Trout Lilies | New Hampshire Garden Solutions

Posts Tagged ‘Trout Lilies’

More Spring Flowers (And Friends)

Posted in Birds, Flowers, Insects, Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Bathing Robin, Bluets, Bradford Pear Blossom, Bud Break, Canon SX70 HS, Christmas Fern Fiddleheads, Cinnamon Fern Fiddleheads, Early Spring Flowers, Elm Seeds, Female Box Elder Flowers, Grape Hyacinth Blossoms, Keene New Hampshire, Lilac Blossoms, Male Box Elder Flowers, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Ohio Buckeye Bud Break, Olympus TG-6, Ornamental Cherry, Painted Lady Butterfly, Pulmonaria Blossoms, Purple Leaved Sand Cherry, Sedge Flowers, Shadbush Blossom, Spring Beauties, Spring Flowers, Spring Wildflowers, Strawberry Blossoms, Striped maple, Striped Maple Buds, Swanzey New Hampshire, Trailing Arbutus, Trout Lilies, Tulip Blossom, Violets, Yellow Violets on April 27, 2024| 15 Comments »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for stopping in.

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A Wildflower Walk

Posted in Birds, Buds, Flowers, Mosses & Liverworts, Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged Beautiful Spring Days, Beaver Stump, Bluets, Canada Goose Nesting, Canon SX40 HS, Childhood Places, Cinnamon Ferns, Coltsfoot Flower, Cypress Leaved Plait Moss, Dormant Buds, Eastern Tailed Blue Butterfly, Keene, Learning FRom Nature, Mid Spring Flowers, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, Olympus TG-6, Painted Turtles, Pennsylvania Sedge, Seeing Nature, Shadbush, Signs of Spring, Strawberry Blossoms, Swanzey New Hampshire, The Ashuelot River, Trout Lilies, Unknown Places, Violets, Watercress, Wood Anemone on May 13, 2023| 32 Comments »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Acceleration

Posted in Buds, Flowers, Nature, Other, Wildflowers, tagged Beautiful Spring Days, Bloodroot, Box Elder Flowers, Canon SX40 HS, Early Spring Flowers, Forsythia, Hellebore, Japanese Andromeda, Jupiter, Keene, Lilac Buds, Magnolia, Male Maple Flowers, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus TG-7, Plantain Leaved Sedge Flowers, Signs of Spring, Silver Maple Samaras, Spring Beauties, Striped Maple Buds, Striped Squill, Swanzey New Hampshire, Tibetan Cherry Blossom, Trout Lilies, Vinca, White Violet, Willow Flowers, Yellow Violet on April 22, 2023| 36 Comments »

All of the sudden we have bloodroot flowers. They’ve appeared five days earlier than last year and last year’s post said that was the earliest I had ever seen them. That’s what four days of above average heat can do; everything is accelerated. I had a feeling I should go and see if they were blooming and it’s a good thing I did because these flowers don’t last long. On this day I found what seemed to be a very formal grouping for what are entirely native plants.

The flowers were as beautiful as ever. Quite often you find that yellow pollen has spilled onto the white petals but I didn’t see any of that going on so I’m guessing these blossoms must have just opened. Capturing the faint veins in the petals is tricky. Both the light and the camera’s settings have to agree, but it’s worth the effort I think, to show them as they are. The name “bloodroot” comes from the bright red sap in the plant’s roots.

Though I saw only one trout lily blossom it was about 2 weeks earlier than I’ve seen them before. I noticed that it had a friend over, most likely for a meal of pollen. The big yellow anthers seen here can be yellow, orange, or dark maroon. Nobody seems to know why they are different colors on different plants but I’ve always suspected that they changed color from yellow to maroon as they aged.

My favorite part of a trout lily is the maroon coloring on the backs of three of the tepals. Another name, dog tooth violet, comes from the shape and color of its roots. It is said that a colony of these plants can be hundreds of years old.

The trout lilies grow near where the spring beauties live. In just a week these small flowers have gone from a smattering of blossoms to many thousands of flowers carpeting the forest floor. One day a few years ago the thought that all of creation must rejoice when a flower blooms came into my mind, probably when I was in this place, and I realized just this spring that the thought must have come from the pleasure I feel when I find flowers in bloom. I do rejoice, and my thoughts become elevated; free from all but the beauty of life. It’s easy to imagine songs of joy, love, and exaltation ringing throughout the forest when I see something so beautiful. Reverence and gratitude come easy, especially in spring.

Violets have appeared suddenly, in large numbers. I’ve always thought of this favorite of mine as just a white violet but I think it’s a variant of the common blue violet. Violets can be hard to identify and I’m no longer interested enough in knowing the names of things to spend hours (or days) trying to find one. These violets seem to be more common each year. The more, the merrier.

Yellow violets are also blooming. Though they’re said to prefer rich woods I think these I found growing in a local park are round leaved violets. The round leaves never completely unfurl until the flowers are out and that’s a characteristic of the round leaved violet. I found one or two plants a few years ago but now there are several in this group. I hope they keep expanding in number because yellow violets are on the rare side here.

Female willow flowers are blooming and they look very different from male flowers in just about every way. If you don’t know what a bud scale is, it is that dark object on the left at the base of the flower stalk, and not too long ago all of what you see here fit into it as a willow catkin.

Here are some male willow flowers for comparison. If you go just by color the difference between male and female bushes can be seen by quite far off. Male flowers are much brighter yellow.

I looked at the male flower buds on box elders one day and saw no signs of flowers and then just three days later there were flowers everywhere, and that’s the way spring is going so far. Box elders are in the maple family and are considered a soft maple. They are also considered weed trees because they come up everywhere. I pulled one up that was growing in the foundation of my grandmother’s house and carried it home to my father’s house when I was probably 8 years old or so. I dug a hole and planted it and last I knew that tree was still there, still shading that house.

Female box elder flowers consist of lime green, sticky pistils. They’re very pretty things but they don’t last long. It’s unusual to find the female flowers further along than the male flowers but this year everything is a little off track. Usually, the male flowers appear and then the leaves and female flowers will appear a week or so later. This year the male flowers haven’t even produced any pollen yet but the female flowers are ready to go.

The colorful buds of striped maples have grown quickly and I almost missed seeing their beautiful colors this year. For a short time, they’re one of the most colorful things in the forest and a tree full of them looks like a tree full of tiny colored lights.

Striped maple buds are a good example of why, when a bud or flower catches your eye in the spring, you should watch it every day because changes come quickly. In a day or two your beautifully colored bud might have become leaves. That’s what happened this year to the ones I was watching but luckily bud break is staggered so it doesn’t happen on all trees at once.

Last week I showed a plantain sedge about to bloom and this week they’re in full bloom. This is a flower that grows to about ankle level so most people walk right by them without seeing them, even though the woods are full of various sedges blooming at this time of year. The butter colored flowers at the top are male flowers and the wispy white bits lower down are the female flowers. They are wind pollinated and this is a good year for wind pollinated plants because we’ve had plenty of it.

The seeds (samaras) forming on the silver maples wear furry white coats for just a very short time before becoming a beautiful, vibrant red. I’d guess there must be many billions of seeds getting ready to let the wind take them to new places. They love to grow near rivers and wetlands.

Though many female trees have formed seeds the male maple flowers are still going off like fireworks in many of the trees. This staggered bloom time from tree to tree over a month or more is all about seeing to the continuation of the species. If we have a hard freeze not all of the flowers on all trees will die. It’s a plan that works well as long as we humans just let them be.

Lilacs really got ahead of me this year. It looks like they’ll bloom early.

