Specialty Gardening: rattlesnake plantain, 1 by CutNGlass

CutNGlass wrote:
woodspirit1:

You may be familiar with these, but in case not:
At any given date in late spring/early summer these will be in various stages of flowering, depending on where they are located in the woods. When you're walking around the woods, you may see only the top of the flowers/seed pods poking out on a slender stalk. I am trying to document the various stages the plants go through, so when folks walk around our trails they can know what to look for. I'm also marking the plants with flags, so that I can detour trails around them -- and locate plants again later.

http://davesgarden.com/journal/j/vbc/CutNGlass/49918/

I have a series of pix I took recently of a goodyera pubescens plant which initially only had the seed pods showing. (campsite trail location)

The other goodyera pix (roadwatch trail location) shows the wiggly, windy stem when I first uncovered that specimen. After a couple of weeks it straightened up (and is now starting to blossom). That particular picture gives a good idea to the source of the "rattlesnake" portion of the common name. It is really "snake-like" in appearance at that stage!

I have never tried to start these from seeds, but that could be an interesting experiment to try propagating them from seed in a terrarium. Also, I've noticed that spotted wintergreen often grows very nearby (sometimes only inches away), so you may want to poke around under the leaves near your plant to see what else you may find.

Mary S.