More Spring Flowers (And Friends)

Bluets have appeared so the game is on. The game is, how long will it take to find the darkest, bluest bluets? Some are almost white and others are a rich, dark blue but there are many millions of them and the trick is finding them. I don’t run around looking for bluets; when I happen upon them I just take a photo of those that I think might be darker than the ones in the last photo, so the photo above is the one to beat.

Violets have appeared along with the bluets as they often do. I was happy to see lots of white ones in this group. Some believe the whites to be color variants of the purples and others believe they are a distinct species. It doesn’t matter to me what the cause might be. I just enjoy their cheery spring beauty.

Yellow violets are the rarest of all in my experience, but a few years ago I found one in a local park. Since then that one plant has spread into several, so I can now count on seeing them each spring. Provided they aren’t weeded out, that is.

If you’ve seen bluets and violets in bloom then it’s a fair bet that you’ll be seeing wild strawberry blossoms as well. It was a cold morning and the sun hadn’t yet had a chance to dry the dew off these flowers before I came along with a camera, but a night in the 20s hadn’t seemed to hurt them any.

The strawberries that these plants will produce are barely bigger than an aspirin but they have an intense flavor that store bought fruit can’t match. A handful of the warm berries on a hot summer day is delicious. Wild strawberry roots were one of the ingredients in the spring tonic used by native Americans in this part of the country. They believed it purified the blood.

By the time I was born in the 1950s, trailing arbutus had been collected for nosegays to the point of near extinction. My grandmother loved these flowers and she always hoped that she would be able to show them to me but it never happened because we never could find any. She was born near the end of the 1800s and there were plenty of them then, so she could describe the way they looked and their wonderful fragrance well enough so when I finally found some years later, I knew immediately what they were. These days, though I couldn’t call them common, they’re making a good comeback. They should never be picked; not if you want to be able to show them to your own children and grandchildren.

Spring beauties haven’t yet carpeted the forest floor but they are working on it, as can be seen in this photo. They’ve been held back a bit by the cool, cloudy weather but that’s okay with me because this entire colony will be gone shortly after the trees leaf out. The odd thing about them this year is how most of them are white with pink stripes that are so faint they can hardly be seen. I’ve heard that the most colorful ones are those that grow in partial shade but I don’t know how true that is. These plants grow with a southerly exposure and get full sun all afternoon.

This is what I hope to see when I find spring beauties. Each flower is about the size of an aspirin so to get a good shot of one you have to at least get down on your knees.

The sharp eyed readers might have noticed trout lily leaves in amongst the spring beauties in the previous photos. That’s because the two like the same soil and exposure and they often co-mingle and grow side by side. This shot shows how the trout lily plant’s common name came about; its leaves are speckled like a trout’s body and the flower looks just like the much larger native Canada lily blossom. It’s nice to have plant names that make perfect sense once in a while.

Trout lily flowers nod at the ground so this is a hard shot to get. Each plant has just one flower and they can take seven years from seed to flower. Large colonies like the one I found this flower blooming in can be hundreds of years old, so there’s a good chance that it was here before Keene, New Hampshire was even thought of.

Sedges are starting to flower and the flowers of sedges like Pennsylvania sedge and plantain leaved sedge look a lot alike. The buttery colored male flowers appear at the top of the stem, which is called a culm in the world of sedges, and the wispy pure white female flowers usually appear lower down. I say usually because this year I’m seeing female flowers growing along with the male flowers at the top of the culm, as can be seen in this shot. I don’t know if this is “normal” or not but I can’t remember ever seeing it before.

Fern fiddleheads are suddenly popping up everywhere, as they usually do. These cottony fiddleheads belong to cinnamon ferns. An odd thing I noticed is how, because we had so little snow, the stalks from last year didn’t decompose as they usually do after spending months under the snow. The seedlings seen in this shot are those of jewelweed.

Christmas fern fiddleheads are also up. These fiddleheads are very hairy and scaly, and silvery. They’re quite different from other fiddleheads and once up they unfurl quickly. Christmas ferns get their common name from the way the first Europeans brought the evergreen fronds inside during the cold, snowy winters so the long days of sitting inside waiting for spring would be easier to bear.

