Marsh marigolds provide a burst of color in the early spring: Nature News
It has been ages since I moved back to Maine and my memory is not the best, but, one thing I will never forget about that first spring back were the marsh marigolds. I had never seen them before: clumps of bright yellow buttercup-like flowers (these are in the buttercup family so this makes sense) with succulent-ish (I’m currently not sure whether this is a true succulent), fleshy heart-shaped leaves. They were growing in a marshy area along a stream − the woods were a little dark and they glowed like bright little beacons of spring. They are just starting to bloom, so now is a great time to go look for them.
I’m not the only one who fell in love with them at first sight. Thoreau called them “A flower-fire bursting up”. And, naturalist John Burroughs noted that “they give a golden lining to many a dark, marshy place in the leafless April woods.” This is what makes them so spectacular - they are a burst of yellow and green in an otherwise monochrome, late winter, forest.
I know that one of the first things that attracted me to marsh marigolds was that they are edible … I really wanted to be able to live off the land back then. Since then I have realized we all can’t forage, especially if we don’t need to. The natural world in our backyards is hanging on by a thread, much better to appreciate the beauty that we find than try to eat it. And, while marsh marigolds do have edible qualities they are also toxic! With caustic sap! An Eastern European name for this plant, “Gundega”, means "fire-burned," referring to the plant juices which are, like many members of the buttercup family, toxic and caustic. This means the sap of the marsh marigold can cause blistering and inflammation of the skin and gastric illness if eaten. Leave it alone! You have to know what you are doing to make a meal of this plant.
My current love of this plant embraces the ecosystem services it provides to the temperate forests of the Northern Hemisphere. This is a widely distributed plant. In fact my first discussions about marsh marigolds were with some folks in Finland. Because marsh marigolds bloom early to take advantage of the leafless canopy of their forested ecosytems, they are vitally important to early pollinators − this is one of the first flowers to provide nectar for early pollinators. While I was admiring the marsh marigolds in the floodplain along my river a variety of flies, wasps and bees stopped by for some nectar and pollen. In addition, the leaves of marsh marigolds provide food for various caterpillars and the roots help stabilize wetland soils − this helps reduce erosion and maintain water quality…what a plant!
As a biologist I also have an inordinate love for the structure of the flowers. Marsh marigold flowers don’t have petals! Those bright yellow things that look like petals are in fact sepals, the leaf-like structures that encase a flower bud until it opens. The sepals provide a landing platform for pollinators. To us the sepals look bright yellow. But to an insect, who can see in the ultraviolet, the sepals provide even more of an attractant - under ultraviolet light the base of the sepals appear black or blackish-purple, this is what insects see, a big bulls eye pointing to the nectar in the middle.
Another thing the nerd in me loves about these plants is their gender. It is fairly common for flowering plants to have both male and female flowers on a single plant (aka monecious) ...human reproduction is definitely not the norm! However, monecious plants typically have different timetables for the male and female parts to avoid self-fertilization. Marsh marigolds don’t do that. They have both male and female parts, but they don’t have different timetables. Instead, if self-fertilized, the resulting seeds are infertile. The hope is that an early pollinating insect, or even some rain, will do some cross pollinating with another plant. This is making me very anxious for one of the marsh marigolds in my backyard − it is so far away from everyone else I’m worried it won’t find someone to produce fertile seeds with.
A neat adaptation of marsh marigolds to their wet ecosystems is seed dispersal. Fertile marsh marigold seeds float. They contain a spongy material that acts like a life vest that helps them float away from their parents. But, this life vest gets water-logged pretty quickly and then the seed sinks, stranding it, hopefully, on a muddy bank a little bit downstream. This is how, given the right conditions, you can end up with a beautiful meandering stream lined with bright yellow marsh marigolds. Nature’s landscapers!
Susan Pike, a researcher and an environmental sciences and biology teacher at Dover High School, welcomes your ideas for future column topics. Send your photos and observations to spike3116@gmail.com. Read more of her Nature News columns online at Seacoastonline.com and pikes-hikes.com, and follow her on Instagram @pikeshikes.