Mid April Flowers

I’ve heard all the arguments against forsythia and I agree with most of them, but you have to admit that spring would be very different without their cheery blooms.

Forsythias shout that spring has arrived and it’s hard to ignore them because they are everywhere. I think you’d have a hard time finding a street in this town that doesn’t have at least one.

It’s great to stop for the daily paper and see this beautiful pink magnolia on my way into the store. Every time I do I feel like I should thank the owner for planting it.

Someone at the local college must like reticulated iris (Iris reticulata) because hundreds of them grow there. They’re a very early spring flower that does well in rock gardens and goes well with miniature daffodils like tete-a-tete.

I’m interested in both botany and history and they come together in the Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas). This under used shrub is in the dogwood family and is our earliest blooming member of that family, often blooming at just about the same time as forsythias do. The small yellow flowers will produce fruit that resembles a red olive and which will mature in the fall. It is very sour but high in vitamin C and has been used for at least 7000 years for both food and medicine. In northern Greece early Neolithic people left behind remains of meals that included cornelian cherry, and the Persians and early Romans also knew it well. As you look at its flowers it’s amazing to think that Homer, Rumi, and Marcus Aurelius most likely did the same.

The shoots of false hellebore (Veratrum viride) rise straight out of the damp ground and look like a rocket for a short time before opening into a sheaf of deeply pleated leaves.

I can’t think of another plant that false hellebore really resembles but people occasionally poison themselves by eating it. When it comes to poisonous plants false hellebore is the real deal and can kill, and it’s not a good way to go. In 2010 five people who had been hiking the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska had to be evacuated by helicopter for emergency medical treatment after they ate false hellebore roots. Luckily they all survived, with quite a tale to tell.

Native American used the plant medicinally but they knew it well and dug the roots in the winter when their toxicity was at its lowest level. There is a legend that says the plant was used in the selection of new chiefs, and by the sounds of it anyone who lived through the experience was thought of as chief material.

Wild leeks (Allium tricoccum) come up at the same time as false hellebore and in fact I found these growing very near the false hellebore plants shown previously. But how anyone could confuse the two is beyond me, because they look nothing like each other. Even the leaf color is different. Wild leeks, also called ramps, are edible and considered a great delicacy, and each year there are ramp festivals all over the world.  These plants lose their leaves before they flower in midsummer and that makes the flowers very hard to find, so this year I’m telling myself that I’m going to put marking tape on the trees near where these plants grow so I can finally get photos of the flowers later on.

Some friends of mine have this beautiful hellebore growing in their garden and I wanted to get a shot of the flower to see if it looked anything like the flowers of false hellebore. False hellebore flowers bear a slight superficial resemblance, but they are much smaller and are green, and the leaves look nothing like a true hellebore. Nobody seems to know how the name false hellebore came about. If it wasn’t because of the flowers or leaves, what could it have been? Maybe because true hellebores are also poisonous?

Pliny said that if an eagle saw you digging up a hellebore he (the eagle) would cause your death. He also said that you should draw a circle around the plant, face east and offer a prayer before digging it up. Apparently doing so would appease the eagle.

There are plants that can take me out of myself and cause a shift in my perception of time so that I often have no idea how long I’ve been kneeling before them, and spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) is one of them. How could you not lose yourself in something so beautiful?

I’ve read that spring beauties that grow in the shade are the most colorful and for the most part I’ve found that to be true, but this year I noticed that the newly opened flowers were also more colorful than those that were fully opened. Just look at this example’s deep color and near perfect form. To me it’s everything a flower should be and though I can think of many flowers that are as beautiful, I’d have a hard time naming one that was more beautiful.

 

I know a place where hundreds of thousands of trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) grow but each year I find a single one that buds before all of the others. Though I didn’t mark it I think this is the same one that budded first last year. I think that because of its being located to the right of a path near a small pond, and this year I want to mark the location. This plant gets its common name from its leaves, which are said to resemble the side of a trout. A brook trout maybe, but not a rainbow.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is another of our beautiful native wildflowers that I wanted to show you but it was cloudy, cold and windy on the day that I went to take their photo and they don’t like that kind of weather any more than we do, so they all closed up and wrapped themselves in their leaves. Earlier in the week they weren’t even showing yet, so they’ll be around long enough to give me another chance. Bloodroot’s common name comes from the poisonous blood red juice found in its roots. Native Americans once used this juice for war paint.

The bud scales of red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) have opened to reveal lilac like flower buds. They are handsome at this stage but the whitish, cone shaped flowers are less than spectacular. Though this plant’s bright red berries are edible when cooked I’ve heard that they don’t taste very good. The leaves bark and roots are toxic enough to make you sick, so this shrub shouldn’t be confused with common elderberry (Sambucus nigra) which is the shrub that elderberry wine comes from.

You might think this was just an old weed not worth more than a passing glance but if you did you’d be wrong, and you’d miss one of the high points of early spring in New England.

Most people never see the beautiful flowers of Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica) that appear on the weedy looking plant in the previous photo in mid-April. Creamy yellow male staminate flowers release their pollen above wispy, feather like, white female pistillate flowers but the female flowers always open first to receive pollen from a different plant. As the plant ages the male flowers will turn light brown and the female flowers, if pollinated by the wind, will bear seed. It’s a plant that is well worth a second look.

The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thanks for stopping in.