Early May Flowers

The magnolias have been beautiful this year. Some, like the one pictured, are already dropping their petals, while others are just opening their buds.

 

Shadbush (Amelanchier canadensis) gets its name from the shad fish. Shad live in the ocean but, much like salmon, return to freshwater rivers to spawn. Shad was a very important food source for Native Americans and for centuries they knew that the shad were running when the shadbush bloomed. In June they harvested the very nutritious shad fruit, which looks much like a small apple. It was a favorite ingredient in pemmican, which was a mixture of dried meat, dried fruit, and animal fat. This is our earliest native white flowered tall shrub, coming into bloom just before the cherries.

This cherry isn’t a native but I thought it was beautiful enough to have its picture taken.

I found wild field pansies (Viola arvensis) growing in a local park. This tiny flower, no bigger than a pencil eraser, is a challenge to photograph. This plant is from Europe and, since it was used medicinally there, probably came to this country with the earliest settlers.

Native Canada violets (Viola canadensis) aren’t anywhere near as common as blue violets, but I find them at the edges of woods occasionally.  The U.S.D.A. lists them as threatened in Connecticut, endangered in Illinois, Maine, and New Jersey, and “historical” in Rhode Island, which means they are only a memory. There are several look alikes, so this plant can be a real challenge to identify.

This bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) grows in a local park. It’s a beautiful thing.

There is a lot going on in a ground ivy blossom (Glechoma hederacea). Its five petals are fused together to form a tube. The lowest and largest petal, which is actually two petals fused together, serves as a landing area for insects, complete with tiny hairs for them to hang onto. The pistil’s forked style can be seen poking out at the top under one of the three separate petals. Two long and two short stamens mean this flower is both male and female and so is perfect, or hermaphroditic.

The darker spots on a ground ivy blossom are nectar guides for insects to follow into the tube. These flowers really go all the way to insure pollination. Ground ivy is another plant that was brought by European settlers because of its medicinal qualities.

In botanical terms the word sessile describes how one part of a plant joins another. In sessile leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia) the leaves are sessile against the stem, meaning they lie flat against the stem with no stalk. These leaves are also elliptic, which means they are wider in the middle and taper at each end.  New plants, before the flowers appear, can resemble Solomon’s seal at a glance. The plants I find always have just a single nodding, bell shaped, pale yellow flower but they can sometimes have two. Sessile leaved bellwort is in the lily of the valley family and is also called wild oats.

False rue anemone (Enemion biternatum) can be a hard flower to get a photo of because they seem to be closed more than they’re open. The flowers have no nectar and produce only pollen, but they are still visited by a large number of bees and flies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a false rue anemone growing alone. They always grow in large colonies here and can be quite a sight when hundreds of them are in bloom.

NOTE: Josh from the Josh’s Journal blog has pointed out that this plant is most likely Anemone quinquefolia or wood anemone, which is very similar to false rue anemone. Rue anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides), which is also similar, also grows in New Hampshire, which complicates things even further. While false rue anemone is native to the eastern U.S., the USDA and other sources say that it doesn’t grow in New England. The petal count alone should have alerted me because false rue anemone always has 5 white sepals, while wood anemone and true rue anemone can have more. Thanks to Josh for a lesson in how easy it is to misidentify a plant, and why we need to look very closely at the plants we are trying to identify.

Dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius) flowers are so small that even a cluster of them is hardly bigger than a nickel. One interesting thing about this little plant is how some plants have only male flowers while others have perfect flowers with both male and female parts. Each plant can also change its gender from year to year. This photo also shows where the trifolius part of the scientific name comes from. Three leaflets each make up the whorl of three compound leaves. Dwarf ginseng doesn’t like disturbed ground and is usually found in old, untouched hardwood forests. It is on the rare side here and I only know of two places to find it. This is not the ginseng used in herbal medicine.

Goldthread (Coptis groenlandicum)gets its common name from its thread like, bright yellow roots. This is another plant that usually grows in undisturbed soil that is on the moist side. Native Americans used this plant medicinally and told the early settlers of its value in treating canker sores, which led to its being nearly collected into oblivion. At one time more goldthread was sold in Boston than any other native plant. Luckily it has made a good comeback but another plant called goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) suffered a similar fate and I’ve never seen it, even though I’ve been walking in these woods for half a century.

Native ginger (Asarum canadense) has finally unfurled its downy leaves and is now flowering. Its brownish maroon flowers are often found right on the ground and are hard to see. For years this plant was thought to be pollinated by flies or fungus gnats but several studies have shown that they are self-pollinated. Native Americans used this plant for food and medicine but, even though its aromatic roots are similar to culinary ginger, scientists say that they contain toxins and should not be used as food.

A close up of a wild ginger flower. This flower has no petals. It is made up of 3 triangular shaped calyx lobes that curl backwards. You might think, because of its meat-like color, that flies would happily visit this flower and they do occasionally, but they have little to nothing to do with the plant’s pollination. It is thought they crawl into the flower simply to get warm.

This is the time-just before the grass gets high enough to mow-that bluets (Houstonia caerulea) form large enough colonies to look like patches of snow in the grass. These were the darkest blue in a colony of many thousands of plants.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. ~Henry David Thoreau

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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