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

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Goose Pond

Last Sunday the thought hit me that I hadn’t seen any of our native blue flag irises, so I sat and tried to remember where I had found them in the past. There were a few places that came to mind but Goose Pond in Keene sounded like the most fun of all on what was supposed to be a hot day. This photo shows the trail that leads from the road to the pond.

You have to cross a stream, which is one of many you cross if you walk all the way around the pond. I hoped to see some salamanders in this spot but they were all hiding, apparently.

False Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) was the first flower I saw, but I’m seeing lots of them this year, everywhere I go. I keep hoping I’ll find star-flowered Solomon’s Seal (Maianthemum stellatum) but I haven’t had any luck. I found it once years ago but I can’t remember where, so I can’t go back and try again.

And here was Goose Pond. I know I just visited a pond but Goose Pond is very different than Willard Pond. For one thing, this pond was made by damming streams. Goose Pond was called Crystal Lake by some in the 1860s, and was also known as Sylvan Lake in the 1900s. Keene had a major fire in 1865 and the town well and cisterns failed to provide enough water to put it out, so dams were built to enlarge the pond to 42 acres. The city stopped using the pond as a water supply in the 1930s and in 1984 designated the forest as a wilderness park. Surrounding the beautiful pond is a vast 1,044-acre tract of forest (up from 500 acres) that has been left nearly untouched since the mid-1800s. It’s a wilderness area, and it’s just 2.6 miles from downtown Keene.

Trails here are wide enough for two to pass but there are lots of roots and stones, and of course mud. The 2.1 mile long loop trail hugs the pond for the most part but there are one or two places where you can lose sight of it, so you have to watch the white blazes on the trees. They have faded over the years and need to be repainted, so in places you have to be alert. I’ve met a few people out here who had gotten turned around and didn’t know where they were but all you need to remember is if the pond is on your right when you start the trail it should be on your right when you finish, if you’re going all the way around. That and the fact that all streams you will cross run downhill to the pond is really all you need to know. I always feel sorry for them though, because I was lost in the woods once and it’s a scary place to be. As soon as you panic you lose all common sense, so you really have to stay calm.

Indian cucumber root (Medeola virginiana) grows abundantly out here. There are more plants here than I’ve ever seen anywhere else. I like the way their whorls of leaves grow in tiers. This one had a fly friend visiting that I never saw when I was taking the photo.

I don’t like trying to get a shot of Indian cucumber root flowers because it’s always an involved process. These plants grow in shade that is sometimes dense so you spend a lot of time fiddling with camera settings. Then when I get home I often find that what looked good on the camera screen is not good. This is the best of a bad lot from that day but at least you can tell what is going on. The flowers usually nod under the leaves and have 6 yellowish-green recurved tepals, 6 reddish stamens topped by greenish anthers, and 3 reddish-purple to brown, curved styles. These large styles are sometimes bright red-brown like those shown but I think they darken as they age. Each flower will become a shiny, inedible dark purplish-black berry. Also quite often in the fall the top tier of leaves will have a beautiful bright scarlet splotch on them. Nobody seems to know why.

Here was a hemlock tree full of hemlock varnish shelf fungi (Ganoderma tsugae) basking in the sun. Though some plants and most fungi grow in shade nothing I know of can grow totally in the dark, so everything gets its moment in the sun. Even if it is just a ray of cool morning sunlight landing on a slime mold for a half hour, everything gets at least some sunlight, or at the very least bright reflected light.

When mature this mushroom will look like a plate size, red shelf fungus that has been lacquered, but at this stage it looks like a gob of dough that someone stuck to the tree and spilled red paint on.  

Here was the first of two wooden bridges. You’ll see that these bridges are chained to trees to keep them from washing away if the streams flood. I’ve heard couples wondering out loud if the chains were there to stop people from stealing them but no, it would take quite a few people to move a bridge this size.

The view from the bridge.

There are quite a few royal ferns (Osmunda spectabilis) growing in and along the stream. I always make a point of showing this pretty fern because I’ve met people who didn’t know it was a fern. Royal ferns are thought to be one of the oldest living things, with fossil records of the Osmundaceae family dating back over 300 million years. Individual plants are believed to be able to live for over 100 years.

There are stone walls everywhere out here and that is no surprise. If I ever walk through a New Hampshire forest without bumping into a stone wall that will be the surprise. There are an estimated 50,000 miles of stone walls in New Hampshire and 250,000 miles of walls in New England and New York. There is a mapping project going on now that wants to map all of the stone walls in the state, and to that I say good luck.

This is what you do when there isn’t a bridge. That third flat rock that is shaped like a slice of pizza wobbles when you step on it and I thought I was going down when I stepped on it. A friend of mine fell into a stream in exactly that way and cracked several ribs. Another friend gave me some walking poles when he got new ones but I never think to use them, even though I have them right in the car. I’m going to have to move them to the front seat. They would have been handy here.

Here was the pine tree that was struck by lightning. I came through here just a day or so after it happened a few years ago and found long strips of bark on the ground around the tree. The lightning had blown them right off the tree.

Slowly, this pine is dying. Each time I look more limbs have died and one day it will fall, probably into the pond.

I think this is the best shot I’ve ever gotten of the island, because the light was good. I wondered about how the island might have been a hilltop before the size of the pond was artificially increased. I would have loved to explore it as I have so many other islands but without a kayak, swimming would be the only way. I knew better; I tried to swim out to the island in Spofford Lake once and almost drowned because even when I was young, I had weak lungs.

Pine and hemlock pollen is falling. It floats on the water of lakes and ponds and makes designs every year at this time. Sometimes it can be very beautiful on water, and allergy sufferers would rather see it floating on water than in the air.

I use my phone camera quite a lot for landscape shots these days and it usually does a good job but sometimes the photos look a bit garish, and that’s the way this one looks to me. This shot is of one of two dams on the pond. It took me a while to get a shot of it because I saw a lot of people and a lot of dogs here on this day, and that’s what makes this pond so different from Willard Pond. I waited to take the shot as a young girl sneezed her way across the dam. “It sounds like someone might have allergies,” I said to her mother. “Yes, it seems like everyone is allergic to something these days,” she said. I agreed. I was never allergic to anything until I turned 50 and then I became allergic to many things. I can’t remember anyone in my family ever having allergies when I was a boy though, even during haying season.

