Flowers from Yesterday

There are no unusual flowers or plants in this post. These are all finds from yesterday. However, there are a couple of interesting notes.

Most of these finds are from one particular location on the trail. In general, the Spirit of the Woods section of the NCT (the northern 2/3 of the Manistee National Forest) does not support a lot of wildflowers. Most of the forest through which the trail passes is xeric (dry) mixed woods with sandy soil. Wildflowers like to have a little bit richer earth from which to sip their nutrients.

However, Just west (trail east) of Highbridge Road there is a section of trail along lower ground by the Manistee River. This location is rich in spring wildflowers. The soil is probably enriched by seasonal flooding.

Here are common toothwort leaves, Dentaria diphylla or Cardamine diphylla. When I see toothwort in our area, I think it's about 50/50 as to whether it's common or cut-leaved. The "di" in diphylla is because there are two sets of three leaves, opposite each other. For those people who have trouble telling any three-leaved plant from poison ivy, you can look for those two sets.

This is a trick picture. Don't think that even somewhat experienced people don't get fooled by stuff like this. The flowers are NOT those of the toothwort! Toothwort is a member of the mustard family, Brassicaceae, and the flowers have 4 petals. When I saw that these had 5 petals, I did a double take. What? Then I looked more closely at the picture, and underneath the toothwort, Virginia spring beauty, Claytonia virginica, is growing with the flowers reaching through the toothwort leaves to get to the sun!

Here's a patch of the familiar trout lily (aka dogtooth violet, adders' tongue), Erythronium americanum. This is slightly unusual because of the number of plants that are blooming. Most often, you'll find a huge patch of the leaves, but only a very few of the plants will have a blossom.

Next up with another slight surprise is bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis. For one thing, bloodroot is usually one of the very earliest spring flowers, and it's usually finished blooming before the other flowers open. These have to be close to dropping their petals because the other unusual thing is that the leaves are open and the flowers are still present. Usually, when you see the flowers, the leaves will be wrapped tightly around the stems. Later the leaves will open to create lush green carpets.

I know lots of you love the trilliums. There's nothing unusual here, and it's not even a particularly wonderful patch of them. They made the pictures because they are the first ones I've seen open this year. Trillium grandiflorum.

Next up isn't a flower at all. This is a horsetail. In fact, meadow horsetail, Equisetum praetense. I'm trying to learn these guys, because there aren't too many. I should be able to remember them. The fertile stalks are flesh-colored and have no leaves.

We did find this flower in a dryer area of the forest. It's not open yet, so I'm breaking my "rule" to not share pictures this spring until the flowers are open, but I like these a lot, so I get to break the rule. This is gaywings buds, Polygala paucifolia. When open, it looks like a tiny orchid, but it's not at all. It belongs to the milkwort family which has wildly varying plants if one goes by appearance alone. Genetics will sort out a lot of the confusion. A lot of plants were thrown into Polygala because they had similar flowers but not much else in common. It was kind of a junk drawer of genera.

Finally for today, I bring you shadbush (aka serviceberry, Juneberry, shadblow, and more), probably Amelanchier laevis, as it is the most common species in our area. It seems to me that these are blooming very late this year. This is usually the very earliest flowering tree you will see in the edges of the woods. Indeed, looking back in my blog, I've often posted finding it in bloom in mid-April.

Now that I've shown you some nice plants, I'll counter that with telling you that I spent a fair amount of time today chopping, digging, and trying to kill more autumn olive- A VERY BAD PLANT- around our house. It's so serious, it really needs a bulldozer. All I can hope to do is keep it from overtaking the yard.

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