Trout lily - Erythronium americanum Named for their purple-brown mottled leaves which do somewhat resemble the green and white spotted colors of a brook trout, trout lilies are common on forest floors across eastern north America. Their flowers are quite bold and distinctive, but are often hard to spot, growing scattered, low to the ground, and with their faces turned down. Often it takes a minute stopped beside a likely looking spot on the trail to get your eye in, and then they start to pop out of the background like magic.
For whatever reason, instead of adding more true petals, lilies have co-opted their sepals to stand-in as extra petals instead, and when this happens the petals and sepals combined are collectively called “tepals”.
Flowering for any plant is an expensive exercise requiring a lot of energy. Some annual plants blow all their resources on a single flowering season, relying on some of their seed to make it to the next year. Other longer lived plants, typically shrubs and trees will often take their time, concentrating on growing bigger and stronger before thinking about throwing any resources at reproducing. Trout lilies, although small, grow from bulbs under the ground, each of which can live for many years, and so like other longer-living plants they get well settled before flowering. An individual trout lily will not flower at all for the first 5-7 years of its life, and even then not very often, such that only 0.5% of any population will be in bloom in any particular year. There are 20-30 species in the trout lily group, spread across North America and Europe, and their closest relatives are – Tulips!
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Wild blue phlox - Phlox divaricata Phlox is a flower that you may have seen in bunches at the store, or growing in gardens, as they throw up very attractive heads of blazingly colorful flowers with a sweet scent. Problem is, many plants have hit upon a similar cunning plan to attract pollinators and so it is easily to confuse between them, especially Phlox and a the quite unrelated Dianthus. Adding to, and maybe because of, the confusion members of both sometimes go by the name "sweet William" including Phlox divaricata which is known in some parts of North America as "wild sweet William". Garden Phlox left and Dianthus right. Sadly and ironically, like many garden varieties of flowers, cultivated sweet Williams are commonly found without their scent as they have been bred for larger, brighter, longer lasting flowers. Happily, delicately perfumed wild relatives of Phlox can still be found across the woodlands of North America where there are ~70 species (a single species is from Siberia). Phlox divaricata is easy to recognize by the width of its flowers and habit of growing in straggling patches. These are formed as plants send roots out across the ground that sprout new stems and eventually become independent plants. This habit is called “divaricate” and gave it its species name. Relatively common in woodlands across the majority of the eastern half of the United States, there are two subspecies: ssp. divaricata, with petals notched at the tip, and the one below, ssp. laphamii, without a notch. The leaves and stems are covered in sticky hairs (also grow in other species) which presumably act as a defense against insects. Phlox in general tend to be taller with larger flowers in the lowland wooded country, while the many species found in alpine meadows grow as lower clumpy plants with smaller flowers. Colors range from white, through pink, purples and blues. “Phlox” comes from the Greek for flame due to the bright blazing colors of some species, but on a clear spring day P. divaricata looks like a reflection of the sky. *Phlox divaricata pictures from the C & O Canal National Historic Park, credits: Bort Edwards
Virginia bluebell (Mertensia Virginica)One of the loveliest first signs of spring here in the eastern United States are Virginia bluebells. Their leaves bring the first green to the muddy forest floor and their early buds are a gorgeous powdered pink even when everything else is still cold and grey. Bluebells thrive in the dappled sunlight of deciduous forests and along river banks, and can form colonies that stretch out in rich blue carpets when they flower. The flowers themselves are an important food source for bumblebees, especially the females who are the first to venture out after winter. However bees struggle to land on the wide petals and the most common pollinators are butterflies, with longer legs that allow them to settle more comfortably. If you look closely you can see a long, thin, white filament or thread poking out past the mouth of the flower - this is the stigma. The stigma is the female part of the flower and its sticky tip brushes the underside any butterfly when it lands, to catch pollen picked up at another plant. Unlike many other plants, the petals of bluebells fall away once they are pollinated, leaving just the stigma behind, with older plants waving wispy white stigmas in the breeze where the flowers used to be. While the buds and flowers are a pale pink before they open, they typically turn a vivid blue, except for two uncommon forms: one that stays pink, and another that is white. These can appear scattered throughout otherwise blue populations and are presumably the result of random mutations. There are two closely related species, Mertensia paniculata which is found mostly in the north west of the US, has been recorded as overlapping with M. virginica in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but can be told apart by having smaller bell-shaped flowers; and M. maritima which is found north from Massachusetts into Canada and north western Europe and grows as a low spreading plant with fleshier leaves and smaller flowers. *All pictures from the C & O Canal National Historic Park, credits: Bort Edwards
Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) Skunk cabbages are from the arum family, and thus related to Jack-in-the-pulpit, with similar construction of an inflorescence of smaller flowers combined into a spadix and surrounded by a modified leaf (spathe). "Skunk" refers to the rank smell of the leaves when crushed, while “foetidus” comes from the word fetid, meaning unpleasant smelling, and likely refers to flowers which smell like rotting meat to attract flies. The inflorescences of this plant are hard to find as they sit on the ground, and the spathe is camouflaged brown and green (seen here at the base of the plant). It is purse-shaped, with only a small opening to let potential pollinators in or out, and is often present when there is still snow on the ground. The spathe/inflorescence/flowers grow before the leaves, which when they do arrive are very noticeable, being large, flat, bright glossy green, and forming thick knee-high emerald seas of vegetation that spruces up the drab late winter forest floor. If you push through a colony of skunk cabbage the leaves feel rubbery and squeak as they rub together. In order to produce flowers so early, skunk cabbages have evolved a neat trick: they make their own heat, keeping themselves at ~60-70 degrees F which can be 27–63 °F (15–35 °C) hotter than the temperature of the air around them! This allows them to melt snow, protect themselves from frost damage, with the added advantage of attracting insects who shelter inside the flowers to stay warm, while becoming pollinators in return. Skunk cabbages grow in bogs and flooded river-edges across eastern North America and have adapted to these slippery conditions by contracting their roots after they grow downwards. This pulls their stems deeper into the ground, making it incredibly difficult for them to be pulled up or swept away.
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