I’ve seen lance leaved violets (Viola lanceolata) growing in the water at a pond’s edge before but here they were high and dry on the dam, and there were hundreds of them.  It is also called the bog white violet or strap leaved violet, for obvious reasons. The plant needs a wet, sunny habitat, preferably one that floods and then dries out. It is listed as present in 8 out of the 10 counties in New Hampshire but though I’ve been on a lot of pond shores, I’ve only seen it twice. It is said to be rare in Vermont.

For the most part lance leaved violets are said to have no hairs on the side petals, but according to what I’ve read they may occasionally have residual, greenish white hairs as this one did. The flowers nod on stems that can be as much as 6 inches long and both the bottom and side petals can have purple veining. This little plant only blooms for three weeks. The leaves are much longer than they are wide and after much searching in books and online I believe that this is the only violet that has them.

A sleepy-eyed female bullfrog rested on a mat of vegetation. You can tell she’s a female by the size of the external eardrum, which is called a tympanum and which appears just behind and below the eye. A male’s eardrum is much bigger than the eye. As soon as I got to the pond and all the way around it all I heard was the loud croaking of male bullfrogs, so it’s no wonder she needed a rest.

I saw the blue flag irises (Iris versicolor) I remembered were here, but there wasn’t a flower to be found on any of them. I think I must be rushing it a bit. I usually see them in June but sometimes they come out earlier so I thought I might see some.

Something that surprised me was all the painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum) I saw. There must have been two dozen of them here, right along the trail. They had all gone by as the one in the photo had but this is a hard plant to find in this area so I’ll have to remember to come here next year to see them. I’ve written myself a note, just in case. This one was forming a seedpod, which I was happy to see.

The old stump I sit by sometimes showed that the water level had dropped an inch or two. Goose Pond is a great place to find mushrooms so I’m hoping we don’t have a dry summer. An inch of rain per week would be perfect but I don’t think there is any such thing as a perfect summer anymore, if there ever was. Last summer it rained two or three days each week and was too wet but the two summers before that saw hardly any rain at all, so I’m hoping we can get back to average this year, whatever that may be. Whatever happens we’re sure to still be surrounded by the beautiful countryside we’ve been blessed with, so it’s hard to complain.

If you reconnect with nature and the wilderness you will not only find the meaning of life, but you will experience what it means to be truly alive. ~Sylvia Dolson

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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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Oh That Magic Feeling (Nowhere to go)

Here on my first day of retirement I don’t think the reality that I have nothing I have to do and nowhere I have to go has fully sunken in yet. Maybe I’ll need time to decompress after 50+ years of working. It was an odd career that went from gardener to mechanical engineer and then buildings and grounds maintenance. Though I started out fine with maintenance nearly 7 years ago I didn’t end fine. The job, always a dirty and dusty one, became increasingly difficult due to weakening lungs and I could feel myself slowing down, so it was time to go. One of the more pleasant memories of those last 7 years that comes to mind is of the many beautiful things I saw on those 25-mile drives to and from work; like clouds of mist rising up out of the forest in Marlborough, or the morning sunlight turning the snow-covered peak of Mount Monadnock to pink and orange. These sights were always unexpected and, though the drive wasn’t always welcome, they always were.

When I finally got to work each day, there on the shores of Half Moon Pond in Hancock, it wasn’t that uncommon to find something like this waiting. Each morning I would cross the road and stand on the shore in the quiet and watch as the sun rose behind me. It was a wonderful way to start the day and it wasn’t long before I felt that I had stumbled into paradise. I might not miss the work but I will miss the place.

You could feel an energy on the shores of the pond; an infectious childlike spirit, and that’s because children have come here for over 100 years to learn about and enjoy nature. The land, all 700+ acres, is known as The Sargent Center for Outdoor Education, owned by Boston University and currently in use by Nature’s Classroom, which is an outdoor environmental education program. Children, musicians, artists and other groups come from all over the world and the happy shouts and laughter of children can be heard all day every day, almost all year round. It was like music to me and I loved hearing them and seeing them having so much fun, but then covid came along and everything had to stop for a time. I can’t see that the place will ever stop attracting children though; after a fallow year in 2020 they returned for 10 weeks last summer and this summer looks like it will be even better.

The children come to what we call the camp to learn about nature and though that wasn’t my reason for coming, I learned right along with them. This was the first place I had ever seen dragonfly nymphs clutching the pond weeds, waiting to shed their exoskeletons. Once free they are apparently disoriented for a time. (I know how they feel) I had them land on me several times over the years and their empty shells, called exuvia, can be found here and there all along the shoreline.

This was the only place I knew of where I could get close enough to the big mother snapping turtles to see them laying their eggs. It was a slow, seemingly exhaustive process.

Before I went to work there, I had to drive for half an hour to see a rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) in bloom but that first year I found them along the shoreline. I was able to get to know them like I never could before. They’re one of our most beautiful early spring flowers and it was great to know that I could now find them with ease.

The same is true for sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia). I used to have to drive for miles to find it and even then I had a hard time, but there it was right on the shore of the pond. This is another relatively rare and beautiful native shrub which blooms later than the rhodora. Our native laurels have 10 anthers that fit into tiny pockets and spring out when an insect lands on the blossom, dusting it with pollen. The thought of it always fascinates me.

Before I started working at the camp the only way I could see a beautiful marsh St. John’s wort (Hypericum virginicum) was from a kayak, and if you’ve ever tried taking photos while sitting in a kayak you know how that went. Here, I could walk right up to them and see them in all their beautiful glory. It’s a relatively rare plant so I was happy to find them growing right along the shoreline. This is the only St. John’s wort I know of with pink flowers; all of our others St John’s worts are yellow.

A little further up on shore I found my favorite milkweed, swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). As I watched over the years one plant became two, and the first plant grew more and more flowers. The pretty flower clusters always remind me of millefiori glass paperweights.

Humble little Narrow leaf cow wheat plants (Melampyrum lineare) grew and bloomed by the hundreds there. I know of only one other place to find them and they don’t grow well there. This little, shoe top high plant may look innocent but it has a secret; it is a hemiparasite, which is a plant that can photosynthesize and create its own food but is still a parasite on surrounding plants. It seems to want more than its share. 

