Kate's Blog

Welcome to my website. I regret to say that I closed the plant nursery last fall. But I continue to offer on-site consultations and other services. Services / information / plant list  I have kept the plant list, as well as other resources that have accumulated, including book reviews, books that are still for sale, lists of the native plants you are likely to find at mainstream commercial nurseries - as well as of invasives you are likely to find on offer at said nurseries, plants which are best avoided. And I will continue to write a blog. Keep in touch by subscribing (see blog update box at left).

I had a disappointment yesterday.

My first lupine seeds germinated – it's such an exciting moment when one sees the soil pushed aside by the curl of an emerging cotyledon (the first leaf)!

I had planned for some time to write about the importance of growing Wild Lupines, which are the host plant for three butterflies classified as extirpated in Ontario. Extirpated means that they once lived in the wild here, that they still survive somewhere else in the world, but no longer eist in the wild in this province.

The Karner Blue (Plebejus melissa samuelis) and the Frosted Elfin (Callophrys irus) rely exclusively on the Wild Lupine, it is the only plant their caterpillars are able to digest. The Wild Lupine is also the host plant for the Eastern Persius Duskywing (Erynnis persius persius), although this butterfly can use Wild or False Indigo (Baptisia australis) for food. In all three cases the last sightings were in the 1980s, in two areas in southwestern Ontario.

My seed has been collected from my own plants, the parent plant having been grown from seed labelled Lupinus perennis (Eastern, Wild or Sundial Lupine) that I purchased a few years ago from a large Ontario-based seed company.
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Sometime in June, somewhere around the Great Lakes, perched at the very top of a tree in a young, densely growing forest, a male Kirtland’s Warbler throws back his head and lets rip with a series of bubbly, clear notes that steadily rise in pitch, tempo, and volume: chip-chip-che-way-o. Spring is here! I’ve found the perfect spot, he calls.

He had to work hard to find it. This is a bird that has come back from the brink. In 1973, when legislation to protect endangered species was introduced in the United States (1977 in Canada), the Kirtland’s (Setophaga kirtlandii) was one of the first on the list, its global population down to an estimated 300-500 birds. Now it’s up to 5,500, breeding mostly in Michigan, where conservation efforts started in the 60s.

The habitat that meets this bird’s needs is so specific. It occurs only in the Great Lakes basin, mainly south of the Canadian Shield: Sandy soil with young pine and oak trees, 10 to 20 years old, growing densely with frequent clearings, with an understory of native shrubs and ground cover of native forbs and grasses to generate the insect populations and fruit required to feed young. It nests on the ground, sheltered by the boughs that sweep down to soil level. As the trees age, they drop these lowest branches and these warblers have to move on.
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