Mid May Flowers

Since trilliums are all about the number 3 or multiples of it, it seems appropriate, I thought for the first time, that I know of only three native trilliums in this area. They are, in order of bloom time, red trillium, nodding trillium, and the beautiful painted trillium seen here. This one surprised me by having a feature I’ve never noticed; dark red anthers frosted with white pollen. My color finding software actually calls the anther color “indian red” and sees the red on the petals as either crimson or deep pink, depending on where I put the pointer. It is those splashes of color on the petals that give this trillium its name and also make it the most beautiful of the three, in my opinion. It’s always a joy to find one because they don’t come easy.

This is a very busy time of year for someone doing a nature blog, because many flowers can appear each day. Apple blossoms have come and gone quickly, and though I haven’t heard anything official yet, I’m wondering if the below freezing nights we had last week might have damaged this year’s apple crop. We had another quite heavy frost just yesterday moning so it looks like nature is going to hold us to our traditional last day of May planting date. You can get tender plants in the ground before then but you’d better be prepared to cover them at night.

The crabapple in my own yard suffered from the 27 degree night we had on the 18th. All its flowers quickly disappeared and that was too bad, because it blossomed better this year than it has in a while. Apple trees aren’t native but crabapples are, so I thought they’d better withstand the cold. Some native and ornamental cherries also had a hard time, and some didn’t blossom at all.

Lilac flowers hadn’t opened yet when we had the freeze and it didn’t look like their buds had been damaged. I caught these just as they started opening two or three days later when temps were back to normal.

White lilacs usually bloom a week or so later than purple ones but this year for some reason they bloomed together. My mother died when I was an infant but before she did she planted white lilacs, so they and a few other flowers she planted always remind me of her.

Lily of the valley flowers on the other hand, always remind me of my grandmother. When I was young I’d run up her stairs with a fist full of violets, dandelions and lily of the valley blossoms, all wilting badly before I could even give them to her. Welch’s Grape Jelly used to come packaged in small glasses that could be re-used as drinking glasses, and she always put the flowers in one of those. She had a few of those glasses that I remember, all with Flinstones characters on them.

When Mayflowers grow naturally they can form large colonies. Their large, umbrella like leaves touch and overlap between the two foot tall plants so they create their own shade underneath. This makes getting a shot of the flower tricky. You have to open the canopy of plants with one hand and hold it open while you try to get a shot of the flower, which nods at the ground. What you see here is this year’s attempt. Not one of the best but since most people don’t even know there are flowers under the solid canopy of leaves, it’s always worth a try. This plant is also called American mandrake, which is legendary among herbalists for the root that supposedly resembles a man. Native Americans boiled the root and used the water to cure stomach aches but this plant is toxic and should never be eaten.

This red horse chestnut tree in a local park is a cross between the red buckeye and the horse chestnut, and it isn’t real common. In fact this is the only one I’ve seen. It’s quite a big tree and at this time of year it looks like a tree full of orchids. I’ve read that bees and hummingbirds love the flowers and I wouldn’t wonder. They’re beautiful.

Every now and again I meet up with a flower that grabs me and pulls me in so deeply that there is nothing else, and that’s what this one did. I found it growing in a local park. It was the only one of its kind and was planted far too close to other plants, so it looked as if someone had just dropped it there accidentally. At that moment I thought it was the most beautiful flower I had ever seen so I got down on my hands and knees and took photo after photo, lost in its beauty. I find that it’s good to lose yourself in a flower now and then. They always remind me that we come from the same place.

For gardeners out there who’d like to grow this beautiful flower, I’ve tracked it down as an Italian anemone called “Mistral Plus Blu.” Everywhere I’ve checked it has been sold out, so if you’re interested I’d ask a reputable nursery email me when they got more in. There are other colors but I’d have to go with this incredible blue, which looks like someone painted it on each petal.

If you’re looking for a good reason to spend more time in nature I’d recommend nature photography. Since school vacation is coming up why not get the children interested as well? It doesn’t have to be a big expensive thing; everyone has a phone these days and I see many people using their phone cameras with good results, even for birds. I’d love to see what young people could do with their phones cameras in nature; I think I’d be surprised and delighted.

