Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage | Flora | Mullein

On of the last day of December 2024, before the big January snow storms of 2025, mullein, or witch’s broom, as it is known locally, was still green. 

First-year witch’s broom near the Mount Savage Overlook (click on photos for enlargements)

Witch’s broom is a biannual plant and this is almost certainly a second-year plant. By the end of the coming summer it will have a stalk up to seven feet high. It is this stalk and the leaves attached to the bottoms, like whisks on a broom, that gave plant the name witch’s broom. 

Second-year witch’s broom in mid-summer

See Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) Bike Trail between Cumberland, Maryland, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Cumberland to Frostburg, including Towns of Cumberland, Mount Savage, and Frostburg