Elm seeds are ahead of maple seeds this year. When I see these seeds I think of my father, because our street was lined with 200 year old elms and when the seeds fell they clogged up the vents on his car. That used to get him riled up because once hundreds of them were down inside the vents they were almost impossible to get out. The vents I’m speaking of are just below the windshield on the car’s exterior and are called cowl vents. If they get plugged up you get little to no fresh air inside the car. Back then they were a lot harder to clean out than they are today.

Colorful striped maple buds are all over the trees now, and the bud sheaths are just starting to split, as can be seen here. Once the sheath splits the leaves appear, and before too long the tree will flower. These are among the most beautiful buds in a spring forest, in my opinion. The main bud is about as big around as a pencil and might reach 2 – 2.5 inches in length.

These buds backlit by the sun clearly show the darker leaves within. To see the sun shining on trees full of buds is something you don’t forget right away, because sunlight makes them glow.

Male box elder stamens are hanging at the ends of their long filaments now, and soon all it will take is a breeze to get them to release pollen. It seems like many plants are releasing pollen right now.  

For the first time since I started this blog I’m able to show both the male and female flowers of box elder in the same post. What usually happens is, the male flowers appear and the after a space of maybe a week and a half to two weeks the leaves start to appear, and along with them come the female flowers, which are the beautiful long, lime green, sticky pistils seen here. They might look strange compared to the flowers of other trees but box elders grow lots of seeds, so they get the job done.

This robin was making a puddle look like someone had spilled dry ice in it. Every part of its body was in frantic motion except its head.

I saw a painted lady butterfly land in the grass and it was a good thing I did because it was very hard to find again once I took my eyes off it. Green looks orange to me sometimes so it just disappeared. I had to use landmarks like leaves, dandelions, and stones to find it again. It isn’t the first butterfly I’ve seen this spring but it’s the first one willing to pose. Its official name is now the American painted lady butterfly, I’ve read. As opposed to the English painted lady, I suppose.

I found this flower on a shrub at the local college. I believe it was a purple leaved sand cherry. The flowers were smallish at about the size of a dime, or about .70 inches. The red anthers were very pretty, I thought.

Bradford pear is an ornamental pear that is planted for its beautiful flowers. Beautiful to see, that is. You don’t want to put your nose in one, because its scent has been compared to everything from spoiled fish to an open trash bin. I smell fish when I get near it so I get a quick shot and move on. These flowers are larger than those of the sand cherry at about the size of a quarter, or .95 inches.

Ornamental cherries are still blooming beautifully this year. Some trees look as if they couldn’t hold even one more flower. These flowers are also about an inch in diameter. I discovered this year that bees love them. These trees were covered with bees and I thought for sure I’d be stung while getting photos but no, they were more interested in the flowers than in what I was doing.

Native shadbushes (Amelanchier) are blooming as well. They’re actually more tree than bush and cultivated varieties of the wild native are used ornamentally these days. Compare the flowers of the cultivar with those of the wild plant and you’ll see the same things. The main difference is, cultivars will often have more of them. They’re used extensively at the local college.

It’s amazing how plants are responding to the mild winter we had. Everything seems more vigorous and robust, including these beautiful blue grape hyacinths. Grape hyacinths aren’t related to either grapes or hyacinths. They’re actually in the same family as asparagus.

There are many beautiful tulips blooming right now and not too long after them will come the Tradescantias, which I’m always happy to see.

Pulmonaria have just started blossoming. Another name for the plant is lungwort. Lungwort was once considered dangerous because the grey spots on its leaves were associated with an infected lung. Later, it was used to treat lung disorders. The scientific name Pulmonaria comes from the Latin pulmo, meaning lung. This particular plant is odd in the way the flowers start out pink and then turn purple. Odd in my experience, anyway.

I looked for lilac flowers and thought I was too early until I saw these buds just about to open down low on a bush. It won’t be long now.