Black chokeberry flowers are about as big as an aspirin and have plum colored anthers which help tell them from some of our other white flowered trees and shrubs. The plant might reach 5 feet tall on a good day and is really more shrub than tree. It is considered an important forage plant and bear, birds, rabbits, mice, chipmunks, deer, elk, and moose eat various parts of it. Ants, butterflies, honeybees, flies, and hummingbirds drink its nectar. Native Americans used all parts of the plant medicinally. The fruit was used for canker sores and sore throats and the roots were dried, chewed, and placed in wounds to stop bleeding. The stems were boiled to make tea to treat fevers. The small drupes have an edible outer fleshy layer but the single seed contains high levels of hydrogen cyanide so children should be warned against eating too many of them.

Chokecherry trees are blossoming everywhere along our roadsides and they’re very easy to see. Chokecherries are small trees that sometimes can resemble shrubs when they grow in a group but the sausage shaped flower heads are very different from the chokeberries that we just saw. The racemes full of flowers are very fragrant. If pollinated each flower will become a dark purple one seeded berry (drupe) which, though edible but can be bitter or sour. Many Native American tribes used the fruit as food and used other parts of the tree such as the inner bark medicinally. They also used the bark in their smoking mixtures to improve the flavor.

Hobblebushes can be said to have fully bloomed now that the small, fertile center flowers have opened. They open a few days after the big, showy but sterile outer flowers. They are one of our prettiest native spring blooming shrubs. If pollinated each tiny flower will become a fruit that will be green at first, and will then change to bright red before finally ripening to deep, purple black. This is a fairly common shrub that can be seen on roadsides and streamsides.

Each year I challenge myself to find a five flowered star flower but so far, no luck. I found a four flowered one right away though, and that’s unusual. Evey now and then you can stumble into places where the forest floor is covered with thousands of these small blooms, and it’s always beautiful. The scientific name of a starflower is Trientalis borealis, and the Trientalis part means “one third of a foot” and relates to the plant’s 4 inch height. Borealis means “of the northern forests,” but since it grows quite far south, nearly into Georgia I think, it isn’t entirely accurate.

I like the way the flowers sparkle in the sunlight, almost like they’re made of sugar.

I’m lucky to have a Hawthorn growing in my yard because I like their showy anthers. The blossoms aren’t much in the way of fragrance because the flowers have a slightly fishy odor, but they’re big on beauty. Hawthorn has been used to treat heart disease since the 1st century and the leaves and flowers are still used in that way today. There are antioxidant flavonoids in the plant that may help dilate blood vessels, improve blood flow, and protect blood vessels from damage. There are over 100 species of native and cultivated hawthorns in the U.S. and they can be hard to identify. Native Americans used the plant’s long sharp thorns for fish hooks and for sewing. The wood is very hard and it was once used for tools and weapons.

Foam flowers (Tiarella) are blooming beautifully this year. They like to grow in damp and sometimes even wet places, so their abundant blooms most likely are coming because so far, we’ve had plenty of rain this spring. Shady, damp places can be problem areas in gardens, so these plants might be a solution.

It isn’t easy to isolate a single foamflower for a photo but it can be done. They’re tiny little things but all together they can make quite an impact. There are many cultivars that have been developed for gardens and I think most nurseries sell them now.

One year I knelt down to take a photo of some forget-me-nots and when I stood up the knees and lower legs of my pants were soaking wet, and that’s how I discovered that this little plant loves wet feet. But it also loves full sun and that’s a little tricky in a garden. The plant was introduced into North America, most likely by early European settlers, and now grows in 40 of the lower 48 states. In some states it is considered a noxious weed, but I hardly ever see it in the wild here. I like all the little stars in this shot of them.

Wild geraniums are native to this part of the country but I had seen many more in gardens than I ever had in the wild until recently. I found a spot where there are dozens of them spread out along a road. They looked happy there and looked as if they had been spreading, and I was happy to see them. They seem to like living just at the edge of the forest.