One year I cut a large area of brush right along the pond edge to open up a view and the following year I was surprised to find it full of wildflowers, including the beautiful little fringed polygalas (Polygala paucifolia) above. This is one of the last of our spring ephemeral flowers to bloom and it’s a signal that it’s time to start looking for flowers out in the sunny meadows rather than in the woods. Other plants that grew in this spot were pink lady’s slippers, painted trillium, blue bead lily, and partridge berry.

In certain places in the camp woods you can sometimes find large colonies of painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum). Throughout my experience I have found only one or two plants here and there, so finding large numbers of them here in this place was surprising. And beautiful; painted trilliums are our most beautiful trillium, in my opinion. They will bloom in May, just about the same time as the rhodora we saw earlier.

I was also surprised to find so many broad leaved helleborine orchids (Epipactis helleborine) growing at the camp because I normally see so few of them. They were introduced from Europe in the 1800s and almost immediately escaped gardens and are now considered an invasive orchid; the only one I’ve ever heard of. Scientists have discovered that its nectar contains the strongest narcotic compounds found in nature, and wasps have been seen moving away from it in a kind of staggering flight. Strangely, the plants have chosen to grow in the shade around building foundations.

Since I’m colorblind, before I started working at the camp I had seen only one cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), and that was only because a kind reader had sent me directions to it. But it was across a stream, so I could never get close to it. When a red cardinal lands in a green tree it disappears to these eyes, so I almost stepped on the plant in this photo before I saw the red flower. It grew in a peaceful place beside a stream at the camp. It was a real treat to finally see them up close after so many years of looking for them but now I know that I should stop looking, because the only way I’ll ever find them is by luck. If I should happen to stumble across them again well, that will be a lucky day.

Another plant that I had never seen before working at the camp was the ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi). Like the cardinal flower it is a plant I searched for for many years. I stumbled across it growing in a lawn, which is the last place I’d have thought to look for it. Though there are native plants called ragged robin in the U.S. this particular plant was introduced from Europe into New England.

As I think back on my time at the camp, I can see that it was really just one discovery after another, and I could probably fill two posts with all the “firsts” I saw, like the eyed click beetle (Alaus oculatus) above. Its “eyes” are really just eye spots, there to mesmerize and confound predators. It has a spine that it can click and use to propel itself away from predators, and it used it to jump and hit me in the back, otherwise I’d have never seen it. One day a bobcat walked past a group of us from just feet away, and one morning I saw a young moose come up out of the pond. Several people told me that a black bear walked just 10 feet from me when I was blowing leaves one day, but I never heard or saw it. This was also the first and only place I ever heard the song of a whippoorwill. It really is a magical place that is filled with natural wonders, and I’m very grateful to have had the chance to spend time there.

Another wonder was the cluster of Dryocosmus deciduous galls I found on a red-oak leaf one day. These galls are created when a tiny wasp in the Dryocosmus genus lays eggs on the midrib of a red oak leaf. Each tiny gall has a single larva inside. As the scientific name reveals, these galls are deciduous, and fall from the leaf before the leaf falls from the tree. I remember how amazed I was when I read that about them.

One of the jobs I had at the camp was mowing a 13-acre meadow. The first time I mowed it I noticed that there were one or two chicory plants (Cichorium intybus) in it, so I started mowing around them. Year by year their numbers increased until last year there must have been 15 plants, all blooming together. Several people asked me about them over the years and I think everyone enjoyed the blue flowers, even though they looked a little odd out in such a big expanse of grass.

The meadow that I mowed was full of tiny black insects which I think must have been weevils. There were so many thousands of them I could feel them peppering any uncovered spot on my body as I mowed, so I had to always wear glasses and keep my mouth closed tight. But mowing was when I first noticed something strange; a group of dragonflies would fly alongside the tractor, a few on either side, and every now and then one or two would peel off for a moment or two before coming back to rejoin the group. I realized then that the dragonflies were eating all the insects that were being scared up by the mower. I also realized that they were intelligent creatures. They must also have some type of a memory, because they flew along beside me every time I mowed the meadow in summer. The one in this photo was so used to me mowing I rode right up to it and took this shot with my macro camera as it perched on a chicory plant. If a fish can learn to come when it is called at feeding time, why can’t a dragonfly?

Because I spent most of my time outside, I could keep a close eye on the local monarch butterfly population, which seemed to rise and fall quite a lot from year to year. Last summer seemed to be a good one for them and I hope the future will be kind to them.

I realize as I work on this post how much there was to see and discover in an area smaller than the center of an average small New England town. It’s just amazing, but it isn’t just the beauty of it all; it’s also the rarity of the things found here, like the dewdrop (Dalibarda repens) flowers above. I’ve seen them in exactly one other place in over 50 years of wandering through nature.  

And then there is the purple fringed bog orchid (Platanthera grandiflora) I found growing beside a trail through a swamp one day. People had been walking by it without seeing it perhaps for years and if I hadn’t caught just a glimpse of color out of the corner of my eye, I would have done the same. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget how I felt that day. I think it has to be the most beautiful flowering plant I’ve ever seen in these New Hampshire woods.

All of the animals, plants, insects, and amphibians that have made this place their home is what makes it so special. Just think of all the children, more than a hundred years’ worth of them, who came to this place and might have seen one, two or all of the things in this post. Think of how much they might have learned. This place, full of beauty, wonder and enchantment, should always be here for them.

Last year a group of artists came to stay for a week and my co-workers cajoled one of them into doing an oil painting of the bog orchid, which they gave me on my last day. It was a great gift and it now hangs here where I’ll see it every day. Though I doubt I could ever forget the camp, this painting will make sure I don’t. I hope many people who pass through the camp will get to see and admire the flower that inspired it, especially the artist. He did the painting from a photo that I had taken.  

There was a time when I could sit in the quiet of dawn on a summer morning and listen to the birds sing through the open windows, and that’s what I’m looking forward to doing again more than anything else. In the evening I can walk to the stream down the road and watch the sunset turn it to liquid gold, and then when it gets dark I can sit outside and watch the stars while listening to the the spring peepers. These are some of the things that are most important to me, and I’ll have time now to do them and anything else that comes to mind. The possibilities are infinite.

