All Tied Up In Knot(weed)s

It's the middle of January as I write this, a rainy, blustery day on the coast of Washington. I'm sitting here, staring out the window at Willapa Bay, my stomach all tied up in knots. Two weeks ago, just two days into the new year, my wife and I were informed that our services were no longer desired as innkeepers at the inn we've managed since May, eight months ago. Frankly, we were both relieved, but not without a little tension; a little bit of knotting.

Faced with the prospect of finding a new innkeeping position at the worst time of the year to do so, the knot got knottier. Now, after two weeks of emails, phone calls, no-thank-yous and near misses, it appears as if we may be heading up into Alaska, above the Arctic Circle. My wife is excited; I am just one gigantic knot. I want to go to Alaska too, but not now, not in the middle of winter, not when it's 50 below zero, not when the sun shines less than 4 hours a day.

Going now means a lot of preparation, planning, and anticipation. That includes putting everything into storage for the time being, including all of my wildflower books and my photographs and so on. It means I've got to write four months of articles in the next week or so.

All of my articles up to now, including next week's, were written by the end of last year, so you would think this would be no different, but it is; I'm all tied up in knots...

...which is my clumsy segue into knotweeds, one of those easy to overlook wildflowers that are so much a part of their environment they can't possibly be anything special.

Knotweeds are of members of the Buckwheat Family (Polygonaceae). There are more than 100 species worldwide, with about 70 of those growing in North America. Their flowers, which are usually pink though a few species hive whitish or greenish flowers, are tiny; an eighth of an inch long is a tall one. They make up for their small size by growing in clusters of just a few to more than fifty flowers, consequently putting on somewhat of a pink show in numbers.

Their pink show is prolonged, or enhanced by the behavior of the flowers. One or two flowers open at any given time, in no particular order, in no particular cluster. Thus they are scattered around the plant, among the many pink buds. But that's not at all. After the bloom is finished, it does not wither away; a pink, bud-like five-part calyx closes up, an elliptical back seed case growing inside. So at three different stages of its life, a knotweed flower holds its color, and the cluster stays pink for weeks.

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