Painted Fields and Lawns

     Large parts of many fields, pastures, lawns and roadsides in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania appear to have been painted pink and/or light-blue by early April.  The pink is from the multitudes of small flowers in dense mats of purple dead nettles and the pale-blue is from the many thick carpets of Veronica's little blooms.  These adaptable and hardy species of prostrate plants create pure rugs of themselves in those open, human-made habitats, or mixed clumps.  And some of those pink, blue or mixed patches of little flowers are sprinkled with cheering, yellow dandelion blooms and the tiny, white blossoms of common chickweeds and hairy bittercress, making lovely bouquets in fields, lawns, roadsides and so on.
     Loose groups of American robins, purple grackles and starlings, moving through those patches of lovely flowers to find and eat invertebrates and seeds, add their feathered beauties to those open habitats early in April.  And field mice and wood chucks dig burrow homes among those same kinds of small, but beautiful, blossoms on roadside banks.       
     All these prostrate plants are aliens from Eurasia where they long ago adapted to agriculture.  Growing low to the ground is why they flourish on regularly mowed lawns.  They are ground cover on recently disturbed soil and add much beauty to it in late March into much of April.  And they are prolific, spreading rapidly from seed.    
     Some dandelion flower stems grow over a foot tall.  But when mowed regularly, only the inch-long stems of those same dandelion plants are able to produce seeds.  Therefore, eventually, only dandelions with short flower stems are able to produce seeds.
     Members of the mint family of plants, purple dead nettles stand about three inches tall and each plant has a few small, pink flowers above its leaves.  Each plant's several small, heart-shaped leaves overlap each other like shingles or scales near the the top of its stem.
    Most kinds of Veronicas, also known as speedwells, are flat, creeping plants in fields and, more commonly, on lawns.  Each little bloom of this species has four petals, three of them light-blue, but the bottom one is white.
     Little needs to be mentioned about the abundant and well-known dandelions, except they are cheery to see and their leaves and yellow flowers are food for cottontail rabbits, wood chucks and white-tailed deer.  Several kinds of small, seed-eating birds, including northern cardinals, indigo buntings, American goldfinches, house finches and a few kinds of sparrows ingest their seeds late in April and through much of May.
     The tiny, white blossoms of common chickweeds and hairy bittercress add a bit more variety to the attractive wildflower patches of dead nettles and Veronicas, whether pure one species or the other, or mixed.  And it's gratifying to know they are a couple more species of plants adapted to cultivated fields.
     Look for these small, pretty flowers in cultivated fields late in March and into April.  They are all adaptable and hardy species that have adapted to human-made habitats and have made those built habitats more lovely to the eye during spring.  And they help hold down the soil against erosion and add nutrients to the soil when plowed underground in preparation for planting crops.  These poor plants do get turned under, but they were attractive in habitats with little enough beauties, at least for a little while.