Forsythias are blooming about a week early I think but from what I’ve seen most have just their lower flowers blooming. This is common with Forsythias because any buds that aren’t protected by snow will die off if it gets too cold. If we had two feet of snow depth you’ll see bushes everywhere you go with flowers blooming two feet off the ground and the rest of the bush with none at all. I have a feeling that the below zero cold we had in February must have done it but how this one in a local park and a few others I’ve seen escaped, I don’t know. It could be that evergreen tree cover protected them enough.

This magnificent magnolia lives at the same park as the Forsythia and it is also blooming about a week early.

The wrinkly flowers of Tibetan cherries have appeared about a week early. They always remind me of someone who didn’t have time to iron their clothes. Cherry blossoms are very susceptible to frost so I’m hoping we won’t see frost until next fall. This cherry is also called the paper bark cherry because of the way its bark peels as it ages, much like a birch. It is used as an ornamental tree as much for its bark as for its flowers.

Years ago, when this country was young and people had next to nothing, they would trade plants from neighbor to neighbor, and one of those plants was vinca, also called myrtle. I often find it flourishing out in the woods as the patch in this photo does, without any tending at all. It’s usually near old cellar holes along with lilacs, orange daylilies, and peonies, all still blooming away as if they received daily loving care. They are the toughest of garden plants, of the plant it and forget it type.

One of my favorite spring flowering bulbs is the little scilla size striped squill. It’s a very beautiful thing and I’m determined to find some and grow them here. I find this one blooming in a local park each spring.

Japanese andromeda is an early spring flowering shrub but I think even they are earlier than usual this year. I’ve always liked the way the porcelain white flowers hang from golden bracts. If someone could make a chandelier or lamp out of these shapes done in porcelain or alabaster and gold leaf I think it would be a beautiful thing.

Speaking of beautiful things, this hellebore grows in a friend’s garden. Though hellebores are called “Lenten rose” this one missed lent and Easter too. But it was worth the wait. I think its easily the most beautiful hellebore blossom I’ve seen.

Those who find beauty in all of nature will find themselves at one with the secrets of life itself. ~L.W. Gilbert

Thanks for coming by.

Note: While I know that this post is already too long something just fell into my lap that I think should be shared. If you haven’t seen the newest photos of Jupiter by NASAs Juno Spacecraft just scroll down for a few photos of something miraculous.

This is Jupiter, the largest planet in out solar system, seen like it has never been before. The black spot on the left is a moon shadow.

The detail and colors in these photos are amazing, especially when you consider that Jupiter is 552.94 million miles from earth and we would never see them otherwise. How I’d love to swoop down over the (ammonia) cloud tops and see this in person. It looks like something peeled from the mind of a deranged artist but it is all very real.

It’s just amazingly beautiful, in my opinion. If you think so too and would like to see more just Google “Juno spacecraft photos of Jupiter.” I think there are close to 40 photos in all. I hope you enjoyed seeing these few and I hope I this post hasn’t eaten up too much of your day.

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More Mid May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blueberry Blossom, Canon SX40 HS, Common Chickweed, Common Cinquefoil, Crab Spider, Creeping Phlox, Cypress Spurge, Dandelion, Foamflowers, Fringed Polygala, Gaywings, Hancock New Hampshire, Hawthorn Blossoms, Jack in the pulpit, Keene New Hampshire, Magnolia Blossoms, Mid May Flowers, Nature, Nature Study, Nodding Trillium, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Poets Daffodil, Purple Bearded Iris, Spring Flowers, Spring Hiking, Sring Plants, Swanzey New Hampshire, Trout Lilies, Violas, White Lilac, Winter Cress on May 19, 2021| 35 Comments »

The appearance of little fringed polygalas (Polygala paucifolia) tells me that it’s almost time to come out of the woods where the spring ephemerals bloom into the sunny meadows, where more summer wildflowers than you can count bloom. These little beauties will sometimes grow in a sunny clearing in the woods but more often than not I find them along the edges of the forest. They’re easy to pass off as “just another violet” at a glance so you’ve got to look closely. And there is no such thing as just another violet.

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 whirligig at the end of the tube is part of the third sepal, which is mostly hidden. When a heavy enough insect lands on the fringe the third sepal, called the keel, 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. They’re beautiful little things and it’s easy to see why some mistake the flowers for orchids. 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 might have notice a whitish blur under the flower in that last shot. It was a little crab spider that dropped off the flower when I started taking photos. As is often the case I didn’t see it until it saw me and started moving. Crab spiders can change their color to match the color of the flower they’re on but I’ve read that it can take days for them to change.

Hawthorns (Crataegus) have also just come into bloom. There are over 100 species of native and cultivated hawthorns in the U.S. and they can be hard to identify, so I don’t try. The flowers usually have large plum colored anthers but I think I took this photo before they had matured. Hawthorn has been used to treat heart disease since the 1st century and the leaves and flowers are still used for that purpose today. There are antioxidant flavonoids in the plant that may help dilate blood vessels, improve blood flow, and protect blood vessels from damage. Native Americans used the plant’s long sharp thorns for fish hooks and for sewing. The wood is very hard and was used for tools and weapons.

I like the buds on hawthorns as much as I do the flowers.

Cypress spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias) is blooming. This plant is also called cemetery weed because it’s often found in them. It was introduced from Europe in the mid-1800s as an ornamental. Of course, it immediately escaped the gardens of the day and is now seen in just about any vacant lot or other area with poor, dry soil. This plant forms explosive seed pods that can fling its seeds several feet. Here it grew by a stream, which was a bit of a surprise.

Shy little nodding trilliums (Trillium cernuum) are the second of out three trilliums to bloom. Red trilliums are about done and painted trilliums will come along soon. Nodding trillium flowers open beneath the leaves almost like a mayapple and they can be very hard to see, even when you’re standing right over them.

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. At barely 6 inches from the ground there isn’t a lot of room for a camera so I hold my camera in one hand and with the other I very gently bend back the stem until I can see the flower. It doesn’t hurt the plant at all; they snap right back up.

My favorite thing about the nodding trillium blossom is its six big purple stamens but you’ve got to be quick to see them. This flower’s swept back petals means it was just about done blooming and they have just started. Nodding trillium is the northernmost trillium in North America, reaching far into northern Canada and Newfoundland. It is also called whip-poor-will flower because it blooms when the whip-poor-wills return. And that’s true; a friend heard the first whip-poor-will on the same day he saw the first nodding trillium.

Many plants are showing an abundance of bloom this year like I’ve never seen and creeping phlox is one of them. If you’re a flower lover this is your year for most of them.

Blueberries are blooming so well this year I doubt there would have been room for any more blossoms on this bush. The bears will eat well. Both low and highbush varieties are loaded with flowers.

I don’t usually “do” small yellow flowers because I have found that you could devote your entire life to them and still not identify them all, but I think this one is a common cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex.) They’ve just opened this past week.

Dandelion is another plant that is having a fantastic year; I’ve never seen them bloom like this. My phone camera made these look like they had just come out of a flower shop.

My mother died before I was old enough to retain any memory of 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, as she was on this day when I was taking photos of them. Once the lilacs have passed the cabbage roses, heavy with wonderful scent, will start to bloom. She also planted those in the yard before she died, so in fragrance she is with me all summer long. Her gifts and her memory are carried on the breeze.

The first iris of the season was dark purple with yellow beards. I’m hoping for native blue flag irises soon. They usually come along around the first of June before garden irises bloom, so this one might be an early one.

Magnolias are still blooming. There was no wind but you’d never know it by looking at this flower. The wind was in the bud.

I’ve never seen so many violas in one place as there are in this bed on the grounds of the local college. I’d say they’re having a very good year.

As I’ve said here before two of my great loves are history and botany, and they come together in the poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus.) 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. Its scent is spicy and pleasing but it is said to be so powerfully fragrant that people can get sick from being in an enclosed room with it. It blooms later than other daffodils so I wait impatiently for it each spring. I’m guessing that it must be used to a Mediterranean climate since the antient Greeks knew it.