We’re still having some cold nights down into the 20s F., and that’s holding things back a little. Many trees don’t have that fresh burst of spring green color yet but it is happening slowly, as this Ohio buckeye shows; it’s a sign of things to come. Spring is an amazing time of year so I hope everyone is able to get out and enjoy it.

Spring in the world!  And all things are made new! ~Richard Hovey

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Late April / Early May Flowers

Last week a storm spun just off the coast and brought us wave after wave of clouds, rain, wind and cold almost every day. In spite of below freezing nighttime lows there were a few plants brave enough to bloom. Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) bloomed just in time for May and that’s perfect. It is called Mayflower because that’s often when its small white to pink, very fragrant flowers appear.

To smell its flowers you have to literally get your chin on the ground because these flowers are ground huggers. It’s worth it though, because they have a scent all their own that it is impossible for me to describe. Kind of spicy, but there’s more to it than that. It’s a very unusual scent and that’s why they were so over collected for use in nosegays in years past. My grandmother always told of this being her favorite flower but we never did find any of them, so I found myself wishing she were there on this day. Until I thought about it, that is. She had awful trouble standing from a kneeling position, so she would have told me to pick some and give them to her and I would have had to refuse. That wouldn’t have gone over well. In her day the thought of a flower becoming extinct from over picking would have seemed ridiculous, and she would have told me so. They just didn’t know any better in her day.

A flower I’ve never heard of being picked is that of wild ginger (Asarum canadense), but the plants are still hard to find. I’ve found them in only in this one spot.

The plant’s fuzzy, heart shaped leaves were just unfolding but the brownish flowers were already blooming. I can’t think of another wildflower with leaves quite like these so the plant is very easy to identify. The long rhizomes of wild ginger were used by Native Americans as a seasoning. It has similar aromatic properties as true ginger but the plant has been found to contain aristolochic acid, which is a carcinogenic compound that can cause kidney damage, so it should not be used.

You could fit a pea inside a wild ginger flower but nothing much bigger. Though flies often crawl into the meat colored flowers it is now thought that they do so simply to get warm. Several scientific studies have shown that these flowers are self-pollinated. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because I saw many insects including bees already out before these flowers bloomed. Maybe insects just aren’t interested for some reason.

I’m not happy with the way the river water in the background came out in this shot of leatherleaf blossoms (Chamaedaphne calyculata) but I got a difficult shot so maybe I should just keep quiet and be happy with it. The plant normally grows out of the water a few feet but it can stand being flooded and this year because the river was high, I couldn’t get near it. I stood on a slope just at the water’s edge getting as close as I could by leaning, which wasn’t a good idea. It grew a foot or two off shore and I almost leaned myself right into the river.

But I stayed dry and it was worth a slightly raised heart rate to get photos of such pretty little blossoms. I was able to get a hold of a branch on another shrub and pull it toward me for this shot. The plant gets its common name from its tough, leathery leaves, which are lighter and scaly on their undersides. At a glance it might be mistaken for a blueberry, but these flowers are smaller and not quite so round as a blueberry blossom.

If you see these shiny pointed bud scales littering the ground that means the poplars are blooming. When they bloom their catkins are often blown off or taken off by rain, and you can see one of them on the upper right.

If you pick up one of the fallen poplar catkins this is what you’ll see. These are the reddish-brown male anthers, which are extremely small. But they do the job and when the female flowers have been pollinated, they’ll release their cottony seeds into the air and they will settle on everything. It’s not a good time to leave your car windows open.

The feathery white female flowers of the European white elm (Ulmus laevis Pall), which we call Russian elm, were just forming seeds when I saw them. The tree is large and spreading and quite beautiful, but it lacks the height and vase shape of the American elm.

The female flowers of the American elm (Ulmus americana) were a step ahead of those of the Russian elm, and had already become seeds (samaras), each with a white fringe. They will quickly lose this fringe as they ripen.