A sharp intake of breath and then you stand there, mesmerized by the beauty. When something in nature stuns me into silence I always pay attention because one hour of silence alone in nature is worth more than a hundred conversations about it. Finding an early azalea in the woods is always special and luckily it happens a little more frequently these days because I’ve found them thriving in three different places now. I once knew only one plant so I thought they were quite rare but if they like a spot you can find several in the area. This native shrub is extremely fragrant so you often smell it before you see it.

Early azalea goes by a few different names including wooly azalea, and it gets that name from the hairiness of its buds, as seen here. The backs of the flowers are also very hairy and it is the hairs that emit the wonderful fragrance. They’re beautiful things; another gift of joy and amzement tucked away in the woods for you to find, and finding them is something you never forget.

You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way. ~ Walter Hagen

Thanks for stopping in.

Read Full Post »

A Wildflower Walk

A couple of weeks ago I took a walk down an old road I had never been on and was amazed by all the wildflowers I found there. There was a river nearby and since it was the Asuelot River that I grew up on, I felt as if I had come home. I had never been along this section of it but I felt as if I knew every inch. The river was high; high enough to flood some of the open meadows along its banks.

Watercress grew in the shallows. This plant is edible and is said to have a kind of peppery bite but since it grows in water I’d never eat it. These days you never know what pollutants might be in the water, and when I was growing up parts of this river were terrible. We’ve done a great job of cleaning it so now even trout swim in it once again but for me, it’s hard to forget what we did to it in the past.

There were turtles. There are always turtles. My grandmother called them mud turtles but I think most of our turtles are either painted or snapping turtles. I haven’t seen any of the big snappers yet. They’ll come along in June when the females lay their first batch of eggs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this spot was full of them.

Though the old road looked like it had a wall of growth on either side I knew there were game trails and other places where you could get through. The reason the edge of a forest always looks like an impenetrable wall of growth is because that’s where the most sunshine is and the plants, shrubs and trees compete for all the sunshine they can get. The forest never seemed like a wall to me when I was a boy; it was more like a mirror. I felt at home there and knew I belonged as much as the trees, plants and animals did.

One of my favorite mosses, cypress leaved plait moss, grew on a log. I like the way it seems to reach out and explore new areas of the logs it grows on.

Plaited means braided, and a closer view shows that it is a good name for this moss, because that’s just what it looks like.

Coltsfoot plants were still blooming when I was here and they’re still blooming now. All the spring flowers are having an extended season due to the cloudy, cool weather we’ve had.

There were thousands of bluets here and these were the deepest blue I could find. They’re very cheery little things that everyone is happy to see each spring.

The first strawberry blossoms were appearing when I was here. Now I have hundreds of them blooming in my yard. In June the plants will bear some of the sweetest, juciest strawberries you could hope for. Unfortunately, they’ll also be some of the smallest strawberries ever seen. It takes a while to pick a handful.

It’s a good year for violets and I found many of the first I had seen in bloom here.

The cooler spring weather has meant that fern fiddleheads just go on and on slowly, in no hurry to reach adulthood.

Sedges also had an extended bloom but now grasses are taking their place. In this example many of the butter colored male flowers of this Pennsylvania sedge had given up the ghost and hung shriveled against the stem, but the wispy white female flowers still waited for the wind to bring them pollen from other plants.

The first butterfly I saw this year was this eastern tailed blue. I waited for it to open its wings so I could get a shot of their beautiful blue color but it refused to open them. I knew if my shadow fell on it, it would fly away but I thought if I could put just the tiniest sliver of shadow on it, it might open it wings. Carefully I moved until just a whisker of shadow fell on it but that’s all it took; it opened its blue wings and flew off before I could get a shot. I also saw a mourning cloak butterfly here and heard an amazing chorus of birds, including finches, warblers, wrens, and eastern phoebes.

Wood anemones were tucked in everywhere. I think of all the flowers I’ve gone here and there looking for and here they are, all in one spot. The only thing missing is spring beauties, but they could be here too. It’s possible I just haven’t found them yet.