One sweet dream, came true today. ~The Beatles

Thanks for coming by.

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Late May Flowers

On May 17, 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote “The splendid Rhodora now sets the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color,” and indeed that is exactly what it is doing now. Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) is in the rhododendron family and is native to the northeastern U.S. and Canada. Both Its western and southern limits are reached in Pennsylvania. It was brought from Canada to Paris in March 1756 and was introduced to England in 1791. It is said to have been a big hit, but it must have been difficult to grow in English gardens since it likes wet roots and needs cold winters.

Rhodora flowers appear on short (3 feet or less) upright shrubs that like to live in wet places. I’ve even seen them growing in standing water in full sun but they usually grow just on shore. The flowers appear before the leaves and light up the edges of swamps and bogs for a short time in spring. By mid-June they will be only a memory here.

Painted trillium (Trillium undulatum) is our third and final trillium to come into bloom, and in my opinion is the prettiest of the three. Unlike its two cousins its flowers don’t point down towards the ground but usually face straight out, 90 degrees to the stem. This one was different however; its flower pointed directly at the sky.

Each bright white petal has a reddish “V” at its base that looks painted on, and that’s where the common name comes from. According to the USDA, painted trilliums grow as far west as western Tennessee and south to Georgia.

Native starflowers (Trientalis borealis) are everywhere in the woods right now and grow in either dry or moist soil. Starflowers are a plant based on sevens; seven leaves, seven petals, and seven sepals, but I’ve seen them with fewer or greater than seven.

If nature was to have a rule it would be that no rule in nature is hard and fast and the starflower with 8 petals in the above photo proves that. It does however still have seven anthers. Starflower leaves turn yellow and fade away in mid-summer, leaving behind a leafless stalk bearing a tiny round seed capsule.

Native blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) blossoms are decorating our roadsides right now but I doubt you’ll ever see them while driving. This beautiful little aspirin size flower is in the iris family and is said to have some of the same features. The leaves look like grass but are the grayish color of German iris leaves. All of the iris family is usually thought of as very poisonous but Native Americans had many medicinal uses for this plant. I still think I would have called it yellow eyed grass.

Common chokecherry trees (Prunus virginiana) 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 as these did.

If pollinated each chokecherry 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. The flowers are very fragrant and resemble those of black cherries which bloom a bit later, but black cherry leaves don’t have fine teeth around the outer perimeter like choke cherry leaves.

This wisteria vine has been trying hard to make it all the way to the top of a cherry tree for years now and though I usually forget it’s there on this day I remembered and I was glad I did, because it was beautiful.

Big, beautiful, fragrant flowers dangle from a wisteria and they’re beautiful but you have to watch where you plant them because they can be aggressive. A lady I once worked for made the mistake of planting one on a pergola that was attached to the back side of her house. Each year I had to lean out of a second story window with a pole pruner to cut it away from the eaves because it had once again reached the roof. She wouldn’t hear of removing it though, and these flowers explain why.

In spite of a few faults I can’t think of many flowers more beautiful than a wisteria. They always remind me of lupine flowers.

The round white flower heads of wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) hide beneath its leaves and quite often you can’t see them from above.  Compared to the ping pong ball size flower heads the leaves are huge and act like an umbrella, which might keep rain from washing away their pollen.

Each sarsaparilla flower is tiny enough to hide behind a pencil eraser but as a group they’re easy to see. Dark purple berries will replace the flowers if pollination is successful, and it’s usually very successful. Sarsaparilla roots were once used to make root beer but the drink that was called sarsaparilla contained no part of the plant. It was made from birch oil and sassafras root.

Thyme leaved speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia) has started showing up in lawns. The blossoms are about 1/8th of an inch across and aren’t very easy to get a photo of. Thyme leaved speedwell is considered a noxious lawn weed, but I like it. Speedwell blossoms have one petal that is smaller than the others and though it’s hard to see here the lower petal is indeed smaller than the others.

This little garden speedwell has plagued me for years now because, though I’ve tried to tell you what it is I can never be sure. From what I’ve seen online it is called spreading speedwell or creeping speedwell (Veronica filiformis.)

The flowers cover the plant and though small they’re very pretty.

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. They flower profusely and are said to make an excellent hedge.

The fragrant flower heads of witch alder 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.

The pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule) is the New Hampshire state wildflower and they have just come into full bloom. Once collected nearly into oblivion by people who didn’t know any better this native orchid is making a good comeback. The plant interacts with a Rhizoctonia fungus in the soil and this fungus must be present for it to reproduce.  If plants are dug up and placed in private gardens they will die if the fungus isn’t present so please, look at them, take a couple of photos, and let them be. They’re one of our most beautiful native orchids and everyone should have a chance to see them.

Bees pollinate pink lady’s slippers and they start by entering the flower through the center slit in the pouch. Once inside they discover that they’re trapped and can’t get out the way they came in but luckily guide hairs inside the flower 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. The seeds of this orchid are as fine as dust and will for in a single seedpod.

When you find a large colony of early azaleas (Rhododendron prinophyllum) in the forest you understand the true meaning of the word “breathtaking.” They’re doing better this year than I’ve ever seen. They’re also called roseshell azalea.

The flowers of the early azalea aren’t as showy as some other azaleas but I wish you could smell their heavenly scent. Another common name, wooly azalea, comes from the many hairs on the outside of the flowers. It is these hairs that emit the fragrance, and that fragrance is said to induce creative imagination. It’s just such a beautiful thing and I’m so glad to have found them scattered here and there throughout the countryside. For a while I knew of only one but now I’ve found several.

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul. ~Luther Burbank.

Thanks for coming by.

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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.

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Late May Flowers

If you’re tempted to pass by what you think are violets you might want to take a closer look, because our beautiful little fringed polygalas (Polygala paucifolia) have just started blossoming. Their color and the fact that they sometimes grow beside violets has fooled me in the past. The small 3 inch tall by inch and a half wide plants usually bloom in pairs as can be seen in the photo above. Fringed polygalas are in the milkwort family and are also sometimes called flowering wintergreen and / or gaywings. The slightly hairy leaves were once used medicinally by some Native American tribes to heal sores.