One of my favorite native tree flowers are the female flowers of the box elder. The male flowers come out early before the leaves, but the female flowers don’t show themselves until the leaves unfurl. I love their color and shape. They have a sticky velvety coating so they can catch as much pollen as possible. They must be very good at it because you find these “weed trees” coming up in waste areas and vacant lots all over town. Box elder was the first tree I ever planted. My grandmother used to pay me to pull up all the trees growing around her foundation and one of those I pulled up was a box elder. I carried it home bare root, dug a hole and stuck it in, gave it some water and pretty much forgot about it, and that tree grew for years and years. For all I know it could still be there, some 55 years later.  

For the first time I saw the flower stems (petioles) of female box elder flowers. I never knew this was such a hairy tree but I’ve always known how pretty it was, weed tree or not.

A rare thing has happened. Rare in this area anyhow; a downy yellow violet (Viola pubescens) has bloomed. This single plant is the only one I’ve ever seen. I thought it might be a round leaved yellow violet but the leaves are definitely heart shaped and not round.

It’s a very pretty thing and I was happy to see it. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I’ve seen a yellow violet.

Wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) have just come into bloom. These berries are small but you haven’t really tasted a strawberry until you’ve tasted them.  The full moon in the month of June was known to many Native American tribes as the “Strawberry Moon” because that was when most strawberries began to ripen. The berries were picked, dried and stored for winter use, or added to pemmican, soups, and breads. In the garden strawberries easily reproduce vegetatively by runners (stolons) but the fruit was so plentiful in the wild that colonials in North America didn’t bother cultivating them until the early 1800s. The first documented botanical illustration of a strawberry plant appeared in 1454.

Sessile leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia) has just come into bloom and only three or four out of thousands had opened when I went to see them. It was a windy day and you can tell that by the way this flower isn’t hanging vertically. I doubted I’d be able to get a shot but the camera stopped the motion and this is the result. The black flies are out in force now but the wind keeps them away, so I should have been grateful for it instead of grousing about it while there on my knees waiting for it to stop so I could get a photo. You never have to search too hard to find something to be thankful for, but sometimes I miss the opportunity.

I went to see what American hazelnut buds looked like when they broke but instead found this one still flowering. I was surprised because the male catkins have turned brown and dried up. These were the longest female filaments I’ve ever seen and I wondered if maybe they grew longer by stretching for pollen that will never come. I see a lot of hazelnut shrubs with no nuts on them in the fall and now I wonder if it is because many female flowers don’t appear until after all the pollen has been shed. In the end it doesn’t matter. Nature will straighten it out.

After a very slow start henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) is having a great year. This plant was loaded with cartoon faced blossoms that resemble those of some of our small flowered orchids.

You might see a resemblance to henbit in the much larger flowers of dead nettle (Lamium maculatum) and well you should, because they are both in the same family.

Bradford pear blossoms (Pyrus calleryana) are pretty enough but they’re about all this tree has going for it. They have weak wood and lose branches regularly and birds love the tiny pears it produces, which means that it is quite invasive. In the wild it forms nearly impenetrable thickets and out competes native trees. And though the flowers are pretty enough their scent has been compared to everything from rotting fish to an open trash bin. I smelled fish when I was walking among them taking photos and I can say that I was very happy that I didn’t have one in my yard.

Pulmonaria (Pulmonaria officinalis) has just started blossoming, but I’ve never seen one like this. It had two colored flowers on the same plant, pink and blue / purple. I’m guessing that they come out pink and then change but I’ve never noticed this before so I wonder if it’s a newer hybrid. Another name for the plant is lungwort. During the Middle Ages in Europe, lungwort was considered dangerous because the grey spots on its leaves were associated with an infected lung. Later, it was used to treat lung disorders. The scientific name Pulmonaria comes from the Latin pulmo, meaning lung.

Tulips of all colors and shapes have appeared.

I was looking for the very early red and yellow tulips I saw last year but I never did find them, so these will have to do. There was less yellow on the ones I saw last year. It just peeked out between the red petals.

It’s time to say goodbye to red maple flowers because they have grown wings, and now they will fly. The trees have blossomed longer this year than I’ve ever seen, most likely due to a cool spring.

I tried to draw my soul but all I could think of was flowers. ~Natalya Lobanova

Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone is seeing lots of flowers!

