Joe-Pye at Princeton High

On lazy summer days, music wafting out of the Princeton high school's music rooms mixes with the plunky sound of green frogs in the wetland ecolab. With a science wing on one side and the performing arts center on the other, the flower-packed wetland serves as translator of biology into music.

Joe Pye Weed is looking highly floristic right now, and if you look closely at the shapes of the flower heads you'll see two kinds. The more flat-topped is probably spotted Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum).

The more rounded, graceful flower head is hollow-stemmed Joe Pye Weed.

Here are the contrasting stems, with the hollow stem on the left.

Also in bloom now are a native sunflower (photo), swamp milkweed, cardinal flower, cutleaf coneflower, rose mallow hibiscus, wild senna,

 wild rice,

 water plantain, whose flower heads are so diffuse they seem impossible to photograph,

and boneset.