Late May Flowers

Here we are at the time of year when it’s almost time to leave the forest to seek the flowers that need sunlight rather than shade but first there are a few flowers still blooming in the woods, like the beautiful wild azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum) seen in the photo above. They are also called early azaleas, though others in the family such as rhodora do bloom first. In my last post I spoke about finding the kind of beauty that makes me go silent and still, and this beautiful native shrub always does that to me.

This shot shows how hairy the buds are. Those hairs persist even after the flowers open and they are what give this plant another name: wooly azalea. It is those hairs that emit the wonderful fragrance that these flowers have. It is a fragrance that is said to induce creative imagination.

I’ve been waiting a few years now for pretty little bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) to have a good year and finally, here it is. If they look familiar that’s because they are in the dogwood family. Like a dogwood blossom its large white bracts surround its smaller flowers. Even the 2 larger and 4 smaller leaves look like a dogwood. In fact, an old name for the plant is creeping dogwood. They like moist, shady woods.

If pollinated each tiny flower will become a bright red, single seeded drupe, and the plant will then have the bunch of “berries” that give it its common name. It is rare in my experience to find a plant full of fruit, but I keep looking. The plant’s berries are loaded with pectin and Native Americans used them both medicinally and as food.

Here bunchberry plants are growing through the V made by two oak branches, as they do here almost every year. Bunchberry is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that they must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

I found a dogwood tree blooming at the local college so I took a photo of one of the flowers. It looks remarkably like a larger version of a bunchberry blossom, so it’s easy to see why they are in the same family.

Pretty little blue eyed grass blossoms (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), hardly bigger than an aspirin, have appeared. The plants are in the iris family and if I had gotten a better shot of the leaves it would be obvious. They are the same bluish gray color as those of bearded irises. It is just a roadside “weed” to many, but I look forward to seeing it each year.

Blue eyed grass flowers taught me this year that they come out very dark, like the blossom on the left and then fade rather quickly to look like that blossom on the left. I’ve never noticed this before.

What look like tiny purple airplanes are now carpeting forest floors. Though this little plant in the milkwort family’s common name is fringed polygala (Polygala paucifolia) another name is “gaywings,” so that tells me that I’m not the only one who sees the resemblance to planes. They’re small and at a glance can pass for a violet so you have to keep your eyes on the ground to find them.

They’re very pretty and worth finding. the flowers are made up of five sepals and two petals. Two of the petals form a tube and two of the sepals form the “wings.” The little fringe like structure at the end of the tube is part of the third petal which is mostly hidden. When an insect lands on the fringed part, the third petal drops down to create an opening so the insect can enter the tube. It’s an amazing process that I keep hoping I’ll see happen but so far, not yet.

As I always do, I immediately thought of my mother when I saw these white lilacs. She planted one just before she died and though I never knew her she lives on in the flowers she chose to plant in the yard. I know, by what she chose, that she loved both color and fragrance. When I sat on the porch as a boy and smelled the lilacs or the cabbage roses, or in the fall when I admired the beautiful scarlet leaves of the Virginia creeper she planted, she was there. And she still is. One of the greatest gifts you can give a child in my opinion, is a love of flowers. It doesn’t take much; my mother did it without even being there. Whatever flowers you grow they will learn to love them, and later on in life when they see a flower they grew up with, they’ll think of you.

Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) is a low growing summer wildflower with small, 4 petaled white flowers that seems to prefer the shade at the edges of forests. It makes an excellent old-fashioned groundcover but it likes plenty of water; it won’t spread if it gets too dry. The odoratum part of the scientific name comes from the pleasant, very strong fragrance of its dried leaves. They are often used in potpourris because the fragrance lasts for years. It is also called sweet scented bedstraw and is a native of Europe.