You can see where the name “gaywings” comes from in this photo. They look as if they’re ready to take off. Each blossom is made up of five sepals and two petals. The two petals form a tube and two of the sepals form the little wings. The little fringe at the end of the tube is part of the third sepal, which is mostly hidden. When a heavy enough insect (like a bumblebee) lands on the fringe the third sepal drops down to create an entrance to the tube. Once the insect crawls in it finds the flower’s reproductive parts and gets dusted with pollen to carry off to another blossom. I usually find this one in shady, mossy places and I think it prefers moist ground. Some mistake the flowers for orchids and it’s easy to see why. They’re a beautiful and unusual flower that I always look for in May.

I’ve never seen violets like we have this year!

Painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum) are the third trillium I look for each spring. Usually as the 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, like the last two years, both nodding and painted trilliums are blooming at the same time. 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. 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. 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.

The flowers of rhodora usually appear just when the irises start to bloom but for the past couple of years they’ve been a little early. I often have to search for them on the banks of ponds because they aren’t common. Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense,) is a small, native rhododendron (actually an azalea) that loves swampy places. It is native to the northeastern U.S. and Canada and both its western and southern limits are reached in Pennsylvania. The flowers appear just before the leaves, but only for a short time in spring. By mid-June they will have all vanished.

The rhodora flower looks like an azalea blossom but it’s the color of this one that sets it apart from other azaleas, in my opinion. This plant was brought from Canada to Paris in March 1756 and was introduced to England in 1791. It is said to have been a big hit, but it must have been difficult to grow in English gardens since it likes to grow in standing water and needs very cold winters.

Another native azalea that can be hard to find in this area is called the early azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum,) even though the Rhodora often blooms earlier. It’s also called roseshell azalea and I often find them by their fragrance, which is a bit spicy and a bit sweet. Finding a seven foot tall one of these blooming in the woods is something you don’t forget right away, and I think I remember the exact location of every one I’ve ever found. Unfortunately there aren’t many.

The flowers of the early azalea aren’t quite as showy as some other azaleas but I wish you could smell their heavenly scent. It isn’t overpowering but when the temperature and breeze are just right you can follow your nose right to them.

Another common name for the early azalea is wooly azalea, and it comes from the many hairs on the outside of the flowers, which you can see here. It is these hairs that emit the fragrance, which is said to induce creative imagination.

Starflowers (Trientalis borealis) are supposed to be a plant based on sevens; seven leaves, seven petals, seven sepals and seven stamens, but I’ve seen eight and nine petals on flowers, and I’ve seen many with six petals. These flowers don’t produce nectar so they are pollinated by pollen eating insects like halictid and andrenid bees. There can be one or several flowers on each plant and I always try to find the one with the most flowers. My record is 4 but I’m always watching out for 5. This year I’m seeing lots of plants with three flowers, which is unusual. Usually most of them have only two.

This blossom didn’t live up to the 7 theory with 8 petals. It also has 8 anthers. I have to wonder how many starflowers the person who said it is a plant based on sevens actually looked at though, because many I’ve seen have more or fewer and 7 flower parts seem as random as any other number.

Robin’s plantain (Erigeron pulchellus) is the earliest of the fleabanes to bloom in this area. Its inch and a half diameter flowers are larger than many fleabane blossoms but its foot high stalks are shorter. One way to identify this plant is by its basal rosette of very hairy, oval leaves. The stem and stem leaves (cauline) are also hairy. The flowers can be white to pink to lavender and are made up of ray florets surrounding yellow disk florets in the center. These plants almost always grow in large colonies and often come up in lawns. They’re a good indicator of where the flower lovers among us live because at this time of year you can see many neatly mowed lawns with islands of unmowed, blossoming fleabanes. I’ve seen several already.

The club shaped flower heads of white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) have appeared a little late this year and they seem smaller than usual. This plant is very easy to confuse with red baneberry (Actaea rubra) but that plant’s flower head is spherical rather than elongated. The flower head of white baneberry is always taller than it is wide and if pollinated the flowers will become white berries with a single black dot on one end. That’s where the common name doll’s eyes comes from. The berries are very toxic and can be appealing to children but luckily they are very bitter so the chances that anyone would eat one are fairly slim.

I find purple dead nettle (Lamium maculatum) growing in a local park. It’s a beautiful little plant that makes a great choice for shady areas. It is also an excellent source of pollen for bees. Dead nettles are native to Europe and Asia, but though they do spread some they don’t seem to be invasive here. The name dead nettle comes from their not being able sting like a true nettle, which they aren’t related to. I’m guessing the “nettle” part of the name refers to the leaves, which would look a bit like nettle leaves if it weren’t for their variegation, which consists of a cream colored stripe down the center of each leaf.

The red horse chestnut (Aesculus × carnea,) is a cross between the red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) and the horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum.) From what I’ve read I think this one, which blooms in a local park, is an example of that same tree. I’ve also read that bees and hummingbirds love the flowers. I had to zoom in on the blossoms quite far up in the tree while the wind blew them around so I’m kind of amazed that I even have this photo to show you. It’s a beautiful flower and well worth the effort.

Witch alder (Fothergilla major) is a native shrub related to witch hazel which grows to about 6-7 feet in this area. Though native to the southeast it does well here in the northeast, but it is almost always 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. What little color they have comes from the stamens, which have tiny yellow anthers at the ends of long white filaments. They do very well in gardens but aren’t well known. I’m seeing more of them now than in the past though.

A flower that comes with plenty of memories for me is the lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis.) My grandmother’s name was Lily and I used to bring her wilting bouquets of them when I was a young boy. She would always smell them before putting them in a jelly jar full of water, all the while exclaiming how beautiful they were. The plant is extremely toxic but, though she didn’t tell me it was poisonous I never once thought of eating it or putting any part of the plant in my mouth. I do remember smelling their wondrous fragrance as I picked them though, and all those memories came back whenever I smell them. Amazing how memories can be so strongly attached to a fragrance.

It’s lilac time here in New Hampshire and you can find them blooming in almost every yard. Though I like white lilacs I think the favorite by far is the common purple lilac (Syringa vulgaris.) It’s also 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. As a boy I used to like sucking the sweet nectar out of lilac flowers.

