Kaw Valley Almanac

Apioperdon pyriforme is the only puffball mushroom found in Kansas that lives on wood; other puffball mushrooms can also be found in prairies and woodland edges this time of year.

Recent winds and rains have caused many lingering leaves to fall, and though it looks like these elms have some lingering leaves on their tops, it’s actually a flock of blackbirds!

Many leaves have been slow to fall. Trees weaken the link between next year’s bud and this year’s leaf, but they need moisture to swell that space and pop the leaf off the tree.

Maple leaves are starting to fall and, while colorful, are at times almost pastel because of the dry, sunny skies that have almost bleached them before they fell.

This photo of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was taken Sunday an hour after sunset, with a band of smoke from Wyoming wildfires right underneath.

Smooth aster is a purple and yellow late-blooming prairie wildflower that late pollinators, especially butterflies, are drawn to.

This eastern orb weaver’s is one of many spiderwebs found spanning trails this time of the year.

Sumac is one of the first leaves to shut down the green chlorophyll, leaving the red anthocyanin pigment that extends its ability to create glucose in the shorter days.

The dry weather is taking a toll on many plants and trees, but it has created ideal conditions for one of the most beautiful prairie wildflowers: the gentian.

More than 90% of Kansas is in drought right now, but prairie plant roots go deep and have developed strategies to survive, as evidenced by this field where sunflowers, goldenrods and blue sage are thriving.

Here are Jerusalem artichoke blooms, from green flower buds to fully open, pollinated by a sweat bee among its disk flowers.

There are many species of goldenrod in Kansas, and all of them are godsends for the many bees, beetles, butterflies and other insect pollinators who visit their copious blossoms.

The American ground potato is a vine with edible tubers even more nutritious than the domesticated potato and was a staple food for many North American tribes. “Topeka” means “place where we dig potatoes” for the Kansa and Osage tribes.

American lotus, the largest flower in North America, is currently blooming on waterways in eastern portions of Kansas. In addition to having an edible tuber and seeds, its seed pod can enhance dried flower arrangements.

”One of my favorite memories from childhood is one I can renew almost every year: the Perseid Meteor Shower,” Ken Lassman writes in this week’s Kaw Valley Almanac.