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More Mid April Flowers

Well, we’ve had an April snowstorm here in New Hampshire that dropped as much as 8 inches of heavy wet snow in the higher elevations. In lower spots like Keene it hardly amounted to more than a dusting but still, I’m glad I was able to see the bloodroots (Sanguinaria canadensis) in bloom before the snow fell. These flowers are fragile and I doubt they would have made it through the storm. They’re very beautiful and I’m glad I got to see them.

I’m happy to report that they’re spreading, so I expect I’ll be able to see them here in this all but hidden spot for years to come. You can see the flower to the left of center had already started dropping petals even though the plants had just started blooming.

This photo from Wikipedia shows how the plant comes by its common name. Bloodroot is in the poppy family and is toxic, but Native Americans used the plant medicinally and also used the red sap in its roots to decorate their horses.

Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) are up and adding their cheeriness to our spring days. They are a long blooming plant so will most likely do the same for our summer days as well. What looks like a four petaled flower is actually a single, tubular, four lobed “petal.” They’re very pretty little things and I was happy to see them blooming again.

The lime green, sticky pistils of female box elder flowers (Acer negundo) appear along with the tree’s leaves, but they come a few days to a week after the male flowers have fully opened. Box elders have male flowers on one tree and female flowers on another, unlike red maples which can have both on one tree. This shot is of the female flowers as they had just appeared. They’re a very pretty color.

Here’s a closer look at those box elder flowers. I think they’re one of the prettiest of the early spring tree blossoms.

Fly honeysuckle (Lonicera canadensis) is one of our earliest blooming shrubs and one that not many people see unless they walk old roads in early spring. Its unusual flowers are joined in pairs and if pollinated they become small, red orange, oval, pointed end berries that are also joined in pairs. They are so early I’ve seen them blooming in a snowstorm in the past.

At a glance you might mistake leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) for a blueberry but this plant will grow in standing water and blooms much earlier, with smaller flowers. The plant gets its common name from its tough, leathery leaves, which are lighter and scaly on their undersides. Florists use sprays of leatherleaf leaves as filler in bouquets. The flower type must be very successful because it is used by many other plants, from blueberries to heather. Native Americans used the plant medicinally to reduce inflammation and to treat fevers, headaches and sprains.

Willows are still blooming and I’m always happy to see them.

Sedges are beginning to bloom and one of the earliest is plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea). The flower stalks (Culms) are about 4 inches tall and have creamy yellow male (staminate) flowers at the tip of the stems.

Female plantain leaved sedge flowers appear lower down on the stem and are white and wispy.

Field horsetails (Equisetum arvense) appeared almost overnight.  

The fertile spore bearing stem of a field horsetail ends in a light brown cone shaped structure called a strobilus. Since it doesn’t photosynthesize at this point in its development the plant has no need for chlorophyll so most of it is a pale whitish color. When it’s ready to release spores the cone opens to reveal tiny, mushroom shaped sporangiophores. The whitish ruffles at the base of each brown sporangiophore are the spore producing sporangia. At this stage one little tap and what looks like clouds of pollen float off them but the “pollen” is actually a cloud of microscopic spores. Once the spores have been released the fertile strobilus will die and the infertile green, photosynthesizing stems pf the plant will appear.

The day after the snowstorm I walked and walked looking for violets but every one I saw was closed up due to the cloudy, cool weather. Every one but this one, that is. It had enough spunk to open. Maybe it was hoping a bee that didn’t mind the weather would come along. I’ve read that violet roots and leaves were used medicinally by some Native American tribes. They also used the flowers to make blue dye.

The otherworldly looking flowers of Norway maple have appeared. The flower clusters of Norway maples are large and appear before the leaves so they can be seen from quite a distance. Though invasive the trees were once used extensively as landscape specimens and you can find them all over this town. Unfortunately the tree has escaped into the forests and in places is crowding out sugar and other maples. Norway maple is recognized as an invasive species in at least 20 states and it’s against the law to sell or plant them in New Hampshire.