The spicy fragrance of poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus) reminds me of the paper white narcissus, which has a fragrance strong enough to make some people sick, but I love it. Poet’s daffodil is a plant that comes with a lot of baggage; it is such an ancient plant that many believe it is the flower that the legend of Narcissus is based on, and 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 I find it in unmown fields after most other daffodils have finished blooming.

Lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea) blooms among the tall grasses. This plant is originally from Europe and is also called common or grass leaved stitchwort. It likes disturbed soil and does well on roadsides, old fields, and meadows. The Stellaria part of its 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.

Here’s a sneak peak at the next flower post. One of our most beautiful native orchids, the pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule,) just started to show color on their flowers as I was finishing this post. The moccasin shaped flowers start life colored a yellowish off white and then turn pink. I’m seeing lots of them this year and you’ll see more in the next flower post.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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More Mid May Flowers

Henry David Thoreau once wrote “The splendid Rhodora now sets the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color,” and that’s what this little two foot tall shrub does each spring, usually in mid to late May. The flowers usually appear just when the irises start to bloom but this year they’re a little early. I often have to search for them on the banks of ponds because they aren’t common. Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense,) is a small, native rhododendron (actually an azalea) that loves swampy places. It is native to the northeastern U.S. and Canada and both its western and southern limits are reached in Pennsylvania. The flowers appear just before the leaves, but only for a short time in spring. By mid-June they will have all vanished.

The rhodora flower looks like an azalea blossom but it’s the color of this one that sets it apart from other azaleas, in my opinion. This plant was brought from Canada to Paris in March 1756 and was introduced to England in 1791. It is said to have been a big hit, but it must have been difficult to grow in English gardens since it likes to grow in standing water and needs very cold winters.

Unfortunately it’s time to say goodbye to the beautiful spring beauties (Claytonia virginica.) I doubt I’ll see them again this year because the sudden hot weather seems to have shortened their bloom time. Out of many thousands of plants that grow in this location this little group were all that was blossoming. I love seeing these pretty little flowers in spring and they’re part of why spring is my favorite season.

It’s also time to say goodbye to the coltsfoot plants (Tussilago farfara) that have bloomed for quite a long time this year. Though many blossoms  in this colony were wiped out when a huge old pine tree fell they’ve cleaned up the tree in time for the coltsfoot leaves to appear. That means they’ll be able to photosynthesize as they normally would,  so I’d guess they’ll all be blooming next year despite of the fallen pine.

Heartleaf foamflowers (Tiarella cordifolia) have just started blossoming near shaded streams and on damp hillsides. They’re easy to spot because of their hairy, maple-like leaves and foot high flower stalks, and a colony as big as this one is a beautiful sight. Native plants have leaves that are bright green at first and then turn a darker green, sometimes mottled with maroon or brown. Many hybrids have been created and foam flowers are now popular in garden centers and are grown in gardens as much for their striking foliage as the flowers. They are an excellent, maintenance free choice for shady gardens that get only morning sun.

The small, numerous flowers of foamflower have 5 white petals, 5 white sepals, and 10 stamens. It is said that the long stamens are what give foamflowers their frothy appearance, along with their common name. Native Americans used the leaves and roots of foamflower medicinally as a mouthwash for mouth sores. The plant is also called “coolwort” because the leaves were also used on scalds and burns to relieve the pain.

Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) grow naturally in forests so they are plants that like cool, shady locations. They’ll go dormant quickly when it gets hot and they can leave a hole in the garden but that trait is easily forgiven. It’s one of the oldest perennials in cultivation and it is called old fashioned bleeding heart. I’ve always liked them and they were one of the first flowers I chose for my own garden.

What a show the grape hyacinths are putting on this year!  Since blue is my favorite color, I’m enjoying them.

I saw a hillside with creeping phlox (Phlox subulata) flowing down it so I had to stop and get a photo. Though few of us think of this plant as a wildflower it is actually native to the forests of North America. It is sometimes called moss phlox or moss pinks and it loves growing in lawns. Luckily it doesn’t seem to mind being mowed and many people wait until it’s done blooming to do their first spring mowing.

Another plant called creeping phlox is Phlox stolonifera that has much the same habit, but it is native only as far north as Pennsylvania. One way to tell them apart is by the darker band of color around the center of the flower; if it is there your plant is Phlox subulata and if it isn’t you have Phlox stolonifera.

It’s lilac time here in New Hampshire and you can find them blooming in almost every yard. Though I like white lilacs I think the favorite by far is the common purple lilac (Syringa vulgaris.) It’s also 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.

As a boy I used to like sucking the sweet nectar out of lilac flowers and after I took this photo I found that I still do. I wish you could have smelled them!

Witch alder (Fothergilla major) is a native shrub related to witch hazel which grows to about 6-7 feet in this area. Though native to the southeast it does well here in the northeast, but it is almost always 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. What little color they have comes from the stamens, which have tiny yellow anthers at the ends of long white filaments. They do very well in gardens but aren’t well known. I’m seeing more of them now than in the past though.

Nodding trillium (Trillium cernuum) is a little later than the purple trillium and just ahead of the painted trillium. They’re shy little things with flowers that hide beneath the leaves like the mayapple, and this makes them very hard to see. Even though I knew some plants in this group were blossoming I couldn’t see the flowers at all from above. Nodding trillium is the northernmost trillium in North America, reaching far into northern Canada and Newfoundland.

When the buds form they are above the leaves but as they grow the flower stem (petiole) lengthens and bends, so when the flower finally opens it is facing the ground. My favorite thing about the nodding trillium blossom is its six big purple stamens. My least favorite thing is how hard they are to get a good photo of. At barely 6 inches from the ground there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver.

Painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum) are the third trillium I look for each spring. Usually as the 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, like last year, both nodding and painted trilliums are blooming at the same time. 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. 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. 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. I thought this was a rare plant with two flowers but it was actually two plants growing very close together.

I wonder if people realize that every apple tree in this country (except crabapples) has been imported from somewhere else or was planted by seed; either by man, bird or animal. That’s why John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) did what he did. There are four species of crabapple native to North America; they are Malus fusca, Malus coronaria, Malus angustifolia and Malus ioensis. I planted the example in the photo but I’ve long since forgotten its name. 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 small clump of violets looked like purple butterflies had landed on it. Violets seem to be having a good year. I’m seeing a lot of them.

