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That End-of-Summer Vibe, Monkshood, and the Wolf Man

© Gregg Pasterick

Though it's been more than 4 years since my wife and I left the eastern U.S. for good (or so we have planned ... it hasn't completely worked out that way), and the seasonal changes more typical of those familiar eastern climes are mostly a thing of the past, I haven't completely shaken that end-of-summer vibe. August still has the reek of a garden out-of-control, baskets full of tomatoes and peppers and herbs, goldenrod and asters in full and glorious bloom, and the gradual decline into autumn. By the end of August I was always tired and ready to be done with it all, though I knew I still had two more months of outdoors to deal with.

I tended to lose interest by the end of August, or at least be very indifferent most days. Mother Nature, though, was indifferent to me! She plodded on, blossoming those goldenrods and asters, turning Monarchs' heads toward southern California and the mountains of Mexico, dulling the plumage of songbirds and ripening my tomatoes. I was tired, but nature kept going.

I have since had my end-of-Augusts on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, in the Sierra Nevada Mts., and in southern California. The end-of-summer vibe is a whole 'nother thing in these places; nature behaves differently; the wildflowers behave differently, or so it seems to my end-of-the-season-weary spirit. And if the wildflowers don't behave differently, well, they are, themselves, different. Even some of the familiar ones are different.

Monkshood, for example.

Back east, Monkshood (Aconitum unicinatum), which I never got to see in person, grew to about four feet tall on damp slopes and in low woods. It bloomed from August through October. Western Monkshood (A. columbianum), which I did find along some mountain streams in the southern Sierra Nevadas, grows as tall as seven feet in moist woods and subalpine meadows. It blooms from June though August. Familiar, but different.

Both sport blue flowers that are easy to mistake for larkspur if you're not paying attention. Western Monkshood can be found from Alaska down into the Sierra Nevada Mts., and east into western Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico and Colorado; eastern Monkshood grows from Pennsylvania down to Georgia, and west to Alabama and up into Indiana. They are members of the Buttercup clan (Ranunculaceae).

The European Monkshood (A. lycotonum) is also known as Wolfsbane, and who can forget the ol' Gypsy woman in "The Wolf Man," and her prayer: "Even a

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