The wool of my favorite old rusty orange sweater felt warm and scratchy as I stuffed it into my backpack next to a jacket and camera. The low gray clouds hung onto their rain, but wind gusts flung water drops off the trees as I walked to my car. As soon as I turned onto the gravel road, though, I knew I’d made the right decision. The much-needed rain had washed dust off the autumn leaves and saturated their colors. This was a perfect day for a scenic drive through a rainbow forest.
The sky began to drip just a tad as I pulled into the parking lot for Morgan Falls and St. Peter’s Dome in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, so I dug the jacket out of my pack before ambling down the wide, flat trail. The pink, purple, and yellow wildflowers were bedraggled from the rain, and a motionless bee clung to one of them, too cold to move.
The hike up was beautiful, too. Even though this trail is rocky enough that I had to look down a lot, there was a carpet of colorful leaves and vibrant patches of happy moss to admire. I even spotted a fat little short-tailed shrew scurrying around the same hillside where I often find fat little bumble bees in May. Both species have venom, although at opposite ends of their bodies.
Gray clouds still hung low when I reached the overlook, but below them was a spectacular tapestry of orange. I visit this overlook every fall, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it quite so orange. In Crayola’s words, the shades included mango tango, atomic tangerine, macaroni and cheese, neon carrot, and my personal favorite, burnt sienna. In science’s word: carotene.
All summer, orange carotene pigments in the leaves captured wavelengths of light that the green chlorophyll could not, and then transferred that energy over to help fuel photosynthesis. Yellow xanthophyll pigments absorbed dangerous excess energy in the leaf and dissipated it as heat. This prevented cell damage, and warmed the surrounding environment. All summer, vibrant green chlorophyll was the star of the show, and outshone all the rest. As chlorophyll breaks down and is resorbed, though, its trusty sidekicks are revealed.
I snapped several photos before the sound of raindrops on leaves told me that it was time to hike back down.
Despite the vibrant colors in the tree canopy, the unfrosted understory was still very green. That’s why two little dots of bright orange at about knee height caught my eye. Looking closer, I discovered that they were orange fruits on a green plant. The fruits were the size of small marbles, and each had a tiny tuft of leaves on top like a strawberry. They sat snugged up on either side of the stem, right on top of two broad leaves with wide petioles. A few inches down the stem, the scene was repeated, but with the leaves and fruits rotated a quarter turn. Below that, a third set of leaves and fruits matched orientation with the top ones.
Ah ha! I’d never met this plant in person before, and the fact that they were growing here, on one of my favorite trails, irked me just a little. I hike here multiple times a year, and often teach about spring wildflowers. Why hadn’t I noticed them before? Why did I finally see them that day? The second question was much easier – three people asked me to identify photos of this plant in the past month!
Orange-fruited Horse Gentian is a member of the honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae. The Northern Fly Honeysuckle growing nearby was small and delicate in comparison, though. The cousins share the traits of leaves arranged oppositely around the stem, smooth leaf margins, and roundish, orangish fruits. Fly honeysuckle has delicate woody twigs and much smaller features, while my new acquaintance had leaves the size and shape of bunny ears. In fact, its these big leaves, more suited to a tree than an understory herb, that earns the descriptor “horse,” which often denotes coarseness or a large size.
When they bloom in late spring, Orange-fruited Horse Gentians produce 2 to 6 brownish purple, tubular flowers in each leaf axil, where the fruits now sit. The flowers of true gentians are also tubular, and also have 5 petals, but that’s the extent of the similarity, despite the name.
This plant isn’t common in northern Wisconsin, because they prefer to grow in rich soil. Still, I will be on the lookout the flowers next spring! My hunch is that they bloom after the mosquitoes have hatched, which makes botanizing much harder. The bright fruits, appearing after the mosquitoes have diminished and colored with orange carotene pigments just like the autumn leaves, may always be easier to find.
You know, I’ve always heard that carotene, especially beta-carotene, is good for eye health. I wonder if there are any benefits from simply looking at it? On this beautiful orange day, I think I might have absorbed some happiness through my eyes.
Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.
For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to
Last Update: Oct 23, 2024 9:07 am CDT
