May 16: Appendaged Waterleaf and False Soloman's Seal

I take walks along the same path twice a day and I'm continually amazed by flowers that seem to appear overnight. So it was with this Appendaged Waterleaf.

Appendaged Waterleaf

I have never noticed this flower before, and at first I mistook the leaves for maple leaves -- they look so similar. But the leaves of this plant are hairy while maple leaves are smooth. Another blogger noted that woodchucks like these plants, and I noticed that this plant did have a fair number of chunks taken out of the leaves.

I could not find a lot of uses or history associated with Appendaged Waterleaf. Perhaps if the plant was more useful it would have a more familiar, less clinical name! So maybe this plant is just dedicated to being wild animal food, which is just as well for them. I wonder if animals can communicate different flower types to each other, and how they would do that!

The next plant is much more familiar -- False Soloman's Seal.

False Soloman's Seal

There are a couple other Soloman's Seal plants -- Smooth Soloman's Seal and Star-flowered Soloman's Seal, and if I find them I will post pictures. The name "Soloman's Seal" comes from the way the cross-section of the root stalk looks like when you take the stalk off. I didn't try it, but it's supposed to look like this -- the Jewish double triangle.

Soloman's Seal

Before it flowers, the young shoots of False Soloman's Seal can be simmered and eaten, and they taste like asparagus. But doing this is probably not a great idea unless there is a lot of False Soloman's Seal around and unless you can tell the difference between False Soloman's Seal and members of the Veratrum family, which look similar but are highly toxic. I guess False Soloman's Seal is also a strong laxative, so it might be difficult at first to tell if you've been poisoned! :-D  Indians used the plant in medicinal ways -- here's more info about that.