I came to a clearing and there was the Ashuelot River in full view. I thought about how, when I was a boy of 8 or 9 years old this river was a barrier, but as soon as I found the courage to cross the train trestles alone my world expanded. It suddenly opened up and seemed vast and there I was, free to explore it. The first places I explored were just like this place and the world became my playground. All children should have a chance to run free and learn from nature in places like this. It was a wonderful place to grow and discover so many new things.

Dormant buds under the bark will break (or erupt) when or if something happens to the terminal bud, which in this case was an entire tree. The beavers here did exactly what my grandmother did when she pinched out the growing tip of her geraniums to make them bushier. I became interested in the study of botany by wondering about such things, and that’s why I’ve always thought that nature was the best teacher a child could have. The wonder of nature is in its ability to teach us something new each day. I was an empty jar, and nature filled me to overflowing.

Walt Whitman said “There was a child went forth every day, and the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became, and that object became part of him.” Since it flowed just a few yards from our house the first “object” I looked upon was the river. As I grew older I felt as if I had found a magical painting that I could step into; an artist had painted a beautiful earthly paradise and here I was walking through it. Nature taught me to see and appreciate the beauty of life. It showed me the worth of silence and the meaning of serenity. Nature became my teacher, friend, and companion. I had plenty of childhood friends but, as author David Mitchell wrote, “Trees are always a relief, after people.” Before I had ever heard the word solitude I seemed to crave it, and here along the river is where I found it.

This particular slice of paradise was populated by more trout lilies than I had ever seen growing in one place. They weren’t all in bloom but there were many thousands of them.

On this flower the big, reddish anthers were just starting to produce pollen.

This shot is of the trout lilies covering the forest floor for as far as the eye can see, and they did this along both sides of the old road. There must be millions of plants here and I’m sure they’ve been here for a very long time. Since a trout lily colony can last 300 years or more they might even have been here when this area was first being settled.

The flowers were the biggest trout lily blooms I’ve seen; possibly 2 inches across. It’s obvious where the “lily” part of the plant’s name comes from, and the mottled leaves in this shot show where the “trout” part of the name came from.

Shadbushes were everywhere out here, some in full bloom and others just starting. Since they melted so well into the surrounding vegetation they were hard to get a good shot of.

I left the old dirt road and walked a little on the main road, where I found mother goose sleeping on her nest of cattail stalks. I wasn’t too far away when I took this photo but she seemed fine with my being there. I’ve read that Canada geese are in the top tier of parents in the animal world so I’d guess it would take quite a lot to get her off that nest. I went back a few days later to see if the eggs had hatched and two or three people told me that nine goslings were now swimming peacefully beside their mother. May they all live long and bliss filled lives.

Must we always teach our children with books? Let them look at the stars and the mountains above. Let them look at the waters and the trees and flowers on Earth. Then they will begin to think, and to think is the beginning of a real education. 
~David Polis

Thanks for stopping in. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!

Read Full Post »

Mid May Flowers

In a normal year painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum) are the third trillium I look for each spring. Usually as the red / purple trilliums fade and nodding trilliums have moved from center stage along comes the painted trillium, which is the most beautiful among them in my opinion. This year though, for some reason painted trilliums have bloomed before the nodders. Unlike its two cousins painted trillium’s flowers don’t point down towards the ground but face straight out, 90 degrees to the stem. With 2 inch wide flowers it’s not a big and showy plant, but it is loved. Painted trilliums grow in the cool moist forests north to Ontario and south to northern Georgia. They also travel west to Michigan and east to Nova Scotia.

Each bright white petal of the painted trillium has a reddish “V” at its base that looks painted on, and that’s where the common name comes from. They like boggy, acidic soil and are much harder to find than other varieties. Many states have laws that make it illegal to pick or disturb trilliums but deer love to eat them and they pay no heed to our laws, so we don’t see entire hillsides covered with them. In fact I consider myself very lucky if I find a group of more than three. I’ve read that trilliums can live for up to 25 years. Native Americans used them to ease the pain of childbirth and for that reason they are also called birthroot.

