Into the Woods We Go

When the sun came out on March 22, we knew what we had to do. We had to go look for hepatica. 

I have a couple of places. One, I found just last spring. It rocks so hard, and it's about 7 minutes from my house. 

I called Shila and told her to come out. We'd take our own cars and stay a ways apart, but we'd get to experience the woods together. 

First thing Liam found was some good coon prints. OK, so they're out and about. Batten down the bird feeders. 

Impudent hickory (or buckeye) buds were everywhere.

So was hepatica. It likes cold, north-facing slopes, so it wasn't getting much sun at all, and we had trouble finding any that were open. But I love this shot, with the golden sun and PawPaw Creek shining green behind the nodding flowers. They come in white, pale pink, pale lilac, and deep blue. All the same species (round-lobed hepatica).  My hepatica Grail is a deep blue individual. I think it's a bit early to find one. I will be back, and I will find one.

I saw a little bunch of likely looking leaves high up the slope and started climbing (well, crawling) toward it. 

There were wee buds on it. I couldn't decide if they were going to be Dutchman's britches or squirrel corn.

I got a nice slice of blue sky and more rocky slope in this shot. 

And then I climbed higher yet, where I found one--ONE!! gorgeous specimen of Dutchman's britches in full, unequivocal bloom. The leaves were identical, and the yellow cast on the buds confirmed the ID. It is devilishly hard to photograph these little ephemerals, because the camera wants to focus on everything BUT the blossom. 

Unbeknownst to me, Shila grabbed this shot with her 400 mm telephoto (because we were maintaining quite a respectful distance between each other).

I am grimacing because it's HARD to keep yourself more or less upright on a 45 degree slope with an 8 pound camera hanging off you, and slippery mud and exactly the WRONG boots with no tread because you thought it would be really muddy, and you can't see jack on your phone display because the sun is so bright, so you just grit your teeth and shoot away and hope. Then you throw 9 out of ten photos away. But you love every single minute of it!

After that, everyone had to climb up to find the perfect little britches too. I figure it was out when none of the others were, because it had this huge sandstone boulder to reflect heat and light on it.

The sun has been such a rare commodity this winter and spring that I look at these photos and marvel that it was ever this bright and beautiful--and that was only two days ago. 

One of the cool things about spring ephemerals is that most of them don't open unless there's warm sun. So it HAS to be beautiful out if you're going to go looking for them. It naturally follows that you're going to have a wonderful time.  These are spring beauties, lined in pink. Their bulbs can persist for hundreds of years deep in the soil. 

Just look at these little things! So dainty, but so persistant.

Speaking of persistant, here's a hackberry tree Liam found. Someone had tried to chop it down, and then tried to burn it. The tree responded by discarding the wounded trunk and making a new sort of bark skin over it. It looked perfectly healthy.

We clambered back down the slope and the kids stopped to gaze into PawPaw Creek. This is the spot where Liam found his "Flosaraphtor" (velociraptor) claw so many years ago.  If you want to time travel, you should probably read this one first. 

In a bit of perfect irony, the kids found a mystery for their mom, the Science Chimp. 

Who was utterly amazed that a tiny hominid had been walking in fresh mud on a cool spring day....must have been Homo habilis, or Lucy!
No knuckle prints, so it was truly bipedal...
I'm schtumped!!

Traffic was so sparse they just flopped down in the sun. That's my kind of country road. In case you're wondering, we did not bring Curtis because he had been out on a huge multi-hour hunt, and he's kind of a pain to keep on a lead when I'm scrambling on all fours up 45 degree slopes.

Phoebe gettin' down with the spring beauties.

Ah, it was so sweet to be out with my kids and our friend, in the burgeoning woods of March.

Museum of Diversity: Ohio Wildflowers

I hadn’t seen a woodland full of bluebells since 1991. I remember the year because Bill and I were courting, and he took me to a place in northern Virginia that was knee-high in them. The sun was piercing and warm; the flowers were dazzling, and I had trouble walking in line, as I was so busy kneeling and oohing and aahing. I was taken away by the splendor of it all. I’ve always wanted to see bluebells like that again.

So when I got a line from my friend The Buckeye Botanist on a big bunch of bluebells along the Athens-Nelsonville rail-to-trail bikepath, I decided to chase it down. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Dan, the proprietor of Fullbrooks Café on the square in Nelsonville, Ohio, was the source of exact information on how to find them. I walked into the little café, hungry; Dan took note of my camera and binoculars and we struck up a conversation. I told him what I was looking for, and he told me where to go to find it. Then he made me a fantastic, fresh and delicious sandwich. I shall return!!

The bluebell preserve would be about a mile and a half’s walk from the parking area, but it was like walking through a fabulous movie about richness and diversity.

