October in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland is a month rich with beauties. By then, generally, wild plants and animals have come to their fulfillment of growth, reproduced and are now preparing for the harshness of winter, either by migrating south, hibernating, storing food or putting on layers of fat. At no time of year is food and shelter as abundant than in October. And that special month has much beauty, too; those leftover from summer and some unique to October.
Like all the seasons, including in Lancaster County cropland, a human-made habitat where most people never think to look for autumn beauties besides planted pumpkins, fall has its own special beauties, particularly in October. Then deciduous trees, vines, weeds and grasses sense lessening daylight and lowering average temperatures each succeeding day. They respond by shutting off water to their leaves, which allows their death and the death of the green chlorophyll in them. When chlorophyll dies, the other colors in foliage are visible and we say they have turned colors. Some plants with beautiful colored leaves in autumn farmland include the red ones of staghorn sumac trees, orange foliage on sassafras trees, orange and yellow leaves on poison ivy vines, red foliage on Virginia creeper vines, red on poke, pigweed and lamb's quarters weeds and yellow on fox-tail grasses. These adaptable, abundant plants create medleys of lovely colors that can be enjoyed each fall. And they produce food for wildlife.
Several kinds of lovely berries and crab apple fruits in hedgerows between fields and along rural roadsides feed farmland wildlife through winter. Some of those berries are red ones on staghorn sumac trees and multiflora rose and Tartarian honeysuckle bushes, deep-purple ones on sassafras trees, Virginia creeper vines and poke, and orange ones on bittersweet vines. Those berries are not only attractive, but feed rodents and a variety of berry-eating birds, including American robins, cedar waxwings and other species. Those birds consume the berries, digest their pulp, but pass the seeds in their droppings, thus spreading each kind of plant across the countryside.
Lamb's quarters, pigweeds, foxtail grass and other kinds of weeds and grasses along roadsides, in abandoned fields, and in soybean and pumpkin fields that can't be cultivated, produce an abundance of small seeds that mice and seed-eating birds, including mourning doves, rock pigeons, savannah sparrows and horned larks, ingest during fall and winter. Those field birds add more interest to cultivated fields during those seasons.
Goldenrod, chicory, red clover and butter and eggs, to name a few flowering species leftover from summer, are still blooming in Lancaster County cropland in October, especially in meadows and along roadsides. And in October, wild morning glory vines, which crawl up fence posts and other kinds of plants, and a few kinds of asters also bloom in those same human-made habitats. Morning glories produce big, showy blossoms that are pink, white or, my favorite, deep-purple. Wild asters produce clusters of small blooms that are white, pale-lavender or, my favorite, deep purple, depending on the species. Several kinds of bees, butterflies, particularly lots of cabbage whites and yellow sulphurs, and other insect species swarm on aster flowers to sip their nectar, the last large source of sugar those insects will get each year before frost kills them or sends them to sheltered places, depending on the species.
Interestingly, there are a few kinds of flowering plants, including nodding thistles, chicory and a small variety of asters that still bloom in October, even after they had been mowed to stubs in pastures and along roadsides. Those plants recovered from that cutting and grew full-sized, pretty blooms on stunted stalks. Bees, butterflies and other types of insects visit those blossoms as much as they visit flowers on full-sized plants. The thistles, particularly, are admirable because they normally bloom in June and July, but here they are recovered and blossoming in October, benefiting insects.
A few kinds of trees, including black walnut, shagbark hickory and pin oak, in hedgerows and abandoned fields, and along woodlot edges, waterways and roadsides in cropland, produce nuts in abundance. And the scurrying of gray squirrels, and beauty of blue jays flying in and out of pin oaks, as both species gather and store many of those nuts to eat during the coming winter are entertaining and a big part of autumn. Both these originally woodland species live in farmland woodlots and hedgerows. And the squirrels can chew into all three kinds of nuts to eat the meat inside, but jays can only chip into pin oak acorns to get their nutrition.
There are a few other interesting bits of autumn in local farmland worth mentioning, including the fluff of common milkweed pods, garden spiders, crickets and grasshoppers and fuzzy caterpillars.
When milkweed seeds are mature, the pods that contained and protected them split open, allowing those brown seeds to fall out. But each seed has a fluffy, white parachute that carries its seed cargo on the wind across the countryside, thus spreading the species. Scores of milkweed fluff and seeds on the wind are pretty to see.
The big, black and yellow garden spiders are often noticed on their large, round webs late in summer and into fall to October. These spiders and their webs are quite attractive, especially when covered with dew drops glistening like jewelry in the early morning sunlight.
Field crickets continue to chirp on warm afternoons in October. They and grasshoppers of a few kinds are spotted on roadside plants and leaping across rural roads until heavy frost kills them.
A few kinds of fuzzy caterpillars, including the black and rusty-orange Isabella moth larvae, crawl across country roads to find sheltering places to spend winter. Unfortunately, some of those attractive, little critters of October get crushed by passing vehicles.
These are some of the more common beauties of October in Lancaster County cropland. Highly cultivated farmland is not as barren as one might think.
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