Divine Robes of Cardinal Flower

In every season, there is one characteristic plant or animal that seems to capture my heart as the quintessential expression of nature’s almanac. For me, summer is giving way to fall when cardinal flower, surely one of our most spectacular wildflowers, blooms.

Tall, flaming spikes of scarlet red erupt around my pond and meadow, luring butterfly and hummingbird alike to the visual feast. Each individual flower on the spike is a long tube, with white-tipped stamens arching upwards and sticking out beyond the corolla. The lower petal is divided into three large lobes, and an upper petal divides into two thinner ones.

One afternoon, my husband and I watched a ruby-throated hummingbird pause at the blood-red flowers, each time bumping his forehead against the stamens and transferring pollen to the next flower. The stamens were sturdy enough to ruffle his feathers, leaving a tiny cowlick on his forehead. On another day, a pipevine swallowtail butterfly moved up one spike of ruby flowers and down another, tasting each sweet offering and transferring pollen as it moved.

Cardinal flower is named after the scarlet robes worn by cardinals, officials in the Catholic Church. For the same reason, the redbird of our yards and forest edges is named cardinal.

Cardinal flower grows most profusely where it has plenty of water but still receives direct sunlight. In the wintertime, the flower spike dies back, leaving a basal rosette of green leaves. This leafy rosette must remain free of debris, dead leaves, and competing vegetation, or the plant will die. Because it can tolerate very wet conditions that most plants cannot, cardinal flower often grows along stream-banks or below water-line in seasonally flooded ponds. The spring floods and high water wash away any competition, leaving the plants that grew from seeds shed in the fall, when water levels are lowest.

The small seeds are ideally transported by water. They are so small that they float on the surface tension, eventually lodging against a sandy bank where they take root. As each flower withers, a swollen bulb at its base enlarges with the ripening seeds. When it is dry, the hundreds of brown seeds inside are ripe. Once it is established around a pond or stream, new flowers magically appear a few years after the tiny seeds and resulting tiny plants have reached a size large enough to flower.

Blue lobelia is a close relative of cardinal flower. Although the flowers are blue, they are similarly shaped. While it also grows in moist areas, it occasionally occurs in dry locations as well. It is not as tolerant of submergence as cardinal flower and doesn’t grow below high water-line.

If you’d like a look at cardinal flowers, several plants are blooming around the Porter Center’s pond on the Brevard College campus. They aren’t yet established and vigorous, but are sporting a few flowers. Keep an eye open for those scarlet spikes elsewhere, and let me know if you see them!

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