Ornamental cherries started blooming before the snowstorm and I was afraid that it might have killed off every blossom but no, here they were the day after the snow. In fact there was snow still on the ground under them when I took this photo. I think people who don’t see a lot of snow probably don’t realize that snow can fall even when the temperature at ground level is above freezing. In other words these and other flowers survived because it was warm enough where they were, even with snow falling. Snow that falls in such conditions is very wet and heavy and usually melts quickly. “White rain” is a good way to describe it.

They’re very pretty flowers and I was happy that they didn’t suffer. Not a single blossom was damaged that I could see.

Most of the magnolia blossoms and buds made it through the storm as well. I like the color of the buds on this one.

But the flowers don’t seem to have any real shape and it looks as if they more or less just fall open in a haphazard way. Something doesn’t need symmetry to be beautiful though, and I do like the contrast between the inside and outside of the petals.

The Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophyllas) has come into full bloom. At least I think so; I just met this plant last year so I’m not that familiar with its growth habits.

Purple flowered PJM rhododendrons usually bloom at about the same time as forsythia but they’re a little late this year. The PJM in the name is for Peter J. Mezitt who developed the plant and also founded Weston Nurseries in Weston, Massachusetts. They are also called little leaf rhododendron. They are well liked here and have become almost as common as forsythia.

Speaking of Forsythias, they made it through the storm just fine. They’re blooming as well as I’ve ever seen them this year.

I saw this scene the day after the storm. Most of the spring flowering bulbs came through unscathed.

These tulips made me smile.

The only plants I saw that had suffered from the snow were the hyacinths and they suffered from the weight rather than the cold. Even bent double with their faces in the mud they were still very beautiful.

I know, these aren’t flowers, but they’re so beautiful I had to sneak them in because this beauty is fleeting. The furry seeds (samaras) of the silver maple appear quickly and are furry for just a day or two, so I had to check on them several times to get this photo. I hope you like seeing them as much as I do.

He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth is generally considered a fortunate person, but his good fortune is small compared to that of the happy mortal who enters this world with a passion for flowers in his soul.  ~Celia Thaxter

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Late April / Early May Flowers

The lime green, sticky pistils of female box elder flowers (Acer negundo) appear along with the tree’s leaves, but a few days after the male flowers have fully opened, I’ve noticed. Box elders have male flowers on one tree and female flowers on another, unlike red maples which can have both on one tree. Several Native American tribes made sugar from this tree’s sap and the earliest known example of a Native American flute, dating from 620-670 AD, was made from its wood.

One day I went walking near mown areas looking for bluets (Houstonia caerulea) but found none. Two days later they were everywhere. I always look for the darkest shade of blue for a photo but the flowers can be almost white to dark blue, and I’ve read that they open white and darken to various shades of blue as they age. No matter what shade of blue they are, they always have a yellow center. They are tiny things; each flower isn’t much bigger than a pea. Another name for the plant is “Quaker ladies” but nobody seems to know exactly why. Other names include innocence, blue-eyed babies, Venus’ pride, Quaker bonnets, and bright eyes. They’re cheery little things and I’m always happy to see them. 

I can just imagine the conversation that must have gone on:
Her: Sweetie, there’s a strange man lying on the sidewalk out front, taking pictures of our stone wall.
Him: He’s not taking pictures of the wall; he’s taking pictures of the dandelion growing in it.
Her:  But why would he be doing that?
Him: How should I know? He’s obviously some kind of a nut. Just ignore him and maybe he’ll go away.

Sure, we’ve all seen dandelions, but have we ever stopped to really look at one?

We finally had a day sunny enough to coax the bloodroot blossoms (Sanguinaria canadensis) into opening fully, but by the time I remembered to visit them it had clouded over enough to make them want to close up again. I got there in time to see them start wrapping their leaves around themselves, preparing to close.

But one flower remained fully opened and the lighting was perfect to show the veining in its petals. I’ve learned by trial and error that too much sunlight or the use of a flash will make such subtle details disappear, and you’ll be left with flat white petals. That might not seem like a big deal but if someone who wants to publish a wildflower guide looks at your photo it will be a big deal to them and your photo won’t be chosen.

