Mosaic Monday: Goldenrod

Some of you probably cultivate goldenrod in your gardens. It's a beautiful late summer perennial that grows wild in the meadows near our Little Red House. Goldenrod is a member of the Aster family, and it is a lovely companion to the purple autumn aster.

Goldenrod is often confused with ragweed, which causes hay fever. I checked it out on Wikipedia, and learned some interesting facts. Did you know that parts of the plant are edible, and it is sometimes brewed as a tea? Goldenrod is used in herbal remedies as a kidney tonic. And most interesting of all, Thomas Edison experimented with extracting rubber from goldenrod:

"Inventor Thomas Edison experimented with goldenrod to produce rubber, which it contains naturally.^[7] Edison created a fertilization and cultivation process to maximize the rubber content in each plant. His experiments produced a 12-foot-tall (3.7 m) plant that yielded as much as 12 percent rubber. The rubber produced through Edison's process was resilient and long lasting. The tires on the Model T given to him by his friend Henry Fordwere made from goldenrod. Examples of the rubber can still be found in his laboratory, elastic and rot free after more than 50 years. However, even though Edison turned his research over to the U.S. government a year before his death, goldenrod rubber never went beyond the experimental stage."

How cool is that?!

I've often tried to photograph goldenrod with little success, but this time I had a little helpful companion. Isn't he adorable? I'm not sure what kind of bug this is, so if anyone can identify him, I'd love to hear about it. :)

Now let's have some mosaic fun! Here are the instructions:
1. Publish your Mosaic Monday post.
2. Once it is published, click on the title of the post. This will lead you to the static link for your post. The static link is the page with only that post on it. Copy the url from your browser at the top of the page.
3. Paste the url into the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
4. Type your name in the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
5. Click on "Enter."
6. Please link back to this Mosaic Monday post so that your readers can find other wonderful mosaics.

That's all there is to it! It's always a good idea to then check and see if your link is working. If you have any questions, feel free to email me: mrcarroll(at)optonline.

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