The first thing I saw was Trillium grandiflorum. This is a plant that grows bigger and more magnificent the more nutrients it gets, and these slopes are rich. Enormous white blossoms fluttered in the breeze, as far as my eye could follow up the slope and forward down the bike path. Where they are, they are, and where they aren’t, they aren’t. And they mostly aren’t any more, because people are so greedy for timber, and won’t leave the forests undisturbed. You can’t take bulldozers to a woodland, fell trees and drag logs, and expect these lovely things to survive it.

When the white trillium finally thinned out, the spotted wakerobin Trillium maculatum started. There’s something so pleasing about trilliums, how everything is in threes—leaves, petals, even stamens. Sometimes even the plants themselves. 

Some spotted wakerobin aren't spotted.

Some are, sorta. 

And some knock your socks off with pure leopard power. If you haven't picked up on it, part of the joy of spring ephemerals, at least for me, is seeking out their vast and surprising genetic variation, weaving between the differing leaf and blossom colors, leaf forms, sizes and growing conditions to recognize the common thread that identifies each one. 

It’s hard to believe, only two weeks later, that these flowers are all but done, but that is the life of a spring ephemeral wildflower. On this day, April 10, I felt I was hitting it just right, there for the show at its peak. Hepatica and trout lilies were still out even as the trillium burst into snow-white splendor.  

Hepatica acutiloba, in shimmering pink.

And the same beauty,  but here in breathtaking blue.

How to tell what they are? Just look at the old winter leaves. Sharp point on the tip? Acutiloba.

I was alone, but I felt my father there, looking at it all with me. He was in the trout lilies and the wind that moved them. And oh, there were so many trout lilies! I'd never seen so many in bloom. Rich, rich soil here.

 I have to think that this is one of the most spectacular wildflower blooms ever. The weather’s been kind; there have been no hard freezes since things got going. There’s been enough rain, and it has been warm, but not unnaturally pumped up into the 90’s like 2016’s crazy April. The nights have been cool, and everything’s perked along a bit ahead of schedule, without perturbations.

Who has seen blue rue anemone Anemone thallictroides? I have. (It's almost always white.)

Core’s chickweed put on a spectacular show with Dutchman’s breeches.

When he bade me good-bye, Dan from Fullbrooks, who has also worked as  a woodland guide, told me he’d see me along the trail. And he came biking along a few hours later! I was so happy to see my new friend here amidst the wildflowers he loves so much. Biking to work every day has its perks; Dan has his finger on the pulse of spring and floral diversity.

It was that kind of day. The world opened its arms to me, people were kind to me and I was happy for a time, knowing that my father was with me and, despite all the sadness and anger and hideous things happening in the world, that here on this striped and dappled path the flowers were safe, still opening and blooming so beautifully, keeping pace with a schedule all their own.

Wild ginger Asarum canadense

Buckeye, opening

Cardamine diphyllum, two-leaved toothwort

Blue cohosh, Caulophyllum thalictroides

Cut-leaved toothwort Cardamine concatenata

A trillium/shelf-fungal tableau

Wildflowers, marching down the slope, pooling at the rich bottom

More sharp-lobed hepatica

Large-flowered bellwort Uvularia grandiflora

And I hadn't even reached the bluebells yet! Enjoying the journey, as ever. 

The journey = the destination

Honoring DOD: Spring Ephemerals Day

It always amazes me how many of my friends remember the day in 1994 the world lost the wise, wry light that was my Dear Old Dad (DOD, as he signed his typewritten letters).

With my newfound certainty that I'm accompanied in this life, I was delighted to find the weather report for April 10 was, in a word, ravishing. High of 79, abundant sunshine. Just the thing to make the spring ephemeral wildflowers pop out. I'll take it. 

So I decided to spend the day with DOD, doing all the things he and I loved doing. Mind you, he'd have been looking for bits of iron, wheels and crankshafts and the like in the weeds while I was looking at flowers, but still. We were going out into the country!

I hied myself first to Zaleski, Ohio, on the edge of the Hocking Hills region, where I'd gathered via some Facebook posts that there were flars to be seen. It was a drive of an hour and a half. Perfect for reflection and sightseeing.

The first thing that met my eye was a very large abandoned building that may have been an industrial mill. DOD could have told me. He also could have told me what the belt-driven machine overgrown by weeds might have been. I listened hard, but all I heard was moans. And the soft moaning issuing from its brickchinks told me this old mill was inhabited. 

Please click on the photo to see the amazing orange orbs on this rock pigeon.

He kept a watchful eye on the sky. Broad-winged hawks were just arriving, their thin whistles floating down from the warm sky. What a thing to hear!!

I love you so much, I believe I'll just sit on you.  Keep you safe. Hope that's OK.

My favorite shot. An accident, like most of my favorite shots. Some people don't understand why I love pigeons so much. It's because they don't understand pigeons. 

And it was on to the flars and the butterflies that love them! A fresh cabbage white nectaring on blue phlox has a lovely yellow wash.

