What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations.”  (Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of one of my favorite verses about the Creator and His creation: Psalm 104:24 from The Message).

One hundred species of goldenrod even!

“Solidago” is the genus name of goldenrod, made up of Latin terms that could have meant to the original scientific classifier, “sun dagger.”  I love these goldenrod days—for a variety of reasons: they typically herald the end of the uncomfortably hot days of summer, they mark the coming of fall with its anti-chlorophyll insurgence, and they’re just simply beautiful—especially when an entire field of goldenrod appears like a mirror to reflect the face of the sun.

Spring wildflowers are subtle and quiet (excepting dandelions!), appearing mostly in the deep shade and often hidden to those who don’t actually walk in the woods.  Fall wildflowers, on the other hand, are loud and brazen—revealing their glory even to speeding freeway travelers like a vast crowd of bridal attendants in brilliant silks, satins, and chiffons standing in rapt attention as the Preacher pronounces His blessing on the due process of life and procreation.

In the north, goldenrod is by far the most effusive fall wildflower, washing the country canvass with yellow upon which the Creator dabs purplish aster, white boneset, and a variety of colors and sizes of fleabane, and the last of the daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, and black-eyed Susans.

New England aster

As a kid I was of the hand-me-down impression that goldenrod was the cause of hay fever—an impression that was wrong.  Ragweed produces its spiked wind-blown pollen just when goldenrod blooms.  And it is the cause of most fall plant allergies, but because its flowers remain mostly green, it stays below our visual radar.  Goldenrod pollen is sticky and heavy and is spread not by the wind, but by dozens of different pollinators that make a field of goldenrod busy like a factory.

The Canada goldenrod, the most common variety, is also the typical host of the goldenrod gall fly, a tiny insect that inserts its eggs into the flower stem.  When the egg hatches, the larval fly begins to eat the plant material, its saliva causing the goldenrod to produce extra growth at the spot which sometimes grows to the size of golf ball: a gall.  So in the winter many of the dead brown stalks sport this noticeable gall ball that downy woodpeckers and Carolina chickadees in particular see as an invitation to a meal—because the larva remains in the plant all winter long, its having the capacity to create an antifreeze that keeps it alive in subfreezing temperatures.  A few times I collected several dozen of these galls to pluck out the larval fly, which is excellent ice-fishing bait for panfish.  But I found most of them already emptied by other insect predators.

The joy of the outdoors for me is in discovering that every form of life is full of wonder, and much of that wonder still remains a mystery.  Science may indeed provide us with many answers about the wonders of creation, but it is still baffled by the source and even the nature of life itself.  And that brings us back to the psalmist:  “[Your] knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain” (139:6).  We talk about the “information explosion” we’re experiencing.   Can you imagine how blown away we would be if the divine genius that resides in the common goldenrod—a plant that comes in over a hundred different varieties—actually revealed all its knowledge to us?  “Too wonderful” I’m sure would be my response.

See you outdoors!

Dean