Green flowers often get overlooked since they don’t stand out like the other colors. But at least “Jack” had a hood over his head to protect from the patchy frost overnight. New seedlings need three or more years of growth before they become large enough to flower. The Jack-in-the-pulpit flowers are unisexual and normally the larger plants are female.
Jack Hiding Under the Hood
It was nice not waking up to a white lawn today, after the snow on Saturday morning and the heavy frost Sunday morning, but some white is missing as the deer have eaten all of my Great White Trilliums. The flowers and leaves are gone with only a stem remaining. Apparently the Nodding Trillium leaves don’t taste as good as the deer eat them or there is no white blossom drawing attention to them as the blossom of the Nodding Trillium hangs underneath the leaves and you don’t notice the flowers.
Elusive Blossom
With temperatures near freezing overnight, the spring flowers might be a little frosty. The pinky purple of the Wild Geraniums look like their cheeks are already turning rosy from the cold temperatures, but at least they not buried under snow yet although snow is falling at the moment.
Wild Geranium
On a very warm May day, it is hard to think about May snow storms that can occur but hopefully we will avoid that this year and the only white on the ground is from wildflowers. The Great White Trillium is blooming and I was able to get a couple of pictures before the deer eat them. Trilliums are a favorite of deer and the blossoms get smaller if the deer continue to graze on them and some of mine which have been eaten several years in a row won’t have blossoms this year.They don’t bother the Nodding Trilliums very much as the blossom hangs underneath but the large blossom of these are hard to miss.
Surviving Great White Trilliums
My lawn was full of yellow color from the dandelions, but some other yellow could be found in the ditches and other wet area as the Marsh Marigolds are in bloom right now. A blossom can produce up to two hundred seeds and when its seed pod open, it forms a splash cup so that when a raindrop hits the wall of the seed cavity, the seeds are expelled. And as the plants are often growing in or near water, the seeds have a spongy tissue which allows them to float on the water so the seeds can wash up on land to grow.
Golden Yellow from the Marsh Marigolds
Even though it is just barely above freezing this morning, the precipitation falling right now is snow so the white seen on the ground maybe snow or the little Wood Anemones. The plant tends to grow in thick mats, spreading via rhizomes and a single plant can take five years or longer to bloom. When the sun is out, the blossoms will open up wide like a rounded pointed star, but with the lack of sun, they close up tight.
Other White Besides Snow
The sun doesn’t look as bright yellow this morning as this flower does. The Yellow Trout Lily emerges from the two basal leaves, which from seed to blooming takes 4-7 years. Until the corm reaches flowering size, it produces only a single, ground-level leaf per season. Most of the leaves in colonies I have in the woods are single leaves so it is nice to see a flower blossom.
The common name of trout lily is in reference to the mottled leaves and the appearance of the flowers during trout fishing season. It is also called Adder’s Tongue, due to the tongue-like shape of the flowering shoot and supposedly resembles an open mouth of a snake.
Yellow Trout Lily
The warm weather has disappeared, but a number of the wildflowers opened the last few days. And the ground has patches of white, although not from snow, but from wildflowers like wood anemones and bloodroots. The strong wind has been rather hard on the blossoms as petals have fallen even though the flowers just opened.
Ground White from Bloodroots
It appears spring is officially here at last as the dandelions have made their appearance! But I can’t pick the pretty yellow flowers for my mom since the butterflies are landing on them for the nectar as there isn’t much else for food sources for the bees and butterflies at the moment until other flowers open up.
Sign of Spring
While walking through the woods on my way to fix birdhouses, I spotted a tiny cluster of Spring Beauties which had opened up. Normally they show more pink coloring, but I think all the snow flurries washed the color right out