Dominant Flowers Along Country Roads

     Several kinds of adaptable and abundant flowering plants bloom along roads in Lancaster County farmland during June and July.  The most dominant species there, it seems, are the beautiful sky-blue blossoms of chicory and the pink of red clover flowers, followed by the pink blooms of common milkweeds and Canada thistles.  All these plants are alien to North America, except the milkweeds.  But all provide beauty to us human observers and nutrition for bees, butterflies and other kinds of insects.  Unfortunately, many roadsides are mowed, which eliminates the flowers' beauties to us and nutrition for insects.  But roadsides that aren't mowed are more of a treasure to people and insects.
     The four-foot-tall chicory plants and their lovely, blue blooms seem to be the dominate species among the dominants.  Their beautiful flowers are open during mornings, but generally are closed by early afternoon.  One could drive a rural roadside in the morning and see thousands of cheering chicory blooms, but come back that same road in the afternoon and think- where are those striking blue flowers?
     Chicory plants are tall and spindly with few leaves, but their several one-inch-across blossoms each summer day are quite noticeable to even casual observers.  And, interestingly, chicory stalks can produce a few flowers on inch-long stubs in regularly mowed roadsides.
     Red clover is a kind of hay that escaped from adjoining fields.  This plant has lush, deep-green foliage and pink blooms that are attractive along with chicory flowers.  This plant copes with regular mowing by quickly growing back and producing new blossoms.  Cottontail rabbits, wood chucks and white-tailed deer like to nibble clover leaves and blooms.
     Common milkweeds have dusty-pink blooms that have a sweet scent.  This important, native plant is host to a variety of insects that eat parts of it, including monarch butterfly caterpillars, milkweed tussock larvae, aphids, red and black-spotted milkweed beetle larvae, greater milkweed bugs and their larvae and lesser milkweed bugs and their young.  The caterpillars of both kinds eat milkweed leaves, aphids suck its sap, and both types of milkweed bugs eat the seeds of milkweeds in their pods.
     Canada thistles stand up to five feet tall and form patches of themselves.  They each have several prickly leaves that defend the plant from browsing animals and several lavender-pink blossoms that
also have a sweet fragrance.  This species, however, is invasive and many people try to eliminate it.  But I think it, and the other plants in this grouping, is here in America to stay, in spite of our efforts.
     Many kinds of butterflies, bees and other insects visit the flowers of these plants to sip their sugary nectar.  These roadside blossoms, as long as they aren't mowed off, are sometimes the only ones available to those insects in farmland where most every acre is cultivated to an inch of its life, as we say.  And many of the butterfly species are as beautiful to experience along rural roads as anywhere.  
     Certain kinds of spiders, especially the large, black and yellow garden spiders in their big, circular webs, live among roadside vegetation.  Those spiders, of course, feed on the other invertebrates they catch in their webs.            
     These adaptable and abundant country road flowers and the invertebrates that visit them are cheering and interesting.  And they are sources of food to insects and other creatures that may not have other sources of nutrition.