It’s already time to say goodbye to trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) even though it seems as if they just started blooming. They had a poor showing this year and I’m not sure if it was the early heat or the May cold or last summer’s drought, but hopefully they’ll be back to normal next year. I usually see many thousands of blossoms and this year I’m not even sure that I saw hundreds.

I think this is common chickweed (Stellaria media,) but chickweeds can be tricky. It was little; this blossom could easily hide behind a pea. I’ve read that chickweed is edible and is said to be far more nutritious than cultivated lettuce.

I believe that this is a plant in the mustard family called winter cress or yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris) but it is very easy to confuse with our native common field mustard (Brassica rapa or Brassica campestris.) If I’m right it is native to Africa, Asia and Europe and is found throughout the U.S. In some states it is considered a noxious weed. In the south it is called creasy greens. It is also known as scurvy grass due to its ability to prevent scurvy because of its high vitamin C content. Winter cress is about knee-high when it blooms in spring and stays green under the snow all winter. This habit is what gives it its common name.

Heart leaved foamflowers (Tiarella cordifolia) have just started blossoming near shaded streams and on damp hillsides. These cheery plants usually form large colonies and are quite common in this area. There are also many hybrids available and they are an excellent, maintenance free choice for shady gardens that get only morning sun.

Each foamflower stalk is made up of multiple tiny white flowers. The “foam” comes from their many anthers that make them look like they’re frothing. Or at least they did to the person who named them. They’re pretty little things by themselves but when you see large drifts of plants in the woods you don’t forget it right away.

I wasn’t sure if I’d see Jack in the pulpit blossoms (Arisaema triphyllum) this year. They seem a little late but here they are. In this shot the hood of the pulpit is pulled down over “Jack” and this is the way you will find them in the woods. They like sunny, damp, boggy places so when you get down to take photos you can expect wet knees.

Jack in the pulpit is in the arum family and has a spathe and a spadix much like another arum, skunk cabbage does. In this case the spathe is striped and beautiful on the inside as you can see if you gently lift the hood. And there is “Jack,” which is the spiky spadix. Though in this photo the spadix looks black it is actually plum purple in the right light. Later on in the fall it will be covered by bright red berries and if a deer doesn’t come along and eat them I’ll show them to you. Another name for this plant is tcika-tape, which translates to “bad sick” in certain Native American tribal language. But they didn’t get sick on the roots because they knew how to cook them to remove the calcium oxalate crystals that make them toxic. That leads to another common name: Indian turnip.

By the way, when I’m done taking photos of Jack I always gently fold his hood back down to leave him the way I found him.

My relationship to plants becomes closer and closer. They make me quiet; I like to be in their company. ~Peter Zumthor

Thanks for coming by.

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Looking For Trout Lilies

Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Things I've Seen, Wildflowers, tagged Apple Tree, Ashuelot River, Blueberry Blossom, Bracken Fern, Canada Mayflower, Canoeing the Ashuelot, Canon SX40 HS, Cinnamon Fern, Dandelions, Duckweed, Keene New Hampshire, Leatherleaf, Nature, Nature Study, Olympus Stylus TG-870, red maples, Spring Hiking, Spring Plants, Spring Wildflowers, Trout Lilies, Turtles in River, Willow on May 8, 2021| 28 Comments »

I haven’t been seeing many trout lilies blooming in the usual places that I find them so last Saturday I decided to take a walk along the Ashuelot River in Keene to a colony of a few hundred plants that grow there. It was a beautiful spring day but the river was quite high. The Thursday before we had an inch and a half of rain and that brought all the rivers and streams up.

I thought I might be in for a solitary stroll but by the time I got back I had seen a dozen or more people.

The water had covered the base of a leatherleaf shrub (Chamaedaphne calyculata) but it didn’t seem to mind. I think I can also see some sweet gale catkins (Myrica gale) mixed in, and that’s a surprise because I didn’t know it grew here. I see it up in Hancock 25 miles to the north east regularly but never here that I can remember.

Blueberry buds were just about ready to open. The river bank is lined with native bushes.

Dandelions bloomed happily along the trail.

Cinnamon fern fiddleheads (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) were still surprisingly a week or more behind their cousins the interrupted ferns (Osmundastrum claytoniana).

Canada mayflowers (Maianthemum canadense) are up and bent on taking over the world. Thought they’re a native plant they can be very invasive and are almost impossible to get out of a garden. If you try to pull the plant the leaf stem just beaks away from the root system and it lives on. This plant is sometimes called two leaved Solomon’s seal or false lily of the valley. The “May” part of the name refers to its flowering time. Native Americans used the plant to treat headache and sore throats.

Canada mayflower can form monocultures and I’ve seen large swaths of forest floor with nothing but Canada mayflowers, as the above photo shows.

The tiny flower buds were already showing on many of the plants. They’ll be followed by speckled red berries that birds and small animals love.

I saw a very hairy fiddlehead of a fern I can’t name but if I had to guess I’d say bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum).

Canoeists were paddling upstream, probably thinking about how easy returning downstream would be. There are lots of underwater hazards in this river, mostly fallen trees, so canoeists and kayakers wait until high water in spring to navigate the river.

I always wonder what is over on the other side of the river. It’s a sizeable piece of land and is posted no trespassing so maybe it will remain in its natural state.

In the backwaters where the current doesn’t interfere, duckweed grows. If the ducks aren’t eating it yet they will be soon.

I saw a dozen turtles sunning themselves on a log. I told a man and his wife I met on the trail about how I’ll often tell small children that I meet out here about the turtles they always seem to miss. I’ll ask them “did you see the turtles?” “No”, they’ll say, getting excited. “They’re right there on the log. See them?” Then a parent will lift them up and they’ll spot the turtles and squeal with delight and all the turtles will slide into the water with a plop. The man’s wife thought it was a hilarious story, apparently, but it has happened again and again in just that way. The delightful squeal of a child is not something a turtle can appreciate, so if you have a little one you might want to warn them to just squeal on the inside.

These two obviously weren’t speaking. They didn’t even want to see each other. I didn’t ask.

A willow was golden against the sky.

And an old apple tree bloomed off in the woods.

And the red maples were so very red. Even I can see their color, and that’s always a surprise.

And there were the trout lilies, in shade so deep they thought it was evening and so had all closed up. It was only just after noon but they know more about when their day is done than I do. At least I got to see some that were actually blooming. I still wonder what is going on with them, because they seem to be blooming much later these days.

They’re a flower pretty enough to seek out and admire, so my walk wasn’t wasted. Far from it.

The trout lilies grow right near the bridge, which is always my turning point because there is a highway up ahead.

I had the radio on in my car when I was driving here and the song that was playing when I arrived was Grazing In The Grass, by The Friends of Distinction. I remembered it as I walked back:

Flowers with colors for takin’
The sun beaming down between the leaves
And the birds dartin’ in and out of the trees
Everything here is so clear, you can see it
And everything here is so real, you can feel it
And it’s real, so real, so real, so real, so real, so real
Can you dig it?

I could, and I did.

Your deepest roots are in nature. No matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of life you lead, you remain irrevocably linked with the rest of creation. ~Charles Cook

Thanks for stopping in. Happy Mother’s day to all you moms out there!