If you’re tempted to pass by what you think are violets you might want to take a closer look, because beautiful little fringed polygalas (Polygala paucifolia) are blossoming. Their color and the fact that they sometimes grow beside violets has fooled me in the past. The small 3 inch tall by inch and a half wide plants usually bloom in pairs as can be seen in the photo above. Fringed polygalas are in the milkwort family and are also sometimes called flowering wintergreen. The leaves were once used medicinally by some Native American tribes to heal sores.

Fringed polygala blossoms are also called gaywings and it’s easy to see why. They look as if they’re ready to take off. Each blossom is made up of five sepals and two petals. The two petals for a tube and two of the sepals form little wings. The little fringe at the end of the tube is part of the third sepal, which is mostly hidden. When a heavy enough insect (like a bumblebee) lands on the fringe the third sepal drops down to create an entrance to the tube. Once the insect crawls in it finds the flower’s reproductive parts and gets dusted with pollen to carry off to another blossom. I usually find this one in shady, mossy places and I think it prefers moist ground. Some mistake the flowers for orchids and it’s easy to see why. I love to just sit for a while and look at them; they’re one of those beautiful and unusual flowers that I can find myself lost in.

If you are lost inside the beauties of nature, do not try to be found. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

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More Mid May Flowers

Henry David Thoreau once wrote “The splendid Rhodora now sets the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color,” and that’s what this little two foot tall shrub does each spring. The flowers usually appear just when the irises start to bloom and I often have to search for them because they aren’t common. Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense,) is a small, native rhododendron (actually an azalea) that loves swampy places. It is native to the northeastern U.S. and Canada and both its western and southern limits are reached in Pennsylvania. The flowers appear before the leaves, but only for a short time in spring. By mid-June they will have all vanished.

The rhodora flower looks like an azalea blossom but it’s the color of this one that sets it apart from other azaleas, in my opinion. This plant was brought from Canada to Paris in March 1756 and was introduced to England in 1791. It is said to have been a big hit, but it must have been difficult to grow in English gardens since it likes to grow in standing water and needs very cold winters.

Starflowers (Trientalis borealis) are supposed to be a plant based on sevens; seven leaves, seven petals, seven sepals and seven stamens, but I’ve seen eight petals like the flower on the right in this photo, and I’ve seen many with six petals. These flowers don’t produce nectar so they are pollinated by pollen eating insects like halictid and andrenid bees. There can be one or several flowers on each plant and I always try to find the one with the most flowers. My record is 4 but I’m always watching out for 5.

I have to wonder how many starflowers the person who said that it is a plant based on sevens actually looked at, because like many I’ve seen this one has nine petals and nine stamens.  I’m thinking that the 7 rule should be disregarded because I’ve found by looking at many plants that 7 flower parts seem as random as any other number.

I believe this is purple dead nettle (Lamium maculatum) “Purple Dragon.” Whatever its name it was a beautiful little plant that makes a great choice for shady areas. It is also an excellent source of pollen for bees. Dead nettles are native to Europe and Asia, but though they do spread some they don’t seem to be invasive here. The name dead nettle comes from their not being able sting like a true nettle, which they aren’t related to. I’m guessing the “nettle” part of the name refers to the leaves, which would look a bit like nettle leaves if it weren’t for their variegation, which consists of a cream colored stripe down the center of each leaf. That middle flower looks like it has a chicken popping up out of it.

Dogwood bracts have gone from green to white, but the tiny florets at their center haven’t opened yet. I think this tree is the Japanese Kousa dogwoods (Cornus kousa) and not one of our native trees.

Nodding trillium (Trillium cernuum) is a little later than the purple trillium and just ahead of the painted trillium. They’re shy little things with flowers that hide beneath the leaves like the mayapple, and this makes them very hard to see. Even though I knew some plants in this group were blossoming I couldn’t see the flowers at all from above. Nodding trillium is the northernmost trillium in North America, reaching far into northern Canada and Newfoundland.

When the buds form they are above the leaves but as they grow the flower stem (petiole) lengthens and bends, so when the flower finally opens it is facing the ground. My favorite thing about the nodding trillium blossom is its six big purple stamens.

Painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum) are the third trillium I look for each spring. Usually as the 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 both nodding and painted trilliums are blooming at the same time. 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 didn’t see it until I looked at the photos I had taken but the painted trillium in the previous photo has a single petal pointed straight down, but in this example it points straight up. Note that the three smaller green sepals behind the petals also changed position. Which is the usual way? I’ve never paid enough attention to be able to answer that question but when you’re this beautiful I don’t suppose it really matters.

A flower that comes with plenty of memories for me is the lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis.) My grandmother’s name was Lily and I used to bring her wilting bouquets of them when I was a young boy. She would always smell them before putting them in a jelly jar full of water, all the while exclaiming how beautiful they were. The plant is extremely toxic but, though she didn’t tell me it was poisonous I never once thought of eating it or putting any part of the plant in my mouth. I do remember smelling their wondrous fragrance as I picked them though, and all those memories came back as I knelt to photograph this example. Amazing how memories can be so strongly attached to a fragrance.

Speaking of fragrance, our lilacs are finally blooming. In my April 26th post I showed lilac buds and said lilac blossoms would probably be in my next flower post. So much for prophesying; that was a full month ago and it has taken that long for them to open thanks to the cold and rainy first half of May. Though I like white lilacs I think the favorite by far is the common purple lilac (Syringa vulgaris.) It’s also 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.

My mother died when I was very young so I never really knew her but she planted a white lilac before she died, so now the flowers and their scent have become my memory of her. Whenever I see a white lilac she is there too.

Every time I look closely at blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) I wonder why they didn’t call it yellow eyed grass, but that’s not all that’s wrong with the name because the plant isn’t a grass at all; it’s in the iris family. Its light blue green leaves do resemble grass leaves though. The beautiful little flowers are often not much bigger than a common aspirin but their color and clumping habit makes them fairly easy to find.

The leaves are on the trees and that means that the spring ephemeral flowers won’t get the sunlight they need, and we’ve already had to say goodbye to spring beauties, purple trillium, and trout lilies. Now it’s time to say goodbye to the sessile leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia.) The plants usually grow in large colonies and seeing the bell shaped flowers on thousands of plants all moving as one in the breeze is quite a sight. Sessile leaved bellwort is in the lily of the valley family and is also called wild oats. Each 6-8 inch tall plant has a single dangling blossom that is about half an inch to sometimes one inch long.

