ruderal plants

Broad-leaved Sweet Pea

Friday, the crew is now back to four members, and we walked part of the Red Line Greenway Cleveland. The local metroparks cleaned up along the electric light passenger train line, and some industrial buildings, and a railroad line, a few years ago. It is meant as a bicycle route.  

The vegetation consists of ruderal plants. Several were in bloom, and it looked garden like. The Latin word for rubble is rudera. These plants some call invasive species, and weeds. I heard a biology professor call them opportunistic plants. They colonise disturbed and marginal ground. Sometimes that means after a landslide, an avalanche, a fire. Sometimes among industrial rubble, construction or other land turning activity, and of course abandoned industrial areas. They also grow in sodden ground, and next to train tracks. Sometimes after a few years, they may be replaced by native plants.

 

Some of these plants attract pollinators. And now monarch butterflies are migrating south. They have an ecological purpose.

Butterfly Milkweed

False Sunflower, Heliopsis helianthoides, Smooth Oxeye 

Japanese knotweed

Phragmites australis, the Common Reed

 Yellow toadflax, Butter & Eggs