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Late April / Early May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Apple Blossoms, Bleeding Heart, Blueberry Blossom, Bradford Pear, Canon SX40 HS, Crabapple, Downy Yellow Violet, Hobblebush Flowers, Keene New Hampshire, Nature, Nature Study, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Ornamental Cherry, Perennial Sweet Pea, Pin Cherry, Quince Blossoms, Redbud Flowers, Sessile Leaved Bellwort, Shadbush, Spring, Spring Flowers, Spring Hiking, Spring Plants, Strawberry, Swanzey New Hampshire, Trout Lilies, Violets, White Wood Violet, Wood Anemone on May 5, 2021| 21 Comments »

I’m opening this post with an old fashioned shrub that many of you may not know, even though it’s hard to mistake a Japanese quince (Chaenomeles japonica) for any other shrub. Its pinkish orange blooms appear on thorny branches long before its leaves. The plant is in the apple family and has edible fruit that is said to make excellent jelly. It is also the toughest shrub I know of. If you have a sunny spot where nothing will grow just plant a quince there and your problem will be solved. It is indestructible and 100% maintenance free, unless you feel the need to trim it. In the 1800s this plant was often called simply Japonica.

If you don’t like the orange pink color of the quince flowers in these photos there are also red, pink and white flowered cultivars.

I knew I was too far away from this shadbush to get a good shot but I’m showing it here so you can see how shadbushes grow naturally and so you can see the painterly quality that is sometimes found in photos. If I was still painting I’d be all over this because I think it shows the beauty of spring.

Here is a closer look at what was so impressionistically out of focus in the previous photo; the beautiful blossoms of the shadbush, named after the shad fish that once swam in our rivers in numbers so great they couldn’t be counted. And if you want names this one has many; shadblow, serviceberry, June berry, and Saskatoon among them. Its Sunday go to meeting name is Amelanchier canadensis, and there are many cultivars that have been developed for gardens. In nature it tends to be a bit tall, narrow and lanky and bends into the sun, so hybridizers have come up with smaller trees that are bushier and more compact. Native Americans made arrows from its wood and used its fruit for food, often in pemmican. Its fruit is said to taste better than even blueberries, and that’s high praise in New England.

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, which are very early. Choke cherries come along soon after.

The bell shaped dangling flowers of sessile leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia) are so humble and unassuming you could walk by a forest full of them and not know it. And that’s where they like to grow; on the forest floor. In botanical terms the word sessile describes how one part of a plant joins another. In sessile leaved bellwort the leaves are sessile against the stem, meaning they lie flat against the stem with no stalk, and you can see that in the photo. New plants, before the flowers appear, can resemble Solomon’s seal at a glance. Sessile leaved bellwort is in the lily of the valley family and is also called wild oats.

You’ll see one or two strawberry blossoms (Fragaria virginiana) each day for a week or so and then all of the sudden you’ll see them everywhere. I found this one along the shores of the river but I have a small sunny embankment in my yard that becomes covered with wild strawberry blossoms each year at this time. The soil there is very sandy and dry so I’m always surprised to see such large amounts of blossoms. The fruits are very tasty but also very small so it takes quite a bit of picking for even a handful. My daughter and son used to love them when they were small.

I saw the first highbush blueberry blossom (Vaccinium corymbosum) of the year. If all goes well and we don’t have a late frost we should have a good crop this year. Blueberries are said to be one of only three fruits native to North America. The other two are cranberries and concord grapes, but then I wonder about crabapples, which are also native fruits. 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.

Crabapples have just come into bloom and we have many, both cultivated and wild. This one grows in a field near an old abandoned factory. I like its deep color. 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.

Apple blossoms are one of those flowers that always make me think of my grandmother, because she loved them and I loved bringing them to her.

The hand size flower heads on hobblebushes (Viburnum lantanoides) were spaced evenly all along a branch. They’re blossoming beautifully this year and I’ve never seen so many; they grow alongside many of our roads and are easily seen. The large sterile flowers have opened but the tiny fertile flowers in the center are holding back. Moose and deer will eat the shrub right back to the ground, and ruffed grouse, brown thrasher, Swainson’s thrush, cedar waxwings, red-eyed vireos, and pine grosbeaks eat the berries. They are one of our most beautiful native shrubs; George Washington thought so highly of them he planted two at Mt. Vernon.

The flowers on two of the three eastern redbud (Cercis Canadensis) that I know of were killed by frost and that’s really too bad, but the hardiness of this tree can be questionable here unless trees started from northern grown seed are planted. Even though these trees were sheltered by buildings the cold still found them.

Common blue violets (Viola sororia) have just appeared and though I’m happy to see them I doubt many flower gardeners are. Though pretty, these little plants can over take a garden in no time at all if left to their own devices.

Violets are known for their prolific seed production. They have petal-less flowers called cleistogamous flowers which fling their seeds out of the 3 part seed capsules with force. They do this in summer when we think they aren’t blooming. Personally I tired of fighting them a long time ago and now I just enjoy them. They’re very pretty little things and their leaves and flowers are even edible. Though called “blue” they’re usually a shade of purple. We colorblind people don’t mind.

White violets seem shyer than the blue / purple ones. I see one white for every hundred purple. I think they are the white wood violet (Viola sororia albiflora.) Note how the blue lines in its throat guide an insect to where the prize is found.

I was surprised to find a small group of yellow violets blooming. I think this is only the third time I’ve seen yellow violets, and I think they must be on the rare side here. I think these were either the round leaved yellow violet (Viola rotundifolia) which likes to grow in rich woods. Or the downy yellow violet (Viola pubescens,) which likes the same conditions. Native Americans had many uses for violets. They made blue dye from them to dye their arrows with and also soaked corn seed in an infusion made from the roots before it was planted to keep insect pests from eating the seeds. The Inuktitut Eskimo people placed stems and flowers among their clothes to give them a sweet fragrance, and almost all tribes ate the leaves and flowers.

One of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen was a large field of dandelions and violets blooming together. Nature brings the two plants together naturally, as this small grouping reminded me the other day. In my opinion it’s the perfect combination.

Wood anemones (Anemone quinquefolia) have just started blooming but they are sun lovers so there’s a good chance they won’t be blooming much longer with the trees leafing out.

Wood anemone is very similar to false rue anemone (Enemion biternatum.) Rue anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides) which is also similar, also grows in New Hampshire, which complicates being able to identify these plants. While false rue anemone is native to the eastern U.S., the USDA and other sources say that it doesn’t grow in New England, so that leaves wood anemone and rue anemone. False rue anemone always has 5 white sepals, while wood anemone and true rue anemone can have more.

I first saw this very pretty little plant for the first time last year. It stands maybe a foot tall and the pretty flowers cover the plant. It is called the perennial sweet pea (Lathyrus vernus) and this example grows in a local park.

Bradford pear blossoms (Pyrus calleryana) have pretty plum colored anthers but that’s about all this tree has going for it. Originally from central Asia and the Middle East the tree was introduced by the USDA in 1966 as a near perfect ornamental urban landscape tree, loaded with pretty white blossoms in spring and shiny green leaves the rest of the time. But problems quickly became evident; the tree has weak wood and loses branches regularly, and birds love the tiny pears it produces, which means that it is quite invasive. In the wild it forms nearly impenetrable thickets and out competes native trees. And the pretty flowers? Their scent has been compared to everything from rotting fish to an open trash bin, so whatever you do don’t plant a Bradford pear.

I found an old ornamental cherry in bloom where I work. Since there are over one thousand varieties of cherry in the U.S. it’s doubtful that I’ll ever be able to tell you its name but its beauty was welcome on a cool spring day.

This bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) grows in a local park. It gets its common name from its pretty, heart shaped blossoms. Each blossom, if looked at from the right angle, appears to have a drop of “blood” dripping from it, and that’s where the name comes from.

A few trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) have finally come into bloom, quite later than usual. Their flowers remind me of small versions of Canada lilies because except for their leaves, that’s just what they look like. Another name for the plant is fawn lily, because the mottled leaves reminded someone of a whitetail deer fawn. Native Americans cooked their small bulbs or dried them for winter food. Black bears also love them and deer and moose eat the seed pods.

My favorite part of a trout lily blossom is its back, because of the very beautiful markings. Of course beauty as they say, is in the eye of the beholder, so why not just take a little time and behold?

