Mountain Laurel

In my home state of Pennsylvania, now is the season of the Mountain Laurel blooms. This shrub (Latin name “Kalmia latifolia”) grows indigenously all along the eastern seaboard from southern Maine to northern Florida, and was used by Native Americans — the wood was good for carving into digging utensils, earning the plant the moniker “spoonwood”. The leaves have been used for disinfectant and many other skin-problem treatments.

Europeans began to study Mountain Laurel in the 18th century, and white Americans were growing the shrub as ornamental plants before the Revolution. They grow and flower in shade — in my neighborhood, the blossoms arrive in late May and the first part of June. They get between 7-10 feet, but only grow between 4-8 feet per decade. The famous conservationist governor Gifford Pinchot decreed Mountain Laurel the state flower here in 1933.

Cool nature fact about how the Mountain Laurel propagates. Harvard scientists studied the blooms of the flowers — as the blossoms open, tiny sacs of pollen are drawn backward along ten tiny anther-stems on the center of the bloom with tension, like an archer readying a bow. When a bumblebee investigates the flower, the pollen sacs are launched like catapults onto the underside of the bee’s belly.t).