it because the flower is a little bit smaller. You'd think it would have this big flashy flower because the fruit is so large, but it's actually quite small. It's dark maroon in color, and it's primarily pollinated by flies. And actually, if you smell the flower, it stinks because flies are attracted to it. And usually when flies are a primary pollinator, it means that that flower does not smell good, so don't lean in. But that's usually because the plant is very primitive or flies are a very primitive sort of method of pollination in terms of insects. And it's true, this is a very sort of tropical plant. It's been around a long time. It almost feels like it should be from dinosaur times. But in terms of insects, it is also the host plant for the caterpillar of the zebra swallowtail butterfly. And if you have not seen one of these butterflies, man, get on Google right now, because again, they also look sort of tropical and like they don't belong.

Mikaela
So if you see a zebra swallowtail butterfly in the wild, you know, there must be a patch of pawpawn nearby because they are exclusive to this group of plants. And like I said, their native habitat is that they tend to make more of a suckering sort of community of trees. So it's not like there's one big tree, like an oak tree that's growing straight up in the forest. This is more of like smaller, branching suckering kind of plants. It's almost like it's an entire entity, like it's an entire one species. And in fact, paw paws, in order to pollinate and reproduce and make fruits, they need two different specimens. So you could have an entire patch of paw paw suckers. But if they are not genetically different from another plant that's nearby, they will not produce fruit. They're very picky. Now, we have sort of commercialized paw paw somewhat. So some people do grow it just for the fruit, and they grow them as a single stem specimen, and they grow them in full sun and everything like that. But in nature, they are not cultivated that way. They're completely different. And you will notice that they won't produce nearly as much fruit as if someone is taking care of them and actually farming them.

But they are really something to see if you are out taking a walk in the woods or if you notice them in the understory. It's quite an impressive plant. And I think that's my pick of the month.

Rachel
I think it's a great pick of the month for September.

Mikaela
And I know I love it.

Rachel
I go gaga when I see Paw Paw in a forest. And it's not only that the fruit is ripe in September, but it really provides some long lasting color through, like, I found it in February still with leaves on it.

Mikaela
Like I said, the leaves are enormous. It's like an umbrella of color.

Rachel
And they're really back to this golden color of fall. They're almost like a light mustard color. So they're really easy to identify in a forest in the winter because they hang onto their leaves so long.

Mikaela
And if you go hiking in West Virginia in late September, you will not miss a Paw Paw patch because chances are they have dropped fruits so much that the fruit starts to rot and stinks. I mean, not to detract from Paw Paw, because I love it, but you will notice if you go in the late season fruits that are not picked, like in the wild or you're out hiking in the woods, you can really smell them when they've fallen on the ground and are starting to decay. But obviously, that must contribute to a high level of organic matter. I mean, basically, it's very rich compost, and that's usually where you find these, is in rich wooded areas where the soil is very humissy or it's got a lot of leaf mold to live in.

Emily
I'm surprised something doesn't come through and feed on that fruit before it gets bad.

Mikaela
But I think because it turns so quickly that if you don't even, like, it falls on the ground, if something doesn't eat it right away, it rots, like, immediately. Yeah, like I said, it's so brief a time period when you can find these, but you can find them at specialty farmers markets in September.

Rachel
Yeah. And if you can't find the fruit, it's a great opportunity to go hiking through your local nature preserve or state park and keep your eyes peeled for Paw Paw trees.

Mikaela
In fact, in Frederick, Maryland, there is a Paw Paw Festival in September, and there are several Paw Paw Festivals all throughout the fall, depending on the state, when they kind of ripen. But they tend to be in September and maybe early October, depending on how far north you go. So, yeah, find your local Paw Paw Festival, you will not regret it.

Emily
So how easy of a tree is this to put in your own backyard, Michaela?

 Mikaela
Very difficult. In fact, it hates to be transplanted because usually it starts with like a big tap root and of course then once it established, it makes all the suckers, so it doesn't transplant well. So don't buy a large one because it will not like it. In fact, the smaller the probably easier it will be to transplant. It's not a plant that tolerates a wide variety of growing conditions, right. So I know we cultivate it sort of in full sun, but it really doesn't prefer that as its natural habitat. So if you have a good wooded environment, it loves slope. It definitely will not grow in water or wet areas. So, sorry, eastern shore. That's why it's sort of hard to find sometimes, especially out here, but definitely easier to find as you move west.

 Emily
Okay.

Mikaela
It's so cool and really it makes a great sort of transition from forests to meadow or something like that kind of habitat. So often you will find it also on sloped, ditches of the roadsides and things like that or river banks and stuff like that.

Emily
Cool. That was a great native plant of the month. And I don't know if I can top it with my bug of the month.