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

Thanks for coming by.

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To Find New Things

Posted in Buds, Mosses & Liverworts, Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Things I've Seen, Wildflowers, tagged American Hazelnut Catkins, American Hazelnut Flowers, Apple Moss, Ashuelot River, Beech Bud, Bloodroot, Bloodroot Blossoms, box culvert, Canon SX40 HS, Cheshire Rail Trails, Cheshire Railroad, Forsythia, Keene New Hampshire, Muskrat, Nature, Nature Study, New Cherry Leaves, New maple Leaves, New Raspberry Leaves, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Shadbush, Spring Hiking, Spring Plants, Spring Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Tell Tales, Trailing Arbutus, Trout Lilies, Willow on April 24, 2021| 21 Comments »

John Burroughs said “To find new things, take the path you took yesterday,” and that was to prove very true last Sunday. I followed a rail trail in Swanzey that I’ve followed more times than I can count but saw many things that I’ve never seen here before.

Male American Hazelnut catkins swayed lazily in the slight breeze. They had lengthened to three times their winter length and were still heavy with pollen.

The tiny female flowers were waiting for a good dose of that pollen so they could become the hazelnuts that so many birds and animals eat.

There is a nice little box culvert out here that I always like to stop and see. There was quite a lot of water in the stream it carries safely under the railbed on this day. It’s amazing to think these culverts are still keeping railbeds from washing away 150 years after they were built, and without any real maintenance.

The stream rushes off to the Ashuelot River, which is out there in the distance.

The first thing I saw that I had never seen here were trout lily leaves (Erythronium americanum). I didn’t see any flowers but I found the leaves growing all along the trail, and I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t ever seen them.

You can get a glimpse of the Ashuelot River here and there along the trail. This was where I was to get another surprise. I saw something swimming quickly toward me from those fallen trees you see in this photo. I thought it was ducks but I couldn’t see anything except ripples.

And then up popped a muskrat. At least I’m fairly certain it was a muskrat. Though it never showed me its tail it was much smaller than a beaver and nowhere near as skittish. It saw me up on the embankment but still just sat and fed on what looked like grasses. It probably knew I was far enough away; this photo isn’t very good because my camera was at the limit of its zoom capability. At least you can see the critter, and that matters more to me than a technically perfect shot.

I knew that apple moss (Bartramia pomiformis) grew here and I was able to find it. Its reproduction begins in the late fall and immature spore capsules (sporophytes) appear by late winter. When the warm rains of spring arrive the straight, toothpick like sporophytes swell at their tips and form tiny globes that always look like pearls to me, but someone thought they looked like apples and the name stuck.

Beech buds (Fagus grandifolia) are beginning to lose their straightness and that means the beautiful new spring leaves will be appearing before long. Beech bud break begins when the normally straight buds start to curl, as in the above photo. The curling is caused by the cells on the sunny side of the bud growing faster than those on the shaded side. This creates a tension that curls the bud and eventually causes the bud scales to pull apart so the new leaves can emerge. The buds literally “break” and at the bud’s location on the tree branch an entire year’s new leaves and stems will often grow from a single bud.

New maple leaves were everywhere but every one I saw was green. That was unusual because young maple leaves are often red for a while.

Raspberry plants were also showing their new leaves but blackberry buds had barely broken.

I saw native cherries in all stages of growth. Cherries usually leaf out and blossom quite early.

Some of the willows along the trail had thrown in the towel and were finished for this year.

This is what the flower buds of a shadbush (Amelanchier canadensis) look like. After shadbushes come the cherries, closely followed by the crab apples and apples, and then the peaches and plums. Shadbushes bloom earlier than the other shrubs and trees but are often still in bloom when the others bloom. The flowers appear before the leaves, unlike apples and some native cherries. Small, reddish purple to purple, apple shaped fruits follow in June. The fruit is a berry similar in size to a blueberry and has from 5-10 seeds. They taste best when they are more purple than red. Shadbush flowers are pretty but their fragrance isn’t very appealing. I can’t remember ever seeing them bloom along this trail but there they were.

Forsythia has escaped someone’s garden and was blooming happily beside the trail. Another surprise.

Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) is also called mayflower because that’s often when its small white to pink, very fragrant flowers appear, but here they were blooming beside the trail. This is another plant I can’t remember ever seeing out here before. Trailing arbutus was once collected into near oblivion but these days it can be found at many nurseries so there is no longer any reason to dig it up. Since it’s very fussy unless it’s given the right amount of light, water, nutrients and soil type it won’t grow except where it chooses to anyway. The reason it was collected so much was because its small pink to white, very fragrant flowers were used in nosegays.

I reached the trestle and found that someone, most likely a snowmobile club, had overlaid the flooring, which was starting to rot out. This was a another welcome surprise because that little square that juts out to the right was a hole right through the boards. It’s quite a drop down to the river.

This trestle is the last one I know of with its tell tales still in place. These are pencil size pieces of soft wire that hang down low enough to hit the head of anyone standing on top of a freight car. They would warn the person, or “tell the tale” of an upcoming trestle. I can walk from the trestle to this one in under a minute, so whoever was on top of the train wouldn’t have had much time to duck before they’d hit the trestle, and that would have been too bad. Tell tales used to hang on each end of every trestle in the area, but this is the last one I know of.

The river has come up some since the recent snowfall and a few rain showers. I was surprised I didn’t see any kayakers. They like to paddle the river in spring when the water is high because in that way they can float over all the submerged fallen trees.

It still has to gain more run off before it reaches its average height, by the looks. We’re still in a drought according to the weather people.

I was surprised to find a small colony of bloodroot plants (Sanguinaria canadensis) as I was leaving. This is another plant I’ve never seen growing here, so this day was packed full of surprises.

Bloodroot flowers don’t usually open on cloudy days and I couldn’t tell if this one was opening or closing, but I was happy to get at least a glimpse of its beautiful inside. These flowers aren’t with us long.

In a forest of a hundred thousand trees no two leaves are identical, and no two journeys along the same path are alike. ~Paulo Coelho

Thanks for stopping in.

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Late April / Early May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Bleeding Heart, Canon SX40 HS, Keene, Leatherleaf, Native Plants, Native Wild Ginger, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Purple Dead Nettle, Sedge Flowers, Shadbush, Spring, Spring Beauties, Spring Flowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Trailing Arbutus, Trout Lilies, Violets, Wild Strawberry on May 6, 2020| 28 Comments »

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

I put a single leatherleaf blossom on a penny so you could get an idea of their size. A penny is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and a leatherleaf blossom is about half the size of a blueberry blossom.

Trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) have finally bloomed, about a week later than average but it seems longer. Each trout lily plant grows from a single bulb and can take from 7-10 years to produce flowers from seeds, so if you see a large colony of blooming trout lilies you know it has been there for a while. This colony has tens of thousands of plants in it and I’ve read that colonies of that size can be as much as 300 years old. To think that the first settlers of Keene could have very well admired these same plants, just as I do today.

These blossoms hadn’t been open long and you can tell that by the yellow male stamens in the center. As the blossoms age the 6 stamens quickly turn red and then brown and start shedding pollen. Three erect female stigma will catch any pollen an insect brings by. Nectar is produced at the base of the petals and sepals (tepals) as it is in all members of the lily family, and it attracts several kinds of bees. If pollination is successful a 3 part seed capsule will appear. The seeds are dispersed by ants, which eat the rich, fatty seed coat and leave the seeds behind to grow into bulbs.

I think my favorite part of a trout lily blossom is the back of the petals, which are tinted with maroon. They’re very pretty flowers no matter how you see them.

Spring beauties (Claytonia carolinana) must like the cool damp weather because most plants still have buds, even though they’ve been blooming for about a month. This photo shows the variations in color. There are plants that can take me out of myself and cause a shift in my perception of time so that I often have no idea how long I’ve been kneeling before them, and spring beauty is one of them. How could you not lose yourself in something so beautiful?

