This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the subtropical supplement to Lowcountry backroads, Snow Squarestem (Melanthera nivea).
Cruising through a secluded dirt road below an umbral tunnel of live oaks, the cascade of Spanish moss shadows even the midday sun as you drift upon the splendor of this idyllic Sea Island scene. Through this diurnal twilight a sparkle of starlight pierces its liminal veil. Snow Squarestem flowers shimmering in white above its margins, sun-flecks suspended in the air, drawing attention to them. These floral beacons sway with life, encircled by bees and butterflies, the sprites and faeries congregating about them in this interstitial world, where the domain of man has carved a course which ever slowly melds back into the maritime jungles of Mother Nature.
Snow Squarestem is one of those wildflowers that sings to me of sea island summers, sweating on a shaded stroll or soaking up the tattered scenery on the heel of a September gale. It’s found in only the deep Lowcountry of South Carolina, in a concave arc from McClellanville to Aiken, and thus so its gestalt is firmly planted on the Sea Islands in my mind’s eye. Snow Squarestem is a plant with distinct and narrow growing conditions. It prefers sandy and calcium-rich soils, ample moisture, heavy shade, and a subtropical climate. This makes the dirt road shoulders and ditches of Edisto Island one of its favorite places to be. Once established, it’s a hardy, carefree wildflower and a long-lived perennial, returning to bloom each year.
Snow Squarestem is a member of the sunflower family, Asteraceae, but shows characteristics more familiar to many of our mint family wildflowers, Lamiaceae. Snow Squarestem is a tall plant growing chest high in an open and airy growth form composed of narrow stems growing square in cross-section. Its leaves are a deep inky-green with a distinct “pike-like” shape, having an elongate center, angled point, and two angular lobes jutting perpendicular from the base. Above the leaves atop its square stems collects its snow-white flowers. Snow Squarestem blooms from August to September with a modest scattering of blooms at its stems’ ends. Each bloom is a composite composed of a hundred or more small tubular flowers, forming a flat-topped compound flower an inch in width. These flowers are a favorite of many of our pollinators, particularly the Zebra Longwing, an unmistakable tropical-migrant butterfly who typically arrives on Edisto Island in number every August.
