By SCOTT RANDO
Years ago, roadsides and highway medians were regularly sprayed and mowed to keep the shoulders clear and improve sight distance for safety reasons. The mowing went out to wherever the road right-of-way ended, and the interstate medians almost looked like golf courses. If you saw brown vegetation in the summer, herbicide was probably used.
Today, many of these same areas are seeded with wildflowers.
Now we recognize that some of these roadside areas offer critical habitat to certain pollinator species, and so we don’t spray or mow to the extent that was done in the past. One of these species is the well talked about monarch butterfly. The monarch relies on milkweed for its survival. In upland forest habitats, the only place where milkweed might be observed is on the sides of roads in the area, in the small buffer between the road and the tree line.
If you visit public lands this time of year, chances are that you will come across access roads that were cut for public and emergency access. The public access is frequently for hiking only. These roads are typically unpaved roads that resemble jeep trails in some cases, with a small strip of cleared area on each side.
The plant species growing along these roadside clearings will be different from what is seen in the surrounding forests or other surrounding habitat. On a few of these access roads, milkweed is abundant, along with monarch butterflies. Among the various plant species present may be a few plants considered to be invasive species. Most of these require sun and do not do well in the surrounding forest.
The wildflowers pictured in this column were all captured last week on a Pennsylvania State Game Land in central PA.