Juvenal's Duskywing was to be expected on this hot sunny day.

Sleepy duskywing, on the other hand, was unexpected! I only added this one to our property list in 2004 (it was #67 for the property.) 

I thrilled to the first snowberry clearwing, one of the well-named hummingbird moths. Wild blue phlox Phlox divaricata must have some nice spicy nectar. Smells like a carnation, unsurprisingly, both being in the Caryophyllaceae, or Pink family.

Bloodroot Sanguinaria canadense  was, to my delight, still in full bloom. It's notorious for shedding its petals a few days after pollination. I just learned that if bloodroot comes out too early and pollinators fail to show up, its stamens will lengthen, bend over, and touch the pistil, in an impressive act of self-pollination! Thank you Andrew Lane Gibson! (The Buckeye Botanist on Instagram)

I chose a plant with several leaves so I could pick one to show y'all why it's called bloodroot. It's in the poppy family (Papaveraceae), most of which have lovely colored sap.

Here's your moment of Zen. What it's like to be out in the spring woods. No leaves yet, and the ephemerals exploit that narrow window of full sun for a couple of weeks to do their rush-rush blooming and growing!


Please pardon weird crackly leaf noises. Can't avoid it when shooting at ground level with iPhone6. They're right by the microphone. 

 Bluets. Innocence. Quaker ladies. By any name, Houstonia caerulea is an absolute charmer. I will never forget seeing a guy who lives on our road weedwhacking the drifts of bluets that come up on a bare steep bank in front of his house every spring. Because he couldn't get the mower there.
He also weedwhacked the white trillium until it gave up. And then he planted variegated hostas in its place. What a guy. What an ultramaroon. I probably should have said something, but where to start with a person who destroys Innocence on purpose?

A stunning composite with an unfortunate name, golden ragwort Senecio obovatus sounds like it should make you sneeze. Of course it doesn't. It's early and lovely.

I don't ignore the vetches. This is wood vetch, Vicia caroliniana. 

Cuckoopint! or swamp blue violet, Viola cucullata.  I was gobsmacked by the color variation in this species, from a brilliant rose-pink the likes of which I'd never seen in a violet, to that smashing true royal purple with a streak of delphinium blue in its hair.  If you click on this photo you may be able to see the fat white hairs in its throat, which differentiate it from other species.  Violets can be tricky.

Bloodroot, throwing a beautiful shadow. 

The first blooms from wild geranium or cranesbill, Geranium maculatum. Soon there will be gobs of it! But for now, its spectral rose pink lights up the forest.

Typical Dutchman's breeches Dicentra cucullaria

Some breeches for a very fat Dutchman.  I wondered if perhaps this could be a hybrid between Dutchman's breeches and squirrel corn Dicentra canadensis? Both Dicentra species. Probably not, but fun to consider.

The only yellow violet I found. Perhaps smooth yellow violet (Viola pensylvanica?)

With some hubris, I announced as I climbed this moist rich slope that I intended to find a dark blue hepatica. There was really no reason to grant my intention, but Fate intervened. I fell to my knees on viewing this round-lobed hepatica Hepatica americana with its leaves wholly obscured by a Christmas fern Polystichum acrostichoides.

What a blue!! Such a thrill for me. I was afraid the hepatica would all be done by now; it's among the first of the ephemerals to bloom, along with bloodroot.

Late to the party: This Mayapple  Podophyllum peltatum, just unfurling its little bumbershoot. Star chickweed behind it. 

I gazed up at the steep slope above me. It proceeded in a series of slumps, which told me that long ago, it was cleared for pasture, like most of Ohio. Erosion would take the soil downhill in slumps and tables. But clearly this mature forest had been here long enough to build up some lovely humus. And the richness gets richer the lower down the slope you look. There are far more and diverse populations of plants on the lower reaches than the upper ones, simply because the nutrients they need flow downhill. These spring ephemerals demand almost impossibly rich soil to do their thing in such a short window of time, while the forest is still leafless. And they get it, if we leave the forest alone. I don't see wildflower shows like this around where I live. People are too greedy, and have been for far too many years. They cut the forest before it's even a quarter of the way to mature: disturbing the soil, taking away nutrients, stamping out the ephemerals. 

Trout lily Erythronium americanum. It can take a decade or more for an individual plant to build up the nutrients and produce the number of leaves it needs to make enough food to bloom! You don't get trout lilies in disturbed forest. Needless to say, picking a trout lily is contraindicated.

It's all happening now. Right now, at least in southern Ohio. Wherever you are, get out there! This show of spring wildflowers lasts only a week or two, and it's gone until next spring. Hence the name "ephemeral!" If you don't know where to go, try searching for a Facebook wildflower group for your state. Ask a native plant gardener. Call your agricultural extension service. Look up your state Dept. of Natural Resources botanist. Then pick a day and go!