 

:Insect sounds: What's buzzing? It's the bug of the month with Emily. :Insect sounds:

Emily
Okay, so my bug of the month this month is goldenrod bunch gall midge. This is a species of fly. It's in the family Cecidomyiidae, which is your gall midge. So these are going to be tiny little flies that are going to create galls. So just like we had talked about earlier, a gall is sort of like a forced large growth that's going to be on a plant that can be caused by bacterias, viruses or funguses, or in this case insects, particularly insect larvae. Although sometimes insect females can do this as well, where they give off kind of a chemical and it causes the plant to swell up around it and it creates like a protective area for the insect or the mite. So these have been found across North America, typically on host species of goldenrods would include tall goldenrod, canada goldenrod and wrinkle leaf. Goldenrod are the three common ones. You're going to find this particular I hate to call it a pest, but I guess it would be considered a pest on goldenrod.

 Emily
This is not the same as the goldenrod gall fly. The goldenrod gall fly, which I talked about a little bit earlier in the episode, creates a gall, which is that ball shaped swelling that's on the stem of the goldenrod plant. This one creates it on the bud or the growing tip of the plant. So a neat thing about this midge is that you get two generations per year. They have a spring generation, which comes out April through May, and then a summer, which would be August and September. But each generation creates a different type of gall depending on when it is in the year and where goldenrod is in their growth period. So the spring generation is going to create very small galls 3 mm in diameter that are really difficult to find, and they're typically going to be on that growing shoots. But your goldenrod is really close to the ground this early in the year, so these tend to go unnoticed when the goldenrod starts coming out. You have so many branches coming up that you don't notice when one or two of them are short and stunted.

 Emily
Each gall is going to have one chamber that's going to have one larvae in it. These are a midge, which is the type of fly, so we're talking complete metamorphosis. So we're going to have adult larvae and puba. So based off of field and lab studies, most entomologists think that the larvae of the spring galls actually overwinter in the ribosomes of the goldenrod down in the soil. And then they come up as the soil warms up. And that's when the females will lay their eggs into these beginning branches of your goldenrod. So they will go through their larvae stage and pupation in these galls, and they'll merge out in the summertime, they'll mate, and then the females in return will lay their eggs for the summer generation. Typically in Maryland, this happens sometime around the end of June, beginning of July. So that female will basically lay her egg on the topmost leaf bud of that growing plant. The egg is going to hatch, and the larvae is going to borrow into that bud. Once it's inside, it's going to secrete a chemical that prevents that goldenrod stem from growing any higher, although that stem is going to continue to produce leaves.

Emily
This makes it a little bit different from some of our other galls, where the gall swells up in the middle of the stem, and the plant will continue to grow a little bit higher, but will be stunted because of the lack of nutrients coming up and down because of the gall. In this case, it's on the very top. The plant keeps making leaves. So what you end up getting is instead of that large, swollen ball, you get is this large cluster of basically leaves, which create this distinct rosa pattern. It's typically three to 5 CM in diameter. The summer larvae will pupate in there and then will emerge in the fall, so September through October, and then they'll lay the eggs for the larvae that will overwinter into next year. So both generations can get heavily parasitized by parasitic wasps inside of these galls, but that's pretty much the only predator that they have, because the gal creates a protective thing. So if you have a good patch of goldenrod and you want to go out and look for galls, you can sign those big swollen ones, but you can also look for these guys, which I think are just really kind of cool looking the fly itself is tiny and very uncharacteristic.

Emily
There are some people who have done some in depth studies of them. So if you want to know how to tell males versus females or identifying them out, that's out there. But I just think the golden itself is the more interesting aspect of these.

Mikaela
Flies, and it's just another illustration of how many insects are tied to or use goldenrod. I mean, it's just pretty amazing the levels of size and use and everything. So even though people might be distressed about the appearance of how their goldenrod might look, I think we should rejoice in how things are using it and they're like living off of it. That's crazy.

Emily
Well, even though you have one or two of your stems of goldenrod would get this, it's not enough that it's going to actually deteriorate that plant or cause that plant to have health issues. You can prune them out if you find them unsightly. But this isn't something that you would want to spray for or treat for in any way, which is a good.

Mikaela
Thing to point out, because usually when people look at something as attacking their plants, the first question is how do I get rid of it? Or how do I stop it? So you're saying there's no control?

Emily
Yeah, there's one not a need to control for it, because, again, it's typically only going to happen on one or two of your flower clusters. And honestly, once you see this happening, it's already in there. So spraying is not going to do any good. You can prune it out and destroy it. That's probably the only thing you can do to kind of decrease the population for next year. But once the insects in there, the damage has already kind of been done. There's no undoing this once it's done.

 Mikaela
That's fair. That's cool.

Emily
Actually, I found a paper that talks about how they define it as an ecological engineer, because that modification of that actually increases species richness by creating an alternative habitat for other arthropods.

Rachel
Oh, wow.

Emily
Yeah.

Mikaela
Well, thanks, Emily.

Emily
Yeah, that's my bug of the month.

