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Scarlet Stars in a Green Cosmos

© Gregg Pasterick

Whether subtle or obvious, small or large, most wildflowers don't have to do much work to get seen. Some require you at least be paying attention, but most find a way to get themselves noticed. Every now and then, something can be truly breathtaking, even if you've seen it before.

Hiking a path through the woods in California this spring, I had my first encounter with such a wildflower. My wife saw it first, but rather than call my attention to it, she allowed me to discover it for myself. To do otherwise would have been a bit like her opening my birthday presents for me.

There, along the path, was a handful of California Indian Pinks (Silene californica), deep scarlet gobs of paint defying gravity, suspended in mid-air. Flower-shaped scarlet holes in the woods. Scarlet stars in a green cosmos. California Indian Pinks.

Few wildflowers are not beautiful in my eyes, but these... They were obscene.

They were very similar to a nearly as beautiful cousin, Fire Pink (S. virginica), a familiar starry blossom in the green cosmos of Ohio. Their moniker, on the other hand, they share with an unrelated eastern wildflower, Indian Pink (Spigelia marilandica).

California Indian Pink, as well as Fire Pink, are members of the Pink Family (Caryophillaceae). It is a perennial found in open woods in California and Southern Oregon, and blooms from March through August. The stems can be over a foot long, often branching, bearing several of the scarlet flowers. Because these stems can get lazy and recline somewhat, the flowers are often found nearer the ground. Where several of the plants grow together the flowers bloom, in the green cosmic scheme of things, in an entire galaxy of scarlet stars. (What alien life forms must exist in such a galaxy, one might wonder.)

Giving the flower away as a member of the Pink Family is not the color, but the five petals, which are lobed. Each petal has 4 lobes, the inner 2 longer and wider than the outer 2. 10 stamens topped with creamy white anthers protrude from the middle of the scarlet petals. A sticky ooze secreted at the upper part of the stem, in which small insects are often bogged down like dinosaurs in tar pits, accounts for the plant's common name, catchfly.

Fire Pinks, the scarlet star systems of the woods near my home in Ohio, are perhaps only slightly less obscenely gorgeous than the California Indian Pinks. Rather than the 4 lobes in the petals of the western species, each Fire Pink petal has a single profound notch in it. Also, the petals are narrower. The sticky, elongated calyx, which traps insects, accounts for this species' claim to the common catchfly name. (Actually, a later blooming prairie species is "officially" named Royal Catchfly. We'll get to that one later in the summer.) Fire Pikns are a native perennial, blooming during May and June.