Roadside Favorites

It is late June in Northwest Ohio, and my favorite roadside plants are in bloom.

This is unusual as they normally bloom in mid-July. With the warmer than average spring temperatures and the past week in the 90s, summer occurrences are two to three weeks ahead of normal. For the past few years, the weather has been everything short of normal. I am beginning to wonder what normal is.

I am always fascinated that these roadside plants thrive in the first place. Our roadsides have some of the most hostile soils in the area. Vehicles that travel these roads drip all sorts of petroleum-based fluids, that consequently end up in the soil next to the roads when it rains. Let alone all the salt-based products used in the winter for snow and ice control, yet these plants grow and thrive.

The first one on my list is the Ditch Lily, Latin name Hemerocallis fulva. Daylilies are common fare in gardens with modern kinds displaying an array of pastel shades in bi- and tri-color combinations, wavy margins, and about every other imaginable variation. The modern daylily is an engineered plant and very different than the dozen or so species from which modern cultivars were produced. One of the parents of the modern daylily is Hemerocallis fulva. This lily gets little respect and goes by such derogatory names as ditch lily or outhouse lily.

The ditch lily is the vigorous, orange-flowered, deciduous daylily with typical inch-wide linear leaves that arise from a central clump and reach about 2 feet long. The flowers appear on a 3- to 4-foot-tall scape, held well above the foliage. Flowers are 5 inches across and orange with a yellow throat. Blooms open mid-morning and wither by the end of the day.

Daylilies were known to the early Roman, Greek, and Egyptian doctors from plants brought from China over the Silk Road about 2,000 years ago. Northern Europe only learned of them in the 16th century as Hemerocallis fulva was introduced directly from China in 1576. It quickly gained favor in gardens and became widely planted.

Gerald Klingaman, a retired Extension Horticulturist states: A few daylily specialists consider the lowly ditch lily a worthy addition to their collection. It may have a place, as a groundcover plant, in difficult locations where plants must fend for themselves. For gardeners interested in growing heirloom plants it is a natural because it has not changed in the past 400 years.

The next plant on my list is the Chicory, Latin name Cichorium intybus. Chicory originated in the Mediterranean and became distributed throughout much of the world where it was grown for centuries as a salad green. Its cultivation in North America began in the 1700s and ended in about 1950 when it became more economical to import chicory. During that time, chicory escaped cultivation, and naturalized populations spread throughout southern Canada and the United States where it is most found growing in the northern and western states. In Ohio, it occurs throughout the state. Chicory grows abundantly beside roads and highways. It can also be found in lawns, pastures, fields, and waste places. The plant favors lime-rich soils but tolerates a variety of soil types.

Chicory is a perennial that initially grows as a rosette of irregularly toothed basal leaves. Then, later in the season, leafless stems emerge with sky-blue daisy-like flowers scattered along their length. Flowers open each morning and close as sunlight increases in intensity around noon. Only a few flower heads open at a time, and each head opens for a single day. Chicory reproduces by seeds.

The Latin word Intybus’ was derived from the Egyptian word for January, which was when chicory was harvested and eaten many thousands of years ago in Egypt. Chicory is considered a salad green rather than a weed in Europe; fresh leaves are sold as radicchio in Italy, and the French produce a green that they call whitloof chicory, Belgian endive, or French endive is produced by forcing chicory roots to sprout while deprived of light. Early American settlers roasted the roots for a coffee substitute. Roots were also eaten raw or boiled, dried, ground, and used as a seasoning.

As we install heirloom landscape plants in our gardens, let us not forget our lowly heirloom roadside plants!