Here’s an identification page that highlights four key plants of New England’s late summer and early fall meadows. These fellows generously ornament the roadsides and un-mowed edges of yards and ponds. They add splashes of yellow, purple, white, and pink color (and form) to the landscape. The quartet includes: New England Asters, Canada Goldenrod, Queen Anne’s Lace, and Milkweed.
Some of these abundant, herbaceous perennials are the creators of fascinating ‘mini-ecosystems’ and communities – in the sense that their flowers, leaves, stems, and roots support particularly robust constellations of invertebrates. For a printable, illustrated checklist (and guide) to a few of the creatures in residence on Milkweeds, see the following page on the evolvingbeauty.org website: https://evolvingbeauty.org/a-few-of-the-insects-living-on-milkweeds/
These four plants also have interesting histories of interaction with that ubiquitous animal – Homo Sapiens. These associations are wonderfully described in John Eastman’s excellent book Field and Roadside: Open-Country Weeds, Trees, and Wildflowers of Eastern North America and Donald and Lillian Stokes’ very helpful Guide to Enjoying Wildflowers.
I’m certain that you can think of many ways to utilize the illustrated pages found here to reinforce learning. Perhaps students will color and cut out the image of their favorite plant and glue it within a paper frame of some sort. By doing this and then threading & tieing yarn through two holes paper-punched at the upper corners of their composition, they can transform their work into a wearable name tag. This will be suitable adornment for a field trip to a Nature Center, a triumphant return home to the family – or even a trek to the edge of the schoolyard.
In this regard, please encourage your School Principal and Maintenance People to set aside at least some part of the school ground for once-only annual mowing. This is such a good way to insure that there will be early successional plants available for science studies and art observations. Not mowing along an edge or ‘island’ also generates improved animal habitat. Such areas will soon serve as refugia for beneficial insect species and as feeding stations for pollinators and even some vertebrates. These are important ecological lessons and practices our youngsters deserve to learn.
Here’s yet another way to access the PDF: Fall Meadow Plants EB