The small fertile flowers in the center of hobblebush flower heads have opened. The larger, sterile flowers around the outer edge opened about a week ago, and this photo shows the difference in size. Technically a hobblebush flower head is a corymb, which is just a fancy word for a flat topped, usually disc shaped flower head. It comes from the Latin corymbus, which means a cluster of fruit or flowers.  All flowers in the cluster have 5 petals, and that’s a good way to identify viburnums versus dogwoods, which have 4 petals. The large sterile flowers do the work of attracting insects and that’s why so many viburnums have this kind of arrangement. It seems to work well, because I see plenty of fruit on them later in the summer. Hobblebush is one of our most beautiful native viburnums.

One thing good about working 25 miles from where I live is how I almost get to see spring happen twice. Shadbushes (Amelanchier canadensis) just finished blooming here but in Hancock they’re just getting started. They are also called Juneberry because in June they’ll be full of small reddish purple berries that birds love. Cedar waxwings will even nest by this shrub each year so they can get first crack at the fruit.

I went to get a goodbye photo of trout lilies and found that they had already gone. In their place were anemones, and that was fine. I should have looked for the trout lilies last week but I completely forgot. The word ephemeral means “lasting for a very short time” so I wasn’t really surprised that I missed them. Leaves are on the trees and it’s warming up.

Wood anemones (Anemone quinquefolia) are sun lovers so there’s a good chance they won’t be blooming much longer with the trees leafing out. They dance in the slightest breeze and Greek legends say that Anemos, the Wind, sends anemones in early spring to warn of his coming. He has certainly moved right in here because it has been windy for almost two months, and last Friday we even had tornado warnings. We didn’t have a tornado but many large trees fell.

The bell like shape of a blueberry blossom must be very successful because many other plants, like andromeda, lily of the valley, dogbane, leatherleaf, and others use it. This photo is of the first highbush blueberry blossoms (Vaccinium corymbosum) I’ve seen this season. It is said that blueberries are one of only three fruits native to North America, but the crabapple is a fruit and it is native to North America as well. The others are cranberries and concord grapes. Native Americans called blueberries “star berries” and used the plant medicinally, spiritually, and of course as a food. One of their favorites was a pudding made with dried blueberries and cornmeal.

New Hampshire has four native cherry trees: black cherry (Prunus serotina), choke cherry (Prunus virginiana), pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica), and wild American plum (Prunus americana). The blossoms in the above photo are pin cherry blossoms. Choke cherries have just started blossoming as well.

This one I’ve never seen before, so I’m going to need help with it. I found it growing in a local park so it is obviously a cultivated garden plant but I can’t seem to find it, either in books or online.

It’s a very pretty plant that stands maybe a foot tall and the flowers look like they belong in the legume family along with peas, beans, locusts and lupines. If you happen to know its name I’d love to hear from you.

My grandmother loved flowers of all kinds but one of the flowers she loved most were apple blossoms, because of their wonderful fragrance. She lived upstairs and had trouble getting down to see the apple trees that grew near her house so each spring I would cut some of the flowers and bring them to her. Sometimes I would sit on the grass, leaning back against the trunk of one of her old apple trees, daydreaming as I looked up at the blossoms, choosing the best branches; the ones with a few flowers and lots of buds that I’d cut for her. The fragrance of the blossoms on this day brought me back to that boy, who was made of all of the things his senses revealed; the soft grass he sat on, the tree he sat under, the sun shining through its leaves and the bees pollinating its flowers. He was the rain and the wind, he was the universe distilled; he was the blue, the green and the pink. He was the fragrance. He was the bird on the branch and the soft hum of the bees. At ten years old he was all that ever was and all that ever would be, but at the same time he was nothing. He was simply the love that made him want to bring these flowers to his grandmother and he was nothing else, because when you distill the universe down to its very essence love is all that is left.

