So-Called Friend of My Youth

When I was a kid, traipsing up and down a little grassy hill from our summer camp in St. Lawrence County to and from the lake where I swam, I delighted in the sight of the orange flower we called devil's paint brush. I loved its yellow center with orange ring, its fuzzy green leaves, its sprightly emergence from the grass around it, I even liked the way it died when I cut it and put it in water, the way a dandelion does.

So I was moved to see it on my back patio last year, hundreds of miles south of the lake, right here in Ulster County. I thought of the herbalist's maxim that the botanicals you need tend to follow you, and I was seized by the mystical notion that I needed this blossom, vibrant with lower chakra energy, in my zone. Then it occurred to me that maybe, more prosaically, it had hitched a ride back from the lake on my shoe and fallen on the patio while I was hanging laundry. I pried it out from between bricks to plant it in a proper garden plot. I even tried to get it to winter over inside, though it wasn't happy and shriveled in my window. Here in the picture is the first one up this spring.

One problemo: this lovely flower, brought here from Europe by enthusiastic fans, is taking over the country. Considered a major pest out west, Orange Hawkweed, as it's more commonly known, or Pilosella aurantiaca as known by botanists, is warned against by those who have seen it overtake meadows, fail to nurture livestock, and even kill plants trying to bed down next to it. My little buddy is an Invader and Pillager!

I will have to think of another botanical friend of my youth to get all misty-eyed about—maybe Indian pipes or water lilies. The New York Flora Association is a nonprofit field botany education group that's creating an atlas of native flora in the state. Looks like a good resource for running a background check on one's little seed-spreading friends.