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One of the joys of living in the country is roaming about looking for interesting plants and then learning about them. A friend of mine lives on a farm in Buckingham County. It’s large, several hundred acres, and has been in cultivation for around 200 hundred years. 

This young woman started her explorations by photographing plants and then using field guides and various apps to identify them. She kept meticulous records of everything. Early finds included both the usual, as well as not so common plants, including skunk cabbages in late winter, everyone’s favorite pink lady’s slippers in mid spring, and ghost pipes and cardinal flowers in mid-summer. By fall, she was trying to identify goldenrods and asters, which are fiendishly difficult to differentiate.

Soon my friend became curious about some of the plants that she couldn’t identify and eventually contacted a botanist at the Department of Conservation and Recreation. Just about everyone who spends time trying to identify plants in the wild dreams of finding a plant that is a new county record. It’s just the coolest thing ever to help document a new county record.

The botanist scheduled a visit that was very productive for him and my friend. He recorded five new native plant records for Buckingham County: small white aster (Symphyotrichum racemosum), purple passionflower (Passiflora incarnata), reflexed sedge (Carex retroflexa), erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum), and cockspur hawthorn (Crataegus crus-galli Linnaeus var. crus-galli). Although not rare, both the erect knotweed and reflexed sedge are infrequently found in our area. The cockspur hawthorn is more common in the mountains than here, so it was a good find too. 

Just several miles away, the botanist made a spectacular find: deceptive bluestem (Andropogon virginicus Linnaeus var. decipiens), a native bluestem grass that until recently was known in only two locations in Virginia. It’s typically found in dry sandy woodlands in areas occupied or previously occupied by longleaf pines. 

In addition to undocumented native plants, the botanist and my friend also found some nonnatives, including one that caused some excitement. Until now, Chinese motherwort or honeyweed (Leonurus japonicus), a native of Asia, had only been found in several locations in Gloucester County and the City of Newport News. While exploring my friend’s farm, the botanist discovered that Chinese motherwort was fully naturalized over several hundred acres of land there, indicating that this plant is capable of becoming a prolific weed and that it may have been overlooked in other locations.

My friend was so happy and excited about the results of the botanist’s visit to her farm. She’s all fired up to search for more plants and to extend her endeavors to include insects and reptiles. The botanist was happy because he found so many plants that hadn’t been documented in Buckingham County. Even for him, new finds never get old. 

Spring is finally here. It’s time to start exploring. Even if you don’t find a plant that hasn’t been documented, searching is so much fun. The hunt is on for 2024. What will you find?

Dr. Cynthia Wood is a master gardener who writes two columns for The Herald. Her email address is cynthia.crewe23930@gmail.com.