Winter’s Beauty

I am enamored with the common milkweed.  We are in the middle of winter and still the strong stalks and seedpods are beautiful to behold.  The beauty is different from the vibrant, fresh greenness and pinkness of the July flowers.

It’s different from the beauty of the summer home and food source of the Monarch butterfly egg and caterpillar.

As the green seedpod grows–one for every 60-150 flowers–the seeds inside develop slowly.  By September and October, the pods begin to dry and open.

The sun and wind can empty the seeds from the pods before the snow flies, but my particular January obsession grew in the shade and developed later than its sunny cohorts.  The pods dried and opened slowly, and as winter and snow fell, it still held on to most of the white-tailed seeds.

The rough, barbed exterior of the seedpod protects the seeds.

Inside the pod, the seeds are packed around a septum in an orderly, overlapping manner.  There is an average of 226 seeds per pod.  The seeds themselves are relatively large and heavy with a corky covering that allows them to float in water.  Each seed is attached to a silky parachute called a coma.  The comas are hollow and coated with wax, making them six times more buoyant than cork.  In fact, during World War II, the fluffy silk was used to fill Personal Flotation Devices when the usual material was in short supply.  It is also used in comforters as a hypoallergenic filler and can be used as tinder to start fires.  But the main purpose of the coma is to disperse the milkweed seeds far and wide via the wind.

Each two-toned brown seed, overlapped on one another like the scales of a pinecone, is amazingly attached to the silky, pure white fluff that lays thin and straight in the pod.  The tough, fibrous pod cracks open to reveal this biologic engineering feat (of which there are millions!) that transforms into an aviation wonder! Beautiful to behold!

Seeing beauty is easy when flowers bloom, grass is green, leaves are colorful, and water is flowing.  Winter’s beauty is harder to see and appreciate.  It reminds me of people driving through the western prairie lands of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas–many think there’s nothing to see or that it’s boring or drab!  We just have to look harder, change our parameters of beauty, and open ourselves to the subtleties of form, color, and function.  There is beauty, exquisiteness, and wonder in all the seasons of Life.