Something
in the quality of the pre-dawn light told me that the world had been made new
with a fresh blanket of snow. I love waking up to a clean slate. What furry or
feathered stories will lay their tracks on it today? Artists, with their
warmer, drier canvases, must have the same feelings of anticipation and
eagerness to see a new creation emerge. As a child, I felt that way on the
first day of school, too, with my stack of blank notebooks, ready for a new
adventure.
Even
as the sun rose, there was already one mark in the snowy expanse of my front
“yard”. Sticking out of the snow like a proud sentinel was the dried stalk from
a common mullein plant. I’ve been watching it since last summer, when its
yellow-flowered stalk was just a dab of color among daylilies, black-eyed
Susans, and daisies. Today it was the center of attention while all of its
companions lay resting under the weight of the drifts.
Although
this mullein stalk is just as dead (actually, even more dead) as its dormant neighbors,
its sturdy, dry stem gives it a second life. This plant began during the summer
before last, when a tiny seed found enough sunlight and bare soil to sprout. Mullein
likes disturbed areas. Soon, a low circle of leaves, called a basal rosette,
spread out on the earth. This biennial overwintered that way, with its leaves
and roots hidden beneath the snow. A period of cold and dormancy is required to
break down starch in the roots and trigger its next life stage.
In
the spring, a thick stalk began to grow out of the basal rosette’s center. Once
the spire was chest-high, the lowest flowers, starting about half-way up the
stalk, began to blossom in small clusters. Small and yellow, with five
symmetrical petals, each flower only bloomed for a single day. It opened before
dawn and closed in the afternoon. If a bee didn’t pollinate the flower during
that short window, the flower did the job itself. With such measured restraint,
a single stalk of mullein can bloom for an entire summer.
Once
that summer is over, though, the mullein is done. Each plant only lives through
two growing seasons, while the durable, dried stalk persists much longer.
Chickadees
scattered from the bird feeder as I tromped outside to take a closer look at my
sentinel in the snow. Up close, I could see tiny, roundish seed capsules split
open down a center seam and clustered among the few dried flower petals still
clinging to the top of the spike. Each of the hundreds of capsules can hold
more than 700 seeds, each less than a millimeter long.
The
flower stalk’s usefulness doesn’t end after it goes to seed, though. Mullein is
a notoriously useful plant among survivalists and other wildcrafters. For one,
it provides everything you need to start a fire. The lower portion of the stalk
becomes a spindle for a hand drill or bow drill. The thick base of big stalks
can be split and used for the fireboard that rests on the ground and holds the
spindle and eventual ember. The tough root can be fashioned into a hand socket for
pressing down on the top of the spindle when using a bow drill.
Once
you get a hot coal, mullein leaves make excellent tinder. Held vertically on
the stalk all winter, they are often dry when everything else is wet. Plus,
their fuzzy texture provides ample surface area to ignite. Once you’ve coaxed a
little flame, the uppermost club of seed capsules is useful as kindling.
That’s
just the beginning. The flowers will make a yellow dye. Many parts of the plant
are considered medicinal, especially for upper respiratory ailments. The seeds
are not edible, but contain chemicals used to stun fish. The fuzzy leaves can
be soaked in fat and made into candle wicks or torches, or laid in your shoes
for cushioning, or rubbed on your cheeks for “Quaker rouge.” Turns out, the
tiny hairs are a skin irritant. They can either make you a blushing beauty, or
give you contact dermatitis. Beware of the wide basal leaves’ other use as
“cowboy toilet paper.”
While
mullein isn’t native here (Europe, northern Africa, and Asia are its home
range), it has spread quickly since the 1700s, and is considered naturalized in
most places. Native species as well as other newcomers find it useful, and it
only threatens to take over where other plants are sparse.
As
I stooped near the flower stalk for a photo, another use caught my eye. Hidden
among the seed capsules was a single, hulled sunflower seed: the food cache of
a chickadee.
Leaning
even closer, I bumped the stalk and sent a shower of tiny black seeds onto the
snow. They are too small for the
chickadees to bother with, but goldfinches have been known to eat them.
Most
of the seeds will likely settle into the soil when the snow melts. With
characteristic restraint, the seeds can persist for up to a hundred years. They
wait for just the right conditions to sprout a new basal rosette and begin
again. Their requirements? Bare soil, full sun: a clean slate on which to begin
something new.
For over 45 years, the Cable Natural
History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Come visit us in Cable, WI! Our new exhibit:
“Lake Alive!” opened May 1, 2015, and will remain open until March 2016.
Find us on the web at
www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Discover us
on Facebook, or at our blogspot,
http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com.
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