It’s that time of year again, time for the multitude
of spring wildflowers to burst into bloom. Any walk in the woods with downcast
eyes will reveal the wondrous eruption of flowers from the ground that had been frozen not so long ago.
Often I walk a number of old roads in the
Big Woods that pass through dry oak forests, moist lowland forests comprised of
a great variety of tree species, along streams and past wetlands. Each of these
different habitats supports a different suite of wildflowers, although there is
often a good deal of overlap. Unfortunately, the all too abundant white-tailed
deer have, over many decades, all but eliminated some species of wildflowers.
Here’s a sample of the Big Woods’ spring
blossoms –
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| Spring Beauty |
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| Blue Cohosh |
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| Bluets |
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| Golden Ragwort |
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| Long-spurred Violet |
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| Painted Trillium |
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| Round-leaved Yellow Violet |
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| Squawroot |
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| Sweet White Violet |
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| Fringed Polygala |
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| Trout Lily |
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| Wild Geranium |
The photographs aren’t in any particular order except
for spring beauty (which is almost always the first to flower) because their
order of bloom is very dependent on the aspect of the terrain where they grow and the micro-habitat the individual plants occupy.
Take a walk in the woods and don't hesitate to bend your knee to take a good look at the bouquet that nature presents each spring.
Excellent group of spring wildflower pictures! Especially good ones of the Blue Cohosh and the Trout Lily.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much to [re-]acquaint me with the wood's treasures in your area. I recognize some of them from our time in upstate New York.
ReplyDeleteMany of your wildflowers end up being garden flowers over here. They were collected about a century ago by European planthunters. Some of those were ruthless and annihilated many species. That makes me feel guilty in a way, but it still happens in countries like China and Turkey, where to many native flowers are taken.
People have always been and will always be greedy. Sigh.
I love the white trillium. Do you ever see the red trillium?
ReplyDeleteThe bluets are plentiful in the spring here and I like seeing them massed near my old red shed.
Purple trillium is fairly common here where the habitat is appropriate (apparently it's not very palatable to white-tailed deer); the photo in this post is painted trillium a widespread, but not common species; white trillium isn't seen anywhere that deer are abundant, they seem to really prefer it as a food, and so it's been extirpated from most of Pennsylvania.
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