No matter how wonderful an apple tree can be they are not native to this country. The crabapple is the only apple truly native to North America and there are four species of them. They are Malus fusca, Malus coronaria, Malus angustifolia and Malus ioensis. The crab apple is one of the nine plants invoked in the Anglo-Saxon Nine Herbs Charm, recorded in the 10th century. The nine herbs charm was used for the treatment of poisoning and infection by a preparation of nine herbs. The other eight were mugwort, betony, lamb’s cress, plantain, mayweed, nettle, thyme and fennel.

A single male flower of the sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is a very hard thing to photograph, but I wanted you to see one. They aren’t as showy as other native maples but they must do their job, because we have a lot of sugar maple trees. Sugar maples can reach 100 feet in height and can live to be 400 years old when healthy. I never knew their flowers were so hairy.

I see many hundreds of this very small white violet in lawns and I wondered if they could be northern white violets (Viola pallens.) They are half the size of the violets that I usually see. In fact they are so small that I couldn’t even tell they were violets from five feet away. The insect guides look black in this photo but they’re actually deep purple. They’re pretty little things and they’re everywhere right now.

Our lilacs are finally blooming, and this photo is of the common purple lilac (Syringa vulgaris.) It’s great to smell their wonderful fragrance again. Lilac is the New Hampshire state flower, which is odd because it isn’t a native. Lilacs were first imported from England to the garden of then New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth in 1750 and chosen as the state flower in 1919 because they were said to “symbolize that hardy character of the men and women of the Granite State.” Rejected were apple blossoms, purple aster, wood lily, Mayflower, goldenrod, wild pasture rose, evening primrose and buttercup. The pink lady’s slipper is our state native wild flower.

Leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula) is in the euphorbia family, which contains over 2000 species of plants including poinsettia, cassava, and many popular house plants. It’s a plant native to Europe, thought to have been mistakenly imported when its seed was mixed in with other crop seed. It was first seen in Massachusetts in 1827, and from there it spread as far as North Dakota within about 80 years. It can completely overtake large areas of land and choke out native plants, and for that reason it is classified as an invasive species by the United States Department of Agriculture. I find it growing along roadsides and gravelly waste areas but I haven’t seen extremely large colonies of it. All parts of the plant contain a toxic milky white sap which may cause a rash when the sap on the skin is exposed to sunlight. In fact the sap is considered carcinogenic if handled enough. Medicinally the sap is used externally on warts, or internally as a purgative, but large doses can kill. Foraging on the plant has proven deadly to livestock.

Witch alder (Fothergilla major) is a native shrub related to witch hazel. Though native to the southeast it does well here in the northeast, but it is usually seen in gardens rather than in the wild. The fragrant flower heads are bottlebrush shaped and made up of many flowers that have no petals. Their color comes from the stamens, which have tiny yellow anthers at the ends of long white filaments. They are said to make an excellent hedge but I’ve never seen them used that way.

I looked inside a tulip and had a hard time looking away from it.  It was a beautiful thing.

The poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus) is such an ancient plant that many believe that it is the flower that the legend of Narcissus is based on. It can be found in botanical texts from as early as 371 BC. It is one of the first cultivated daffodils and is hard to mistake for any other, with its red edged, yellow corona and pure white petals. It has naturalized throughout this area and can be found in unmown fields. It is very fragrant and it is quite remarkable to realize, as you sit admiring its spicy fragrance, that the Roman poet Virgil once did the same thing. I love a plant that comes with a good history lesson.

Eastern Redbud (Cercis Canadensis) is not native to New Hampshire and I have only seen two or three of the trees growing in this area until recently, when I found three large trees growing at the local college. The hardiness of this tree can be questionable here unless trees started from northern grown seed are planted. These were sheltered by buildings, which probably accounts for their large size.

I was surprised to see clusters of redbud flowers surrounding pruned off limbs. They seemed to be coming right out of the bark of the tree. I’m also always surprised by how small the pea like purple flowers are on a redbud but the tree makes up for it by producing plenty of them.

There are more than 500 plants in the veronica family and they can be tough to tell apart, but I’ve always thought that this one might be slender speedwell (Veronica filiformis.) It’s a tiny blossom that I found growing in a lawn, and you could hide a whole bouquet of them behind a pea. This particular speedwell is native to Europe and is considered a lawn weed but there are many others that are native to the U.S., and Native Americans used some of them to treat asthma and allergies.

Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom:
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
~ Zenkei Shibayama

Thanks for coming by. I hope there are many flowers in your lives.

Read Full Post »

Late April Flowers

I finally, after 6 or 7 attempts, caught bloodroot plants (Sanguinaria canadensis) in full bloom. Like other spring ephemeral flowers bloodroot isn’t with us long and in fact a few of these flowers had already lost petals, but luckily colonies in different places bloom at different times and in that way their bloom time can be extended. They’re blooming just a little early this year.

Bloodroot petals have very fine, almost invisible veins in them and if you don’t have your camera settings just right you won’t see them in your photos. When they’re in bright sunlight the veins disappear, so I shaded this flower with my body and boosted the ISO settings on the camera so I could catch them. It’s not an easy flower to do well but with practice and a little luck you can show it at its most beautiful.

Ornamental cherry trees are blooming and I’ve seen both white flowers and pink ones. These trees often blossom far too early and end up getting frost bitten, and I saw a few brown petals on this tree. Our native cherries will be along in May.

Ornamental cherries do have beautiful, if over anxious, flowers. They are one of our earliest blooming trees, usually coming along with the magnolias.

Bradford pear blossoms (Pyrus calleryana) have pretty plum colored anthers but that’s about all this tree has going for it. Originally from central Asia and the Middle East the tree was introduced by the USDA in  1966 as a near perfect ornamental urban landscape tree, loaded with pretty white blossoms in spring and shiny green leaves the rest of the time. Even Ladybird Johnson promoted it but problems quickly became evident; the tree has weak wood and loses 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 the pretty flowers? Their scent has been compared to everything from rotting fish to an open trash bin, so whatever you do don’t plant a Bradford pear. I smelled this one before I saw it so you might say I followed my nose right to it.

Insects don’t seem to mind the smell.

Pulmonaria (Pulmonaria officinalis) is an old fashioned but pretty evergreen garden plant that originally hails from Europe and Asia. The silver mottled leaves were once thought to resemble a diseased lung and so its common name became lungwort. People thought it would cure respiratory ailments like bronchitis and the leaves were and still are used medicinally in tinctures and infusions. The leaves and flowers are edible, and if you’ve ever had vermouth you’ve had a splash of pulmonaria because it is one of the ingredients. The plant does well in shade and has flowers of blue, pink, white, purple and red.

Vinca (Vinca minor) is now approaching full bloom. Though this plant isn’t a native it might as well be because it is much loved. In fact I’ve never heard anyone complain about it. Neighbors have been passing it to neighbors for hundreds of years, and I find it growing out in the middle of nowhere quite regularly.

What looks like a 5 petaled flower on a vinca plant is actually one tubular flower with 5 lobes, as this photo shows. Vinca contains the alkaloid vincamine, which is used by the pharmaceutical industry as a cerebral stimulant. It has been used to treat dementia caused by low blood flow to the brain. It’s origin is probably Europe and one of its common names is “Flower of death” because of the way it was once planted on the graves of infants. Too bad that such a pretty flower has to have such a morbid connection but in truth many flowers are associated with death. I once worked for a lady who refused to grow gladioli because they were so commonly used at funerals.

I love the color of this magnolia bud. I believe the variety name is “Jane.” If so its flowers will be tulip shaped.

Sometimes lilac buds look like they’ve been frosted with sugar. It’ll be so nice to smell those flowers again.

Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) has just come into bloom and these are the first blossoms I’ve seen. These small but fragrant flowers were once over collected and nearly obliterated but I know of several large colonies so they seem to be making a comeback. People need to understand that the plants are closely associated with fungi in the soil and unless the fungi are present these plants will not live, so digging them up to put in gardens is a waste of time. Not only that but it robs the rest of us of the pleasure of seeing them.

The inside of a trailing arbutus blossom is very hairy and also extremely fragrant.