The long wiry stems of what I believe is marsh stitchwort (Stellaria palustris) keep the flowers up above the tall grass so insects can find them. The flowers are said to be smaller than those of greater stitchwort but larger than those of lesser stitchwort, but such things don’t excite me anymore so I don’t pay much attention. I just enjoy seeing their cheery faces alongside the path I’m on, even if they aren’t native. They are a native of Europe and are also called chickweed, but there are over 50 different chickweeds. The Stellaria part of the scientific name means “star like,” and the common name stitchwort refers to the plant being used in herbal remedies to cure the pain in the side that we call a stitch.

Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) had just started blooming when I found a large colony of them on one of my walks. This is one of the first plants I have stored in my memory. I can remember as a boy picking them along with violets and dandelions to bring to my grandmother. To this day I still like the colors white, yellow and purple together.

I found a painted trillium (Trillium undulatum) that had just come up. It hadn’t reached full size yet but it had the beginnings of the reddish “V” at the base of each petal. Someone thought it looked as if they had been painted on, and that’s where the common name comes from. This one also displayed where the undulatum part of the scientific name came from with its wavy, undulating petal edges. They will straighten out a bit as the plant grows. They like boggy, acidic soil and are much harder to find than other varieties, though I never did find nodding trilliums this year.

I had never seen bird’s eye speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys) anywhere but in Hancock where I used to work until I went grocery shopping and looked in an old pasture where a barn used to stand before the store was built. There were hundreds of them growing there, so if my memory still works in the future I’ll be able to see them whenever I want. Most speedwell flowers are borderline microscopic but these are huge in comparison. I’d guess they must be as big as an aspirin. Another name for the plant is germander speedwell.

Robin’s plantain (Erigeron pulchellus) is a flower that always makes me smile, and not just because it is so pretty. No, I smile because it is a flower that reveals a lot about people at this time of year. You can go by a house that has not a flower or flowering shrub or tree anywhere on its property, but then in spring a big island of robin’s plantain will have been left uncut in the mowed lawn. This plant is in the fleabane family and is the earliest fleabane to bloom, with big 1-inch blossoms. They can be white to pink to lavender and are made up of ray florets surrounding yellow disk florets in the center. It’s a pretty, very noticeable “weed.”

I went to a spot I had never been to off in the woods near Willard Pond in Hancock and found hundreds of pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule), more than I’ve ever seen together anywhere else. They’re one of our most beautiful native orchids and I was happy to see so many growing together. I wondered how many other large colonies there were off in the wilderness that nobody has ever seen. I hope there are many.

That flower in the previous photo was quite dark pink but here was one that was lighter. Lady’s slippers, as do all orchids, have both male and female reproductive structures fused into a single structure. Many different insects pollinate orchids but in lady’s slippers bees do the job. They enter the flower through the center slit in the pouch, which can be seen here. Once inside they discover that they’re trapped and can’t get out the way they came in.

Guide hairs inside the flower, which can just be seen in this shot, point the way to the top of the pouch or slipper, and once the bee reaches the top it finds two holes big enough to fit through. Just above each hole the flower has positioned a pollen packet so once the bee crawls through the hole it is dusted with pollen. The flower’s stigma is also located above the exit holes and if the bee carries pollen from another lady’s slipper it will be deposited on the sticky stigma as it escapes the pouch, and fertilization will have been successful. Is it any wonder that orchids are considered the most highly evolved of all flowering plants?

Pollination had been very successful in this spot. I saw many lady’s slipper seedpods. These seed pods contain between 10,000 and 20,00 tiny, dust like seeds. According to the U.S. Forest Service “The seeds require threads of a fungus in the Rhizoctonia genus to break them open and attach them to it. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients to the pink lady’s slipper seed. When the lady’s slipper plant is older and producing most of its own nutrients, the fungus will extract nutrients from the orchid roots. This mutually beneficial relationship between the orchid and the fungus is known as “symbiosis” and is typical of almost all orchid species.” This is why it is waste of time to collect orchids or orchid seed from the wild and expect them to grow in your yard.

Since I skipped doing a flower post one week, I’m behind in keeping up with showing you what is blooming and has bloomed here. I went back out to the ledges in Westmoreland as I said I would though, and found the columbines in beautiful, full bloom. This would have been about 2 weeks ago, I think. I was happy to find more plants blooming than I ever have before, and I hope some of you were also able to see them.

