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!

            

The Mighty Mighty Bluet

There is great power in a tiny flower. The common bluet, Houstonia caerulea, triumphs over drought, frost, neglect and active persecution. It's a member of the Rubiaceae, a very cool family that includes partridgeberry (Mitchella repens), quinine (Cinchona), gardenia (!) and coffee (!!) Oh my!
How all those plants fit in one family beats me--tiny wildflowers and economically important shrubs that dictate land use all over Latin America.

There is a barren hillside on Rte. 821 not far from our house that blooms in early spring with blue. Misty blue, running down like water.

It's barren because the man who lives in the house above it takes a weedwhacker to the wildflowers that try to grow there. He has weedwhacked the Trillium grandiflorum and Solomon's seal into extinction. I see him, balancing on the rocks, whacking away, and I want so badly to stop and talk to him, but I don't. I think it wouldn't go so well.  Besides, I find it interesting that someone would object to bluets. I'd rather watch than intervene, because the bluets are winning.

He prefers daffodils and variegated hostas, his close-mown lawn, to bluets. These rocky steep dry  ledges are no doubt his despair. He can't get the grass to take on them, no matter how he cuts and whacks.

But the bluets don't mind. They don't listen to him and his machines. They go on growing there anyway. 

You see, by eliminating everything else that once grew there, he's creating a monoculture of bluets. And they like that just fine.

And though I mourn the trillium, I like it, too. It's a little victory. He can't kill the bluets. They're too little to bother with. They bend their slender necks and let him have at it. They sing of life and springtime.

Take that! And thank you for your help, Sir!

 Ta-DAAAAA!

Why Whack Bluets?

It's really difficult to write good copy for your web site. It's like one big, multi-page artist's statement. You try to write things that will still sound good in a year or two, things that represent who you are and why you do what you do. One of the things I came up with for my home page is this:

Since 1986, I've made a living from natural history illustration and writing. I'm writing and illustrating my own books now, providing commentary for National Public Radio, and bringing the natural world to many readers with a daily web log. I have finally convinced myself that hiking in the woods is my work. Naturally, I love my job.

I still like that statement. Hiking in the woods IS my job. Blogging, in a very real sense, is my job, too. And taking the joy of discovering nature out wherever I go is my job. This weekend, I'll head to the Mohican Wildlife Weekend in Belleville, Ohio, sorta west of Akron. I'll do a reading from Letters from Eden, two book signings at Malabar Farm, and a couple of nature walks. I'll get paid for it, but that's the least of it. I like doing these things. I feel very fortunate that people will pay me to speak and take walks in the woods, to point out birds and wildflowers and insects and all the minutiae that are so important to me, that make up the fabric of my life. It's not always easy. I have to leave my family and work and drive long distances and get up at ridiculous hours (though MWW is a lot kinder than most festivals in that regard). I come home smashed flat and dead tired, but it's a good tired.

Yesterday's walk with Baker netted so many images that I saved some for tonight. The first thing I saw as we swung out the big meadow was a clump of bluets. Quaker ladies. Honesty. Whatever you call them, they're the sweetest harbingers of spring.Poor soil indicators though they may be, I adore them and their shivery blue color. On the route I drive a couple of times a week there is a barren hillside in front of a ranch house. About the only thing that can grow on it is moss and bluets. They do their best to brighten the red clay. On a couple of passes by this steep incline, I have seen the homeowner out, weed-whacking the bluets in the height of their bloom.There used to be white trillium on that slope (it was woodland not that long ago), but he's long since taken care of those. It's all I can do not to stop the car, climb out, wait for him to shut his ridiculous tool off, and ask him what he could possibly be thinking. As if nothing--bare blasted clay-- were better than bluets and trillium. I wonder if I'm going to be the kind of little old lady that would stop her car, jump out and confront a person doing something like that. It could happen.
The sky was just delicious yesterday and this morning. I love clouds with flat blue bottoms, clouds that rank in the sky like grazing sheep. I checked for cattle in the pasture below, found none, then let Baker run ahead. This is a picture of a Boston terrier, self-actualizing.This is about as happy as Baker gets. I suppose seeing a bunneh and being allowed to chase it is a bit better. But nobody appreciates a good romp in spring sunshine more than Chet Baker. He did a bit of dog-grazing, eating the fresh grass and even a few multiflora rose leaves. Just a bit of roughage to wash down the pot roast and Royal Canin Special 27 Mini kibble.
He had to check the old dead shagbark hickory for squirrels. What a squirrel might be doing in a stone-cold dead tree in the middle of a pasture, only Baker knows. But he checks anyway. Such a doggeh.If you're anywhere near Belleville this weekend, come see me! Remember to blurt, "BLOG!"