I’ve never seen trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) bloom like it is this year and as I visited this colony I wished my grandmother could have seen it. She called them Mayflowers and she always wanted to show them to me, but we could never find them. She loved their scent and so did Native Americans, who though this plant had divine origins.

Each trailing arbutus flower has a tiny yellow star in its center.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is a plant you have to watch closely if you want to see its flowers, because it can produce leaves and flowers in just days. Two days before these photos were taken these plants had no leaves opened.

You can see how wild ginger’s unusual brownish flower rests on the ground in this photo. This makes them difficult to get a good shot of. For this one I turned on my camera’s onboard LED light. Because they grow so close to the ground and bloom so early scientists thought that wild ginger flowers must be pollinated by flies or fungus gnats, but we now know that they self-pollinate. The flowers have no petals; they are made up of 3 triangular calyx lobes that are fused into a cup and curl backwards. Though flies do visit the flowers it is thought that they do so simply to get warm. The long rhizomes of wild ginger were used by Native Americans as a seasoning. It has similar aromatic properties as true ginger but the plant has been found to contain aristolochic acid, which is a carcinogenic compound that can cause kidney damage. Native Americans also used the plant medicinally for a large variety of ailments.

Wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) have just started blooming and if the pollinators do their job each flower will become a small but delicious strawberry. My kids used to love them, and they’d eat them by the handful. The full moon in the month of June was known to many Native American tribes as the “Strawberry Moon” because that was when most strawberries began to ripen. The berries were picked, dried and stored for winter use, or added to pemmican, soups, and breads. In the garden strawberries easily reproduce vegetatively by runners (stolons,) but the fruit was so plentiful in the wild that colonials in North America didn’t bother cultivating them until the early 1800s. The first documented botanical illustration of a strawberry plant appeared in 1454, so they’ve been with us a long time.

Spring, like fall, starts on the forest floor with the spring ephemeral flowers and then it moves to the understory before finally reaching the treetops. Now is the time for the understory trees and shrubs to start blooming and one of the earliest is the shadbush (Amelanchier canadensis.)

Naturalists and botanists have been arguing for years over the many native shadbush species and hybrids. The 5 white flower petals can appear quite different in each, but none of the several variations that I’ve seen have had blossoms bigger than a nickel. All of them seem to have multiple large stamens. Shadbushes bloom earlier than the other shrubs and trees but are often still in bloom when the others bloom. The flowers appear before the leaves, unlike apples and some native cherries. Small, reddish purple to purple, apple shaped fruits follow in June. The fruit is a berry similar in size to a blueberry and has from 5-10 seeds. They taste best when they are more purple than red. Shadbush flowers are pretty but their fragrance isn’t very appealing.

This is what the flower buds of a shadbush look like. After shadbushes come the cherries, closely followed by the crab apples and apples, and then the peaches and plums.

I’m finally seeing blue / purple violets, about two weeks after I saw the first white one.

The deep purple lines on violet petals guide insects into the flower’s throat while brushy bits above dust its back with pollen. Native Americans had many uses for violets. They made blue dye from them to dye their arrows with and also soaked corn seed in an infusion made from the roots before it was planted to keep insect pests from eating the seeds. The Inuktitut Eskimo people placed stems and flowers among their clothes to give them a sweet fragrance, and almost all tribes ate the leaves and flowers.

Lots of sedges are still blooming. The flowers stalks (culms) of plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea) are about 4 inches tall and have wispy, white female (pistillate) flowers below the butter yellow, terminal male (staminate) flowers.

I can’t think of anything much more delicate than female sedge flowers. They are living threads.

When you see these little black spearpoints sticking up out of what looks like grass you’ve found a sedge. Come back in a day or two and you’ll see flowers much like those in the previous two photos.

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.

I believe this cultivated purple dead nettle (Lamium maculatum) is called “Purple Dragon.” Whatever its name it is 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.

Dead nettle flowers always look like they have a chicken popping up out of them to me. They sort of resemble snapdragons but are in the mint family.

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

Thanks for stopping in. I hope everyone is staying safe and able to spend time outside.

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Early May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Bloodroot, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Early Spring Plants, Forsythia, Goldthread, Hobblebush, Japanese Andromeda, Keene, Leatherleaf, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Shadbush, Spring, Spring Beauties, Swanzey New Hampshire, Trout Lilies, Violets, Wild Ginger, Wild Strawberry, Wood Anemone on May 11, 2019| 33 Comments »

Our cool wet weather has held many flowers back from blooming but shadbushes are right on time. The plant is actually more tree than bush but they’ll start blooming when they’re quite small and at that size they do look like a bush. Shadbush is our earliest native white flowered tall shrub, blooming along the edges of woods just before or sometimes with the cherries. Another name for it is serviceberry, which is said to refer to church services. One story says that its blooming coincided with the return of circuit preachers to settlements after winter’s end and the resumption of church services. Another name, Juneberry, refers to when its fruit ripens.

Shadbush gets its common name from the shad fish. Shad live in the ocean and much like salmon return to freshwater rivers to spawn. Shad was a very important food source for Native Americans and for centuries they knew that the shad were running when the shadbush bloomed. In late June they harvested the very nutritious shad fruit, which was a favorite ingredient in pemmican, a mixture of dried meat, dried fruit, and animal fat.

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

If you have dandelions and violets in your lawn, there’s a good chance that you also have wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana.) If the pollinators do their job each of these flowers will become a small but delicious strawberry. My kids used to love them, and they’d eat them by the handful.

Violets are having a rough time this spring because it seems like every time they open their flowers it rains. I’ve had quite a time getting a photo of one fully opened.

I did find a white violet fully opened. Native Americans had many uses for violets. They made blue dye from them to dye their arrows with and also soaked corn seed in an infusion made from the roots before it was planted to keep insect pests from eating the seeds. The Inuktitut Eskimo people placed stems and flowers among their clothes to give them a sweet fragrance, and almost all tribes ate the leaves and flowers.

I’ve never seen Forsythias bloom like they are this year. The cool weather seems to be extending their bloom period. This one was in an old unused parking lot.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is a plant you have to watch closely if you want to see its flowers, because it can produce leaves and flowers in just days. You can see how its unusual brownish flower rests on the ground in this photo. This makes them difficult to get a good shot of.

For the first time ever I was early enough to see the round hairy buds of wild ginger. The bud splits into three parts to reveal the reproductive parts within.

Because they grow so close to the ground and bloom so early scientists thought that wild ginger flowers must be pollinated by flies or fungus gnats, but we now know that they self-pollinate. The flowers have no petals; they are made up of 3 triangular calyx lobes that are fused into a cup and curl backwards. Though flies do visit the flowers it is thought that they do so simply to get warm. Native Americans used wild ginger roots as a seasoning, much like we would ginger root, but science has shown that the plant contains carcinogenic compounds that can cause kidney damage.

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

Goldthread (Coptis groenlandicum) gets its common name from its bright yellow, thread like roots. It likes to grow in moist undisturbed soil in part shade. Native Americans used the plant to treat canker sores and told early settlers of its medicinal qualities, and this led to its being over collected into near oblivion. Luckily it has made a strong comeback and I see quite a bit of it. There’s a lot going on in a little goldthread flower. The white petal like sepals last only for a very short time before falling off. The actual petals of the flower are the tiny golden club like parts just above the white sepals. These are cup shaped and hold nectar for what must be very small insects, because the whole flower could hide behind an aspirin. My favorite parts are the yellow green, curved styles, which always remind me of tiny flamingos.