The magnolias have been stunning this year and I wish I could offer up their fragrance as well as a photo. For a very short time each spring magnolia and lilac fragrances overlap and I always think that, if heaven has a fragrance, it will come from the blending of those two flowers.

I like a challenge and there isn’t much that’s more challenging to a nature photographer than a red flower. They are very hard to get a good photo of for reasons I don’t fully understand, so I was surprised when I saw that this one of a red tulip came out good enough to show here. I won’t bother to tell you how many weren’t good enough.

Willows (Salix) are done flowering for the most part, but you can still find a bloom or two if you’re willing to search a bit. Willows are one of those early spring flowers that don’t get a lot of fanfare but I love the promise of spring that they show.

The inner bark and leaves of some willows contain salicylic acid, which is the active ingredient in aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid). Native Americans chewed or made tea from the willow’s leaves and inner bark to relieve fever or toothaches, headaches, or arthritis, and that is why the willow is often called “toothache tree.” It was a very important medicine that no healer would have been without.

Almost immediately after I told Sara in my last flower post that Pennsylvania sedge was the only sedge that bloomed before the leaves came out on the trees I stumbled upon this clump of plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea), growing in an old stone wall. “When will I ever learn?” was the question I asked myself. There is no such thing as always or never when it comes to nature and every time I use one of those words on this blog nature almost immediately shows me how wrong I am. In this case I was happy to be proven wrong though, because I’ve never seen this beautiful sedge.

The prominent midrib, two lateral veins, maroon bases, and puckered look of the leaves are all used as identifying features for plantain leaved sedge. The leaves can be up to a foot long and an inch wide and I can’t think of another sedge that has leaves that look quite like these. The flowers stalks (culms) were about 4 inches tall and had wispy, white female (pistillate) flowers below the terminal male (staminate) flowers. Sedge flowers are actually called spikelets and the stems that bear them are triangular, hence the old saying “sedges have edges.” I can’t speak for the rarity of this plant but this is the only one I’ve ever seen and it isn’t listed in the book Grasses: An Identification Guide, by Lauren Brown. I’ve read that it likes cool shady places where the humidity is relatively high. There is a stream just a few feet from where this one grows.

Vinca (Vinca minor) is one of those invasive plants from Europe that have been here long enough to have erased any memories of them having once crossed the Atlantic on the deck of a wooden ship. Vinca was a plant that was given by one neighbor to another along with lilacs and peonies, and I’ve seen all three blooming beautifully near old cellar holes off in the middle of nowhere. But the word vinca means “to bind” in Latin, and that’s what the wiry stems do. They grow thickly together and form an impenetrable mat that other plants can’t grow through, and I know of large areas with nothing but vinca growing in them. But all in all it is nowhere near as aggressive as Oriental bittersweet or winged euonymus, so we enjoy it’s beautiful violet purple flowers and coexist.

The trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) have just opened and seeing a forest floor carpeted with them is something you don’t soon forget. I’ve read that some large colonies can be as much as 300 years old. Each plant grows from a single bulb and can take 7-10 years to produce a flower, so if you see a large colony of flowering plants you know it has been there for a while. Young plants have a single leaf and then grow a second when they are ready to bloom, so you see many more leaves than flowers.

Trout lilies are in the lily family and it’s easy to see why; they look just like a miniature Canada lily. The six stamens in the blossom start out bright yellow but quickly turn brown and start shedding pollen. Three erect stigmata will catch any pollen that visiting insects might bring. Nectar is produced at the base of the petals and sepals (tepals) as it is in all members of the lily family, and attracts several kinds of bees. The plant will produce a light green, oval, three part seed capsule 6-8 weeks after blooming if pollination has been successful. The seeds of trout lilies are dispersed by ants which eat their rich, fatty appendages and leave the seeds to grow into bulbs.

Trout lily flowers have three petals and three sepals. All are yellow on the inside but the sepals on many flowers are a brown-bronze color on the outside. No matter how you look at it it’s a beautiful little thing, but I think it’s even more so from the back side.

This is a little hint of what will come in the next flower post.

We do not want merely to see beauty… we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. ~C.S. Lewis

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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