I found lots of viola plants (Viola tricolor) under a tree one day, all blooming their hearts out. Viola blossoms are about half the size of a pansy blossom but every bit as colorful and the plants usually have more flowers than a pansy plant will. Pansies were derived from violas so all pansies are in fact violas but plant breeders have worked on them for years and pansies come in a wider range of colors. I love them because they are very cold hardy and appear early in spring when not much else is in bloom.

I had to go back for another look at the female lime green box elder flowers (Acer negundo.) They were even more beautiful than they were last week. The female flowers appear along with the leaves, and you can see a new leaf or two here as well.

The male flowers of box elder are small and hang from long filaments, and aren’t very showy. Each reddish male flower has tan pollen-bearing stamens that are so small I can’t see them. The pollen is carried by the wind to female trees and once they’ve shed their pollen the male flowers dry up and drop from the tree. It’s common to see the ground covered with them under male trees.

The flowers of Norway maples (Acer platanoides) usually appear well after those of red maples but this year they’re blooming quite early. These trees are native to Europe and are considered an invasive species. White sap in the leaf stem (petiole) is one way to tell Norway maples from sugar maples, which have clear sap. Their brightly colored flower clusters appear before the leaves and this makes them very easy to see from a distance. Once you get to know them you realize that they are everywhere, because they were once used extensively as a landscape specimen. Norway maple is recognized as an invasive species in at least 20 states because it has escaped into the forests and is crowding out native sugar maples. It is against the law to sell or plant it in New Hampshire but the genie is out of the bottle and they are everywhere.

It’s tough to isolate a single Norway maple flower in such a large cluster but I always try, just so you can see what they look like. This is a male (staminate) flower. They have 8 stamens, five petals, five sepals, and a greenish central disc. They’re quite different from any other native maple.

Ramps (Allium tricoccum) are up and growing fast. These wild leeks look like scallions and taste somewhere between an onion and garlic. They are a favorite spring vegetable from Quebec to Tennessee, and ramp festivals are held in almost all states on the U.S. east coast and many other countries in the world. Unfortunately they are slow growers and a ten percent harvest of a colony can take ten years to grow back. They take up to 18 months to germinate from seed, and five to seven years to mature enough to harvest. That’s why ramp harvesting has been banned in many national and state parks and in parts of Canada, and why Ramp farming is now being promoted by the United States Department of Agriculture.

This photo, taken years ago, shows what the complete ramp looks like. I foolishly pulled these two plants before I knew they were being threatened. The bulbs and leaves are said to be very strongly flavored with a pungent odor. In some places they are called “The king of stink.” The name ramps comes from the English word ramson, which is a common name of the European bear leek (Allium ursinum), which is a cousin of the North American wild leek. Their usage has been recorded throughout history starting with the ancient Egyptians. They were an important food for Native Americans and later for white settlers as well.

I’m seeing a lot more white violets than purple this year and that’s a little odd because it’s usually the other way around. I’d love to see some yellow ones but they’re rare here.

Sessile leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia) is also called wild oats and the plants have just come into bloom. They are a spring ephemeral and won’t last long but they do put on a show when they carpet a forest floor, despite their small size. They are a buttery yellow color which in my experience is always difficult to capture with a camera.

In this case the word sessile describes how the leaves lie flat against the stem with no stalk. The leaves are also elliptic and are wider in the middle than they are on either end. The spring shoots remind me of Solomon’s seal but the plant is actually in the lily of the valley family.

And just look what has finally come Into the light; one of our largest and most beautiful spring wildflowers. Purple or red trillium (Trillium erectum) is also called wake robin, because its bloom time once heralded the return of the robins. The flowers have no nectar and are thought to be pollinated by flies and beetles. Their petals have an unpleasant odor that is said to be similar to spoiled meat, and this entices the flies and beetles to land and pollinate them. As they age each petal will turn a deeper purple. Their stay is all too brief but when they fade they’ll be followed by nodding trilliums (Trillium cernuum) and then painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum,) both of which are also very beautiful.

Flowers have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music.  They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its vigor. ~Henry Ward Beecher.

Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone is doing well and will continue on that way.

Read Full Post »