Wood anemone (Anemone quinquefolia) is very similar to false rue anemone (Enemion biternatum.) Rue anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides) which is also similar, also grows in New Hampshire, which complicates being able to identify these plants. While false rue anemone is native to the eastern U.S., the USDA and other sources say that it doesn’t grow in New England, so that leaves wood anemone and rue anemone. False rue anemone always has 5 white sepals, while wood anemone and true rue anemone can have more.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is another plant that has had a rough spring because of all the cloudy, cool days. It likes sunshine but hasn’t seen much, and I’ve had quite a time finding one that was both dry and open. They have a very short flowering period so I doubt I’ll see many more, but you never know.

The flower shape of blueberries must be highly successful because many plants, like this Japanese andromeda (Pieris japonica,) use the same basic shape. This evergreen shrub is usually planted among rhododendrons and azaleas here and as an ornamental is quite popular. Some call it the lily of the valley shrub, for obvious reasons. I like how the pearly white flowers look like tiny gold mounted fairy lights. In japan this shrub grows naturally in mountain thickets.

The small fertile flowers in the center of hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) flower heads haven’t opened yet but the larger, sterile flowers around the outer edges have. 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 a hobblebush cluster, both fertile and infertile, have 5 petals.

Trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) blossom by the thousands here so I thought I’d see how the new camera’s depth of field did. It wasn’t bad but it could have been better. In a forest with fallen logs and other obstacles it’s hard to get a very long shot. But the story isn’t about camera tricks, it’s about thousands of trout lilies that go on and on and not being able to show them properly. I’ll keep trying because I’d really like you to see what I see on this blog.

I’d guess that most people would find a flower like this one beautiful; or at least pretty. Multiply that by thousands and you have beauty that is close to indescribable.

Here is another try at depth of field, which did work but the flowers are so small you can hardly see them.

The tiny white flowers in the previous photo were of course spring beauties (Claytonia virginica,)and I fear we may have to say goodbye to these beautiful little things soon, but maybe the cool wet weather predicted for next week will keep them blooming a little longer. I hope all of you had a chance to see them, or at least something as beautiful.

Go out, go out I beg of you
And taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the earth
With all the wonder of a child.
~Edna Jaques

Thanks for stopping in.

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Early May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged American Fly Honeysuckle, Bloodroot, Canon SX40 HS, Early Spring Plants, Goldthread, Johnny Jump Up, Keene, Leatherleaf, Marsh Marigold, Myrtle, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Purple Trillium, Spring, Spring Beauties, Swanzey New Hampshire, Trailing Arbutus, Trout Lilies, Vinca, Wild Ginger, Wild Strawberry, Wood Anemone on May 9, 2018| 46 Comments »

Anemones have now joined trout lilies, spring beauties, and coltsfoot in carpeting the forest floor and they’re putting on a beautiful display this year. I’m looking at the abundance of blooms as nature balancing out what was a long cold winter.

Wood anemones (Anemone quinquefolia) seem to close whenever they feel like it but especially on cloudy days, so I was lucky to find them open. This native plant is said to be closely related to the European wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa.) Because they tremble in a breeze they have also been called windflowers. Not only do the flowers pass quickly but so do the plants. There will be no sign of them by midsummer. Though these plants are in the buttercup family and are toxic Native Americans made an anemone infused tea to relieve many different ailments, including lung congestion and eye disorders.

I thought the trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) were a little late this year so I looked back to when I found them blooming last year. Last year they bloomed on April 23rd, so they are indeed a little late.

These blossoms hadn’t been open long and you can tell that by the yellow male stamens in the center. As the blossoms age the 6 stamens quickly turn red and then brown and start shedding pollen. Three erect female stigma will catch any pollen an insect brings by. Nectar is produced at the base of the petals and sepals (tepals) as it is in all members of the lily family, and it attracts several kinds of bees. If pollination is successful a 3 part seed capsule will appear. The seeds are dispersed by ants, which eat the rich, fatty seed coat and leave the seeds behind to grow into bulbs.

Each trout lily plant grows from a single bulb and can take from 7-10 years to produce flowers from seeds, so if you see a large colony of blooming trout lilies you know it has been there for a while. This colony has tens of thousands of plants in it and I’ve read that colonies of that size can be as much as 300 years old. The first settlers of Keene could have very well admired these same plants, just as I do today.

A reader wrote in to say that she had spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) in her lawn and they were mowed once they were done flowering. I had never seen them in a lawn until I saw these on this day. I hope whoever mows the lawn will wait for them to finish blooming. I couldn’t mow down something so beautiful.

Goldthread usually waits until other spring ephemerals have finished before its flowers appear above the evergreen leaves but the weather has a few plants confused this spring. Goldthread (Coptis groenlandicum) gets its common name from its bright yellow, thread like roots. It likes to grow in moist undisturbed soil in part shade. Native Americans used the plant to treat canker sores and told early settlers of its medicinal qualities, and this led to its being over collected into near oblivion. At one time more goldthread, then called “canker root,” was sold in Boston than any other native plant. Luckily it has made a strong comeback. I see quite a bit of it.

There’s a lot going on in a little goldthread flower. The white petal like sepals last only for a very short time before falling off. The actual petals of the flower are the tiny golden club like parts just above the white sepals. These are cup shaped and hold nectar for what must be very small insects, because the whole flower could hide behind an aspirin. My favorite parts are the yellow green, curved styles, which always remind me of tiny flamingos.

Vinca (Vinca minor) is an invasive plant from Europe, but it was brought over so long ago that many people think it’s a native. In the 1800s it was given by one neighbor to another along with lilacs and peonies and I’ve found all three still blooming beautifully around old cellar holes out in the middle of nowhere. The word vinca means “to bind” in Latin, and that’s what the plant’s wiry stems do. They grow quickly into an impenetrable wiry mat that other plants can’t grow through and I’ve seen large areas of nothing but vinca in the woods. Still, it is nowhere near as aggressive as many other invasive plants and people enjoy seeing its beautiful violet flowers in spring. Another name for it is Myrtle.

Wild ginger is a plant you have to watch closely if you want to see its flowers, because it can produce leaves and flowers in just days. In fact, everything seen in this photo appeared in 3 days from what was a mass of roots (rhizomes) under last year’s leaves.

Because they grow so close to the ground and bloom so early scientists thought that wild ginger flowers must be pollinated by flies or fungus gnats, but we now know that they self-pollinate. The flowers have no petals; they are made up of 3 triangular calyx lobes that are fused into a cup and curl backwards. Though flies do visit the flowers it is thought that they do so simply to get warm. Native Americans used wild ginger roots as a seasoning, much like we would ginger, but science has shown that the plant contains carcinogenic compounds that can cause kidney damage.

The full moon in the month of June was known to Native Americans as the strawberry moon because that was when most strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) began to ripen. The small but delicious berries were picked, dried and stored for winter use, or added to soups, pemmican and breads. Strawberries were so plentiful that early settlers didn’t even think of cultivating them until the early 1800s. They grow thickly in my yard and my kids used to love looking for and eating the small, sweet berries.

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

Little Johnny jump ups (Viola tricolor) have done just that. This wild form of the modern pansy has been known and loved for a very long time. It is said to have 60 names in English and 200 more in other languages. In medieval times it was called heart’s ease and was used in love potions. Stranger names include “three faces in a hood.” Whatever it’s called I like seeing it appear at the edge of my lawn in spring. I always try to encourage it by letting it go to seed but it never seems to spread.

Like other spring ephemeral flowers bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) isn’t with us long but luckily colonies in different places bloom at different times, and in that way their bloom time can be extended. Still, with the summer heat coming on so early I’m guessing that it’s probably time to say goodbye to this little beauty for another year.

But just as it becomes time to say goodbye to one spring blossom it becomes time to say hello to another, and trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) has just come into bloom. These small but fragrant flowers were once over collected for nosegays and when I was a boy they were very hard to find, but now I know of several large colonies so they seem to be making a comeback. They are protected in some states as well, and this helps. People need to understand that the plants are closely associated with fungi in the soil and unless the fungi are present these plants will not live, so digging them up to put in gardens is a waste of time.

