Jerusalem Artichokes

     On September 21 of this year, the eve of the autumn equinox, I visited several wild strips of Jerusalem artichokes in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  Those plants are not related to artichokes, but are a type of sunflower native to North America from southern Canada south to northern Florida and Texas.  Some rows of Jerusalem artichokes I saw had only a few plants, but others were up to a hundred yards of this tall sunflower with strikingly beautiful, bright-yellow flowers.  And everywhere in Lancaster County, this stately, wild sunflower species represents fall, cropland and the American Indians who once raised them to eat their underground, nutritious tubers.      The perennial Jerusalem artichokes stand up to ten feet tall and have large, rough leaves and several golden blooms on top of each plant.  Those sky-reaching stalks sway and bob gracefully in the wind.  Each flower is about three inches across and has ten to twenty rays.  Hundreds or thousands of blossoms blooming together in a stand of themselves brighten the habitats where they grew.  Along with orange pumpkins and stacked corn stalks in the fields, this type of sunflower helps decorate the mundane cropland their stalks sprouted in.       
     Jerusalem artichokes grow along hedgerows between fields, particularly along the edges of the tall field corn.  And they have stands along country roadsides that may get mowed once in awhile, but never cultivated.  Each plant grows all summer, blooms for three weeks, from the second week in September to the end of that fall month here in Lancaster County.  Then each plant dies, except for its underground roots and tubers. 
     On September 21, I came to a patch of Jerusalem artichokes on the edge of a successional woodlot along the rural road I was driving on.  I could drive right up to that patch of sunflowers in full bloom, which was, at the time, in the shade of young ash-leafed, black walnut, black locust, mulberry and hackberry trees.  Some goldenrod and white asters were also in bloom in this stand of sunflowers.  I sat in the shade of those trees for about an hour and watched several kinds of insects visiting Jerusalem artichoke flowers.  All the rows of this wild sunflower I saw had insects among their blossoms, but this stand had more insects than any of the rest and I was able to see those little creatures more up-close than at any other patch of Jerusalem artichokes.
     The insects flew vigorously from bloom to bloom, providing a lively show and adding their beauties and intrigues to that of the Jerusalem artichoke blossoms.  Honey bees, bumble bees and carpenter bees were all there in limited numbers.  And there was a small variety of pretty butterflies, including cabbage whites, yellow sulphurs, meadow fritillaries, a few painted ladies, one migrant monarch and lots of little, dark skippers of some species I couldn't identify.  Those lively, abundant skippers dominated the sunflower blooms the whole time I was among them.  They, themselves were quite a show.
     Jerusalem artichokes' beacons of golden light, mounted on their own tall, green towers, surely brighten Lancaster County cropland.  Each large and decorative flower, in itself, was striking.  And the many kinds of interesting insects added to the overall show that make this farmland wild plant so interesting to observe.