There is no other flower that I know of that is quite like them. When a breeze blows through where they grow, they all dance at the ends of their long wiry stems and you can imagine them making themselves more visible to the insect by doing so.

I always like to show this photo of a columbine blossom from a few years ago because it helps to illustrate how various names came to be attached to this flower. The Aquilegia part of the scientific name comes from the Latin Aquila, which means “eagle” and refers to the spurred petals that Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus thought resembled an eagle’s talons. Others have thought they resembled pigeons around a dish, and the name Columbine comes from the Latin Columbinus, which means “pertaining to doves or pigeons.” Throughout history columbines have been associated with birds, but I didn’t see eagles or doves when I saw this photo. I immediately thought of five beautiful white swans with outstretched wings. However you choose to look at a columbine blossom it is a beautiful thing, and growing them adds interest to any garden.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~Rumi

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Easter in the Woods

On Easter Sunday I thought, since it was such a beautiful day, that I’d head up to Westmoreland to see if I could find some of the beautiful blue spring shoots of the blue cohosh plant that grows here. I found them last year but I was about two weeks late because they had already started turning green.

Right off I saw a red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) with flower buds. This was a surprise since the others I’ve seen haven’t even broken bud yet. Had I been earlier the finger like leaves would have been deep purple. The purple flower buds will quickly turn green before blooming into a head of small, white flowers, and if pollinated they will become bright red berries.

I saw lots of railroad artifacts here on this day, including this old signal base.

I was shocked to find the buds of striped maples (Acer pensylvanicum) showing. I think this is the earliest I’ve seen this happen. As the buds grow they will become beautifully colored in pink and orange.

There are lots of beech trees up here but the buds didn’t show any sign of swelling or lengthening. They will become one of the most beautiful things found in a spring forest when the buds break and the leaves start to show. It won’t be long!

Last year’s beech leaves have turned white and become thinner than paper, and the wind easily strips them from the branches at this stage. There are lots of theories about why beech leaves keep their leaves all winter, including to discourage deer from eating their buds, but nobody really knows for sure.

This pile of old railroad ties brought back memories. I grew up just a few yards from railroad tracks and seeing all the rails and ties torn up after the trains stopped running hit me almost like a death in the family would have. For many years I didn’t go near a rail trail but then, after some gentle prodding by an old friend, I started walking them. I’ve been glad ever since that they are here to enjoy; they’re much easier to hike than the tracks were.

I saw a tie plate lying beside the trail.

Someone had found an old rail anchor and placed it on a stone. Rail anchors were used, as you would guess, to keep the rails from moving. Eight were used on each 39 foot length of track but their numbers were increased as the grade steepened. Four of them in original as found condition will cost you $36.00 online.

There are a few old box culverts out here, still doing their job of keeping streams from washing the railbed away. This stream had dried up but I think it only runs in heavy rains or when the snow melts.

I was a little apprehensive when I reached this point because this is very near where I met up with the biggest bear I ever want to meet in the woods. That happened a couple of years ago on just about this date but on this day the bear had apparently gone over the mountain.

In case you missed it the first time, here is the bear I saw that day. It was big and it just stared, and that was a bit unnerving. Thankfully it let me leave and didn’t follow. I doubt that I’ll ever forget it.

Grapevines were hanging on to any branch they could grab. This is how they climb trees to get into the crown where there is more sunshine.

I was getting close to where the cohosh grows when I stopped to take this shot. There was bright sunshine when I started out but high thin clouds had made the light flat and strange by this time.

Finally I reached the ledges, cut through the hillside by the railroad, and the mosses glowed.

Marks from the old steam drills can be seen here and there. These holes would have been filled with black powder. You basically lit the fuse and ran, and then you cleaned up all the blasted rock.

I was surprised to find icicles on the ledges but it had been a cold night. They were falling fast after a the sun reached them though, so I had to make sure there were none above me when I got close to the ledges. You can just see a wild columbine to the left of the icicle, and that’s why I wanted to get close to the ledges.

I’m beginning to wonder if they aren’t evergreen. I used Google lens on this plant to see if it could identify it and it came back with Aquilegia canadensis, which of course is correct.

Unfortunately it couldn’t identify this moss that you see covering the ledges because it is so tiny I couldn’t get a shot of it with my phone. I’m still looking through my moss books for it. It forms huge mats here on the stones.

I tried Google lens on this fern and it came back with evergreen woodfern (Dryopteris intermedia), which I think is correct.

Its stalk (stipe) was very scaly and I was surprised that I had never noticed this. I’ve seen scales on lady ferns but there are actually three ferns with scales; spinulose ferns also have them. I haven’t seen any fern fiddleheads yet.

I never did find the blue cohosh but trying to remember where a one inch tall shoot once was in such a large area can be difficult, even though I recognized the stone and log it had been growing near. I’m sure I’ll see the plant with its leaves when I come back to see the wild columbines blooming in early May. Purple trillium, Jack in the pulpit, herb Robert, and many other plants also grow here.

Baby tooth moss (Plagiomnium cuspidatum) lit up a bit of ledge. I can’t think of another moss with so many spore capsules. They start off straight up and pointed like toothpicks and then begin to swell and turn downward. I have it growing in my yard and it’s cheering to see how it glows in the afternoon sunshine.

Cushion moss (Leucobryum glaucum) reminded me of little Miss Muffet’s tuffet. This moss can appear silvery, white, bluish green or grayish green but it always forms a thick cushion and stands out from the mosses that might surround it. It likes plenty of water and shade and grows on rotting logs or on stone when there is enough soil. It is probably the easiest of all the mosses to identify.

How soft and sweet the breeze was, and how warm the sun. I could easily imagine it being an early summer day but anyone who has grown up in New Hampshire knows what a changeable month April can be, and he knows what might seem a soft caress one day could quite likely seem a hard slap the next. Best not to be daydreaming about the coming summer I reminded myself, there was plenty to love about this day.

Landscapes have the power to teach, if you query them carefully. And remote landscapes teach the rarest, quietest lessons.” –David Quammen

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Hiking to a Special Place

Westmoreland lies north of Keene and the soil there is lime rich in certain places which means that you can see plants there that won’t grow in the more acidic soil of Keene, so last Sunday off I went down one of my favorite rail trails. I used to try to ride my bike out here but the gravel of the trail is very soft and I had such a time getting through it that I ended up walking the bike for much of the way anyhow, so now I just walk it. Though it was cloudy it was a great day for hiking with all of the beautiful spring green and singing birds.

This maple was that green that only happens in spring; kind of a yellow green, I guess you’d call it.

Though it doesn’t mind acidic soil red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) does well here in the more alkaline soil.  There were several plants which were flowering well with panicles of whitish flowers growing from the axils of the upper leaves.

Each greenish white flower is about 1/8″ across. They have 5 petals (petaloid lobes) that curve backwards sharply. The flower’s 5 stamens have white filaments and are tipped with pale yellow anthers. There is also a pistil with 3 small stigmata. If pollinated each flower will become a small bright red berry.  Though the plant is said to be toxic many Native American tribes steamed, dried and ate the berries. They are said to be very bitter unless prepared correctly.

There are plenty of reminders of exactly where you are out here, like this old signal base.

When the rails were torn up the railroad left all the ties stacked up along the railbed. People came and took what they wanted but there are still plenty to be seen, slowly rotting into the soil.

The boulder in the previous photo had a golf ball size hole in it, probably made by a steam drill so it could be blasted apart when they were laying the rails. For some reason they decided not to blast it.

Almost there; the dark circle in the distance marks the end of one leg of this journey.

Wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) wears bronze for its new spring coat, but its leaves will green up quickly. Wild sarsaparilla grows all through our forests and is a common sight. The plant sets flower buds quickly just as its leaflets have unfurled, and often before they’ve changed from their early deep bronze to green. In botanical terms the “leaves” are actually one leaf with a whorl of 3 compound leaves, which have groups of 3-7 leaflets. People sometimes confuse the plant with poison ivy before the flowers appear because of the “leaves of three” as in leaves of three, let them be. One easy way to tell the difference is by looking for a woody stem; poison ivy has one but this plant does not.

Wild sarsaparilla always starts out with its three compound leaves held vertically and clasping at the very top.

I was surprised to see logging going on in this part of the forest, but not completely. There are many hardwoods here like beech, oak and maple and very few conifers. Hardwood always brings more at the mill.

A logging road had to be built to get to the section of forest to be logged, so huge boulders were bulldozed into a place that needed a retaining wall. These stones are new, meaning they were just dug or cut. You can tell by how clean they are, and by their color. Most stones will turn gray in just a few years.

Here we are at the man made canyon that showed as a dark circle in a previous photo. There are a few of these along this section of trail, and they were all blasted out of the bedrock almost 150 years ago for the Cheshire Railroad.

I don’t know what it is that draws them here, but many interesting plants not easily seen in other places grow on these ledges.

Purple or red trillium (Trillium erectum) grows here in fair numbers. Each flower averages about as big as a quarter, or about an inch across.

Trilliums are all about the number three. Even the name trillium comes from the Latin tres, meaning three. On the purple trillium the three green sepals just are behind the three red petals. Once they open the flowers often nod under the three leaves (actually bracts,) and are mostly hidden from view for a short time before finally standing erect above the leaves. Inside the flower are six stamens and three stigmas. If flies pollinate the flower a three chambered, red fruit will grow.

False Solomon’s seal grows well here. Though it’s too early for their June bloom time the plants were budded. In about three weeks they should have small white, star shaped flowers in a branching cluster (raceme) at the end of their stems. The blossoms will give way to small but beautiful reddish and tan speckled berries that provide food for many birds and other wildlife.

The wild columbines (Aquilegia canadensis) are what I came here to see and as usual they stole the show. They like to grow on partially shaded rocky slopes so this area is perfect for them. How they got here is anyone’s guess but their numbers have been steadily increasing since I first found them. The rich alkaline soil is very unusual in this part of New Hampshire and many rare plants are known to grow in this area. The trick is in finding them; though I’ve spent 50 years walking through these woods this is the only place I’ve ever seen wild columbine.

They are beautiful things; well worth the hike. Each red and yellow blossom is about an inch and a half long and dances in the slightest breeze at the end of a long stalk. The Aquilegia part of the scientific name comes from the Latin Aquila, which means “eagle” and refers to the spurred petals that Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus thought resembled an eagle’s talons. Some think they resemble pigeons around a dish and the name Columbine comes from the Latin Columbinus, which means “pertaining to doves or pigeons.” It is said that Native American men rubbed the crushed seeds on themselves to be more attractive to women. Whether they did it for color or scent, I don’t know.

I couldn’t stop clicking the shutter, always hoping for a better shot. The wind was blowing through the canyon so I was sure every photo would be blurred. There have been years I’ve had to come back three or four times for that very reason.

Wild columbine flowers have 5 petals and 5 sepals. Each petal is yellow with a rounded tip, and forms a long, funnel shaped nectar spur that shades to red. The oval sepals are also red, and the anthers are bright yellow. When they grow on ledges some of them are up overhead, so you can see the nodding flowers in a way you never could if they were growing at ground level. 5 funnel shaped holes lead to nectar spurs and long tongued insects and hummingbirds probe these holes for nectar. Some say that these holes look like dovecotes, which is another reference to birds. We’re so very lucky to have such beautiful things in these woods.

In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”
~Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Mid May Flowers

Flowers are everywhere you look now, which makes my job a lot easier. Until I have to choose which ones to post on this blog, that is. Right now I have more photos than I do space to put them.

Those are cherry blossoms high in the trees in that first photo and this is a closer look at them. 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).  I’ve given up trying to tell them apart and just enjoy their flowers all along the roadsides. They bloom at the same times as apples and hawthorns, so it can be quite a show.

Three miles down an old rail trail that runs alongside the Ashuelot River hobblebushes (Viburnum lantanoides) blossom on the sun washed river banks. Every time that I see a scene like this I can imagine early settlers traveling down this river in a canoe and gasping at sights like this. Who wouldn’t have wanted to live in the Eden that they found here?

Hobblebush is one of our most beautiful native viburnums. Its flower heads are about as big as your hand and are made up of small fertile flowers in the center and larger, sterile flowers around the outer edge of what is technically 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. 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.

Another walk down a different rail trail led me to the only place I know of where our native eastern red columbines (Aquilegia canadensis) grow on mossy ledges. Its love of rocky places gives it the common name rock-lily. The flowers have yellow petals with red spurs and sepals and are pollinated by hummingbirds. It’s one of our most delicate and beautiful wildflowers. An interesting fact about this columbine is how it contains a cyanogenic glycoside which releases hydrogen cyanide when the plant is damaged, meaning it is quite toxic. Native Americans used the plant medicinally in several ways, including as an anti-itch balm for the poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) rash.

I wanted to show you how small dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius) really is so I put a quarter in front of a few. For those not familiar with the size of quarter, it’s about an inch in diameter. Each flower head is no bigger than a nickel (0.835 in). This photo 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 and it should never be picked.

Heartleaf foamflowers (Tiarella cordifolia) like damp soil so I always find them near streams and other wet places, usually growing in large colonies. This plant is a good example of how wildflowers become garden flowers. People like this plant enough to create a demand for it so nurserymen oblige by collecting its seed and growing it for sale, and plant breeders have created many hybrid varieties. It’s a cheery little plant that always seems as happy as I am to see in spring.

Each foamflower stalk is made up of multiple tiny white flowers. They’re pretty little things by themselves but when you see large drifts of plants in the woods you don’t forget it right away.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is an early bloomer and should have been in my last flower post but I forgot to put it in. These bloomed right around May first this year, but I’ve seen them earlier. This year most of the brownish flowers were lying right on the ground. Probably because they are at ground level scientists thought for years that these flowers were pollinated by flies or fungus gnats, but several studies have shown that they are self-pollinated.

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. In this photo you can see that the flower was just starting to shed pollen.

Lowbush (Vaccinium angustifolium) and highbush blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) are blooming well this year and that means we’ll probably see a bountiful crop of berries, provided we don’t have a late frost. Blueberries are one of only three fruits native to North America. The other two 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.

The name “forget me not” (Myosotis) comes from the original German “Vergissmeinnicht” and the language of flowers in 15th century Germany encouraged folks to wear them so that they wouldn’t be forgotten by their loved ones. Mozart wrote a song about the flowers and Franz von Schober wrote a poem about them. It seems that the plant has always been associated with romance or remembrance; Henry IV had forget me nots as his symbol during his exile in 1398, probably so his subjects would remember him. Surely they must have; he was only gone for a year. Only Myosotis scorpioides, native to Europe and Asia, is called the true forget me not. 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 though I can’t for the life of me understand why. I hardly ever see it.

One of the spring flowers we’ll be saying goodbye to soon is the forsythia. I liked the way this one spilled over an old stone wall. It is a view that’s very common in New England but still beautiful.

In a ground ivy blossom (Glechoma hederacea) 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 darker spots are nectar guides for them to follow into the tube. The pistil’s forked style can be seen poking out at the top under one of the three separate petals. It’s in a perfect position to brush the back of a hungry bee. This flower is all about continuation of the species, and judging by the many thousands that I see its method is perfection. It’s another invader, introduced into North America as an ornamental or medicinal plant as early as the 1800s, when it immediately began taking over the continent. But nobody seems to mind.

Wildflowers aren’t the only flowers that are beautiful. I found this bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) in a local park. This plant gets its common name from its heart shaped blossoms, each with a drop of “blood” at their bottoms. The best example of that in this photo is over on the far left.

The poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus) can be found in botanical texts from as early as 371 BC., and is believed to be the flower that the legend of Narcissus is based on. The Roman poet Virgil wrote of a narcissus blossom that sounds just like Narcissus poeticus. The flower 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.. Its flowers are very fragrant, with a scent so powerful it is said that a closed room full of flowers has made people sick. I like it because of its historical baggage; it always makes me think of ancient Rome and Greece, where toga wearing poets admired its beauty. It has naturalized throughout this area and can be found in unmown fields, and it’s still just as beautiful today as it was then, over 2,000 years ago.

It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what. ~ John Galsworthy

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Exploring a New Rail Trail

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with my travels along the deep cut rail trail in Westmoreland, New Hampshire where I go to see liverworts. For a change I decided to follow the trail in the other direction, just to see what was out there. This post is made up of photos that were taken on four different trips to this place.

After walking for a while you come upon soaring ledges. The minute I saw this stone I knew there was something different about this place because the stone is light colored. There is obviously a lot of feldspar here. If you see light colored, pinkish stone in this part of the state it is usually the mineral feldspar that you’re seeing. Feldspars can be found in sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rock. Here we often find pure feldspar seams in granite but rarely entire hillsides of it.

The purple trilliums (Trillium erectum) along the canyon floor were a good sign that I’d probably find other wildflowers here.

I’ve been trying to identify this fern for over a year and I think I’ve finally settled on rattlesnake fern (Botrypus viginianus), but that may change as I watch it grow. Rattlesnake fern’s common name, like other plants with rattlesnake in their names, comes from the belief that it grew where there were rattlesnakes. It’s supposed to be very common and appears in every state in the continental U.S. and most of Canada, but I’ve never seen it.

I thought this streak of bright white on the stone was some type of lichen but it was caused by mineral deposits that easily wiped away like chalk dust. The bedrock in this part of the state is said to be calcium rich and I’m assuming calcium deposits were what I was seeing.

Jack in the pulpit plants (Arisaema triphyllum) were everywhere, including on the cliff faces. I’ve never seen them growing on stone and it seems odd, because the root is a bulb-like corm. You wouldn’t think it would have enough room to grow to any size on stone, but since these ledges were cut the mid-1800s there is probably plenty of organic matter built up on the horizontal surfaces. Mosses also grew as thick as I’ve ever seen them.

I always like to lift the top of the spathe to see how Jack the spadix is doing. Down inside the spathe is where the fruit forms on the spadix.  I think a similar plant in the U.K. is called “Lords and ladies.”

I started to get perturbed about this until I realized that Native Americans probably wrote hieroglyphs on birch bark with charcoal.

If you’re the one who wrote this note and happen to be reading this, I’d appreciate nothing larger than 50 dollar bills. 200 of them will be fine.

Actually, I’m far more interested in these than I am money. I’ve been searching for many years for our native wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) and here an entire colony of plants was growing the whole time. The rich alkaline soil is very unusual in this part of New Hampshire and many rare plants are known to grow in this area. The trick is in finding them. Since it has only taken me since boyhood to find native columbine, maybe now I’ll move on to the showy orchis, which is also said to grow in the area.

 

Seeing something so rare and beautiful in its native habitat for the first time made all the years of searching well worth the effort. I probably spent five or six hours total in this spot enjoying and photographing them, and searching for other rarely seen plants.

According to Wikipedia the genus name Aquilegia is derived from the Latin word for eagle (aquila), because the shape of the flower petals are said to resemble an eagle’s claw. The common name “columbine” comes from the Latin for “dove”, due to the resemblance of the inverted flower to five doves clustered together.

These woods were alive with birdsong and seemed to shout spring. Walking here reminded me why this is my favorite time of year.

Perchance we may meet on woodland trails where drifts of trilliums and singing robins still greet the spring.” ~Don Jacobs

Thanks for stopping in.

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