I didn’t notice at the time but a tiny piece of lichen had fallen on the blossom over on the left. Native Americans used trailing arbutus medicinally and it was considered so valuable it was thought to have divine origins. Its scent is certainly heavenly and my grandmother loved it very much. I spent many hours as a boy trying to find the flowers for her but back then they were almost impossible to find. Thankfully that has changed.

One of the most unusual flowers to bloom in spring, and one that few people see, is the fly honeysuckle (Lonicera canadensis.) It’s unusual because its flowers are joined in pairs and if pollinated they become small, red orange, oval, pointed end berries that are also joined in pairs. The flowers form on branch ends of small shrubs and many songbirds love the berries, so it would be a great addition to a wildlife garden. Look for the flowers at the end of April on the shaded edges of woods.

So far all of the flowers we’ve seen are relatively small, but not purple trillium (Trillium erectum.) These flowers are often an inch and a half or more across and very visible because of their color. Trilliums are all about the number three, with three red petals and three green sepals. In fact the name trillium comes from the Latin tres, which means three. The three leaves are actually bracts which the flowers nod under for a short time before finally facing outward. Inside the flowers are six stamens and three stigmas, and if pollinated they will become a red, three chambered berry. This is one of our showiest spring wildflowers.

Imagine my surprise when, while driving down a road that I had driven thousands of times, I saw something out of the corner of my eye that I had never seen. I’ve searched for marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) for many years and have never found a single one but on this day there it was, growing in a roadside ditch. I pulled over, threw the car in reverse, and jumped out to see if I could believe my eyes. It grew in water so I couldn’t get close enough for a close up of the flowers but there is no doubt that it was a marsh marigold. How or when it got there is anyone’s guess, but they are rare here in my experience and I was very happy to finally see one. I can now cross it off my still very long list of plants I hope to see one day.

Flowers construct the most charming geometries: circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed with the eye of a magnifying glass seem a Lilliputian frieze of psychedelic silhouettes. ~Duane Michaels

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Late April / Early May Flowers

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Late April / Early May Flowers

I put a single leatherleaf blossom on a penny so you could get an idea of their size. A penny is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and a leatherleaf blossom is about half the size of a blueberry blossom.

I think my favorite part of a trout lily blossom is the back of the petals, which are tinted with maroon. They’re very pretty flowers no matter how you see them.

Each trailing arbutus flower has a tiny yellow star in its center.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is a plant you have to watch closely if you want to see its flowers, because it can produce leaves and flowers in just days. Two days before these photos were taken these plants had no leaves opened.

Spring, like fall, starts on the forest floor with the spring ephemeral flowers and then it moves to the understory before finally reaching the treetops. Now is the time for the understory trees and shrubs to start blooming and one of the earliest is the shadbush (Amelanchier canadensis.)

This is what the flower buds of a shadbush look like. After shadbushes come the cherries, closely followed by the crab apples and apples, and then the peaches and plums.

I’m finally seeing blue / purple violets, about two weeks after I saw the first white one.

Lots of sedges are still blooming. The flowers stalks (culms) of plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea) are about 4 inches tall and have wispy, white female (pistillate) flowers below the butter yellow, terminal male (staminate) flowers.

I can’t think of anything much more delicate than female sedge flowers. They are living threads.

When you see these little black spearpoints sticking up out of what looks like grass you’ve found a sedge. Come back in a day or two and you’ll see flowers much like those in the previous two photos.

Dead nettle flowers always look like they have a chicken popping up out of them to me. They sort of resemble snapdragons but are in the mint family.

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

Thanks for stopping in. I hope everyone is staying safe and able to spend time outside.

Early May Flowers

If you have dandelions and violets in your lawn, there’s a good chance that you also have wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana.) If the pollinators do their job each of these flowers will become a small but delicious strawberry. My kids used to love them, and they’d eat them by the handful.

Violets are having a rough time this spring because it seems like every time they open their flowers it rains. I’ve had quite a time getting a photo of one fully opened.

I’ve never seen Forsythias bloom like they are this year. The cool weather seems to be extending their bloom period. This one was in an old unused parking lot.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is a plant you have to watch closely if you want to see its flowers, because it can produce leaves and flowers in just days. You can see how its unusual brownish flower rests on the ground in this photo. This makes them difficult to get a good shot of.

For the first time ever I was early enough to see the round hairy buds of wild ginger. The bud splits into three parts to reveal the reproductive parts within.

I’d guess that most people would find a flower like this one beautiful; or at least pretty. Multiply that by thousands and you have beauty that is close to indescribable.

Here is another try at depth of field, which did work but the flowers are so small you can hardly see them.

Go out, go out I beg of you
And taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the earth
With all the wonder of a child.
~Edna Jaques

Thanks for stopping in.

Early May Flowers

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Posts Tagged ‘Trout Lilies’

I put a single leatherleaf blossom on a penny so you could get an idea of their size. A penny is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and a leatherleaf blossom is about half the size of a blueberry blossom.

I think my favorite part of a trout lily blossom is the back of the petals, which are tinted with maroon. They’re very pretty flowers no matter how you see them.

Each trailing arbutus flower has a tiny yellow star in its center.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is a plant you have to watch closely if you want to see its flowers, because it can produce leaves and flowers in just days. Two days before these photos were taken these plants had no leaves opened.

Spring, like fall, starts on the forest floor with the spring ephemeral flowers and then it moves to the understory before finally reaching the treetops. Now is the time for the understory trees and shrubs to start blooming and one of the earliest is the shadbush (Amelanchier canadensis.)

This is what the flower buds of a shadbush look like. After shadbushes come the cherries, closely followed by the crab apples and apples, and then the peaches and plums.

I’m finally seeing blue / purple violets, about two weeks after I saw the first white one.

Lots of sedges are still blooming. The flowers stalks (culms) of plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea) are about 4 inches tall and have wispy, white female (pistillate) flowers below the butter yellow, terminal male (staminate) flowers.

I can’t think of anything much more delicate than female sedge flowers. They are living threads.

When you see these little black spearpoints sticking up out of what looks like grass you’ve found a sedge. Come back in a day or two and you’ll see flowers much like those in the previous two photos.

Dead nettle flowers always look like they have a chicken popping up out of them to me. They sort of resemble snapdragons but are in the mint family.

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

Thanks for stopping in. I hope everyone is staying safe and able to spend time outside.

If you have dandelions and violets in your lawn, there’s a good chance that you also have wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana.) If the pollinators do their job each of these flowers will become a small but delicious strawberry. My kids used to love them, and they’d eat them by the handful.

Violets are having a rough time this spring because it seems like every time they open their flowers it rains. I’ve had quite a time getting a photo of one fully opened.

I’ve never seen Forsythias bloom like they are this year. The cool weather seems to be extending their bloom period. This one was in an old unused parking lot.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) is a plant you have to watch closely if you want to see its flowers, because it can produce leaves and flowers in just days. You can see how its unusual brownish flower rests on the ground in this photo. This makes them difficult to get a good shot of.

For the first time ever I was early enough to see the round hairy buds of wild ginger. The bud splits into three parts to reveal the reproductive parts within.

I’d guess that most people would find a flower like this one beautiful; or at least pretty. Multiply that by thousands and you have beauty that is close to indescribable.

Here is another try at depth of field, which did work but the flowers are so small you can hardly see them.

Go out, go out I beg of you And taste the beauty of the wild. Behold the miracle of the earth With all the wonder of a child. ~Edna Jaques

Thanks for stopping in.

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Go out, go out I beg of you
And taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the earth
With all the wonder of a child.
~Edna Jaques