Though I had the new spring shoots of the plant in the last post the club shaped flower heads of white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) have already appeared, so it’s a very fast grower. This plant is very easy to confuse with red baneberry (Actaea rubra) but that plant’s flower head is spherical rather than elongated.

The flower head of white baneberry is always taller than it is wide and if pollinated the flowers will become white berries with a single black dot on one end. That’s where the common name doll’s eyes comes from. The berries are very toxic and can be appealing to children but luckily they are very bitter so the chances that anyone would eat one are fairly slim.

Another plant with the same type of flower head is the witch alder (Fothergilla major.) The difference is that witch alder is a native shrub related to witch hazel, and is much bigger than baneberry. Though native to the southeast it does well here in the northeast, but it is almost always 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. What little color they have comes from the stamens, which have tiny yellow anthers at the ends of long white filaments. They do very well in gardens but aren’t well known. I’m seeing more of them now than in the past though.

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.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. ~Marcus Aurelius

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Late May Flowers

Wild geraniums (Geranium maculatum) have just started blooming. Other common names include alum root, old maid’s nightcap and shameface. In Europe it is called cranesbill because the seed pod resembles a crane’s bill. The Native American Mesquakie tribe brewed a root tea for toothache from wild geranium, but I’m not sure if it’s toxic. Much Native knowledge was lost and we can’t always use plants as they did. Somehow they knew how to remove, weaken or withstand the toxicity of many plants that we now find too toxic for our use.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote “The splendid Rhodora now sets the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color,” and that’s what this little two foot tall shrub does each spring. The flowers appear just when the irises start to bloom and I often have to search for them because it isn’t common. Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense,) is a small, native rhododendron (actually an azalea) that loves swampy places. It is native to the northeastern U.S. and Canada and both its western and southern limits are reached in Pennsylvania. The flowers appear before the leaves, but only for a short time in spring. By mid-June they will have all vanished.

Because of their habit of growing in or very close to the water I couldn’t get close enough to this rhodora to get a shot of a single flower, but if you’ve ever seen an azalea blossom then you know what they look like. It’s the color of this one that sets it apart from other azaleas, in my opinion. This plant was brought from Canada to Paris in March 1756 and was introduced to England in 1791. It is said to have been a big hit, but it must have been difficult to grow in English gardens since it likes to grow in standing water and needs very cold winters.

The waxy shine on buttercup (Ranunculus) petals is caused by a layer of mirror-flat cells that have an air gap just below them, and just below the air gap is a smooth layer of brilliant white starch. All of these layers act together to reflect yellow light while blue-green light is absorbed.

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.

Though it looks big in this photo this witch alder is barely 6 feet tall, and it’s the largest one I’ve seen. Most others I’ve seen are 2-3 feet tall. As you can see they flower profusely and are said to make an excellent hedge.

Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) has leaves that grow in a whorl, which you can see in this photo. This is a low growing summer wildflower with 4 petaled white flowers that seems to prefer the shade at the edges of forests. It makes an excellent old fashioned groundcover which, if given plenty of water, will spread quickly. The odoratum part of the scientific name comes from the pleasant, very strong fragrance of its dried leaves. The dried leaves are often used in potpourris because the fragrance lasts for years.

We have several invasive honeysuckle species here in New Hampshire and I’ve given up trying to identify them all. Most or all are banned from being sold but birds love their bright red berries and that makes the shrubs impossible to ever eradicate. This example had the pinkest flowers I think I’ve ever seen on a honeysuckle.

Apple trees grow throughout our forests and this is what makes people believe they’re seeing “wild” apples, when in fact every apple tree in this country (except crabapples) has been imported from somewhere else or was planted by seed; either by man, bird or animal. That’s why John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) did what he did. I love apple trees for their fragrance and so did my grandmother. Each year at this time I used to give her all the apple blossoms I could pick and for a day or two her house would smell like an orchard.

Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) grow naturally in forests so they are plants that like cool, shady locations. They’ll go dormant quickly when it gets hot and since it’s already getting hot here I thought I should get a couple of photos of them.  It’s one of the oldest perennials in cultivation and it is called old fashioned bleeding heart. I’ve always liked them and they were one of the first flowers I chose for my own garden.

The flowers of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) look like bells dangling on a cord. They usually hang down under the leaves and can be very hard to get a good photo of, but every now and then a wind will come along and blow them up over a leaf, and that’s what happened here. The yellowish green bell shaped flowers are quite small, only about 1/4 inch across. Trees can have male, female or both kinds of flowers.

Another view of the unusual striped maple flowers. Each flower has 5 green sepals and 5 greenish-yellow petals with outward turning lobes that are a bit longer than the sepals. Their six to eight stamens show that those in the photo are male flowers. A striped maple needs to be at least ten years old to produce seeds. They like cool moist woods and their large, hand size leaves mean they can take quite a lot of shade, so they grow in the understory. Native Americans are said to have used the wood of striped maple to make arrows and its bark for tea.

Painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum) are the third trillium I look for each spring. As the 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. Each bright white petal has a reddish “V” at its base that looks painted on, and that’s where the common name comes from. Unlike its two cousins its 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.

Fringed polygala (Polygala paucifolia) flowers often grow in pairs like those shown in the photo. Each blossom is 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. A lot has to happen for this little flower to become pollinated. When a heavy enough insect (like a bumblebee) lands on the fringed part, the third sepal drops down to create an opening so the insect can enter the tube, where it finds the flower’s reproductive parts and gets dusted with pollen. That pollination happens at all seems a bit miraculous but in case it doesn’t, this flower has insurance; there are unseen flowers underground that can self-pollinate without the help of insects.

Some flowers invite you to sit and admire their beauty. Others would like you to understand them, and most can make you smile, even on cloudy days. I find that all three are true of fringed polygala. They are with us for a relatively short time so I’m always very happy to find them in spring. I just found another small colony on Thursday and getting to know them over the next few months will be a pleasure.

Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it. ~Søren Kierkegaard

Thanks for stopping in. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend.

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