:horns: Get your garden tips of the month here with Rachel! :horns: 

Rachel
All right, it's time for our garden tips of the month. One of the biggest things that we see, along with monarch migration, is also hummingbird migration. So mid to late September, we're going to see our hummingbirds and our monarchs slowly start to migrate from Maryland to their winter nesting sites. And that usually goes from mid to late September, and they're usually gone by about the beginning of October. Another fall thing that I know we love to clean up, or at least I love to clean up. Poison ivy leaves are going to start turning red this month, so don't be fooled by their fall foliage and color change. The leaves are still irritating. The vines are still irritating. You still need to use caution when cleaning up your fall garden and knowing how to recognize and ID poison ivy is very important. Fall is one of the biggest times when we say, hey, it's time to plant your fall shrubs, trees and native perennials. If you're going to be doing this, make sure that you kind of avoid a monoculture. So we're not going to be planting all one type of shrub or all one type of tree or all one type of perennial.

 Rachel
Mix it up so that our native insects and birds really have a good habitat and nesting sites, and this also helps prevent disease from attacking your entire landscape. And when we're thinking about our plantings for the fall, select several different types. So not only several different types of plants, but you want to think about mixing evergreen with deciduous and then different heights of plants to kind of create a cohesive environment. In most cases, our healthy trees and shrubs do not require fertilizer. Woody plants receive nutrients from the lawn fertilizer if their roots are adjacent or growing under the turf area. Their roots also take in nutrients from decaying mulches and leaves from the minerals in the soil. So you don't necessarily need to fertilize your woody plants in the fall. Hold off on pruning your trees and shrubs until later in the fall into the winter. Pruning stimulates growth, and any new growth that is produced will not have a chance to harden off before our hard frost and freezes start. Spider mites are really active in our evergreen trees in September, so you want to monitor for this pest by tapping the branches while holding a white piece of paper underneath.

Rachel
And when you tap the branch, you're going to look for little tiny specks that are moving. It almost looks like pepper vibrating on a white piece of paper. If that is occurring in your evergreens, you want to control the spider mites with an ultra fine horticultural oil and a caveat here. You're not to use this on blue spruce and always follow the label instructions. Fall is a perfect time for you to do a soil test. September, October, November. Get those soil tests in to see if you need to make any amendments in your soil profile before next year. And when we're thinking about our soil test, we also think about applying any lawn fertilizer and make sure that you're doing that in accordance with the Maryland Lawn fertilizer laws. If you have a difficult area in your lawn that just isn't growing well, check out our page for lawn alternatives on the Home and Garden Information Center website. It has a great host of different plants that you can plant in an area that isn't working for your landscape. For lawn, you want to make sure that you're leaving the seed heads of any black eyed Susans or cone flowers or other perennials for our migrating birds for the winter.

Rachel
And if you are knee deep in your fall vegetable garden, you want to make sure that you're always removing those spent plants. You can plant garlic from about September 15 to November 1, and you want to make sure that you're purchasing certified garlic bulbs. You're not going to the store, the grocery store, and picking up garlic and using that, because that can introduce disease into your garden. And a lot of those garlic bulbs aren't the type that we're actually going to plant in our garden. They're a little bit sterile. Dig up any potatoes after the foliage has died back and let them lie on the ground for a few hours before you store them in a cool, dark location and you want to store them unwashed. You can harvest your green tomatoes through September, and you can actually put those in a brown paper bag with an apple or a banana to encourage ripening. Or you can make some fried green tomato sandwiches. I soak them in some buttermilk first and then fry them.

Mikaela
Oh, yum.

Rachel
Yeah. Yummy. So that's all the tips I have for the month.

Mikaela
Thanks, Rachel.

:Upbeat Music:

Rachel
Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoy it, and we'll tune in next month for more gardening tips. If you have any garden related questions, please email us at umegardenpodcast@gmail.com or look for us on Facebook at gardentimepodcast. That's garden. T-H-Y-M-E for more information about the University of Maryland Extension and these topics, please check out the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center website at go. Umd.edu backslash. Thanks for listening, and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.

Goodbye.

Rachel
The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Its hosts are Mikaela Boley, Senior Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture; Rachel Rhodes, Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County); and Emily Zobel, Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

 Emily
University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.

 :up beat muisc: 
 
Mikaela
I didn't even talk about grassleaf goldenrod, which is technically not a goldenrod. It's not a solid dago, but it is really cool.

Rachel
That is so awesome.

Emily
Well, is it like a native grass that's pretending to be a goldenrod?

 Mikaela
No, it's a perennial, and it looks like it should be a goldenrod. I mean, it blooms yellow. It just has really narrow leaves. It's very pretty. It's really pretty, but it's posture, and I'm trying to remember the genus name. graminifolia, something like that. No, graminifolia is a species name. Euthania. That's what it is. And I don't know why it's distinguished differently. I couldn't tell you. Asters are weird men. There's so many weird, man. There's so many of them. They don't know what to do. They can't decide what names they belong. It's too nuts.

 Emily
I feel like we need a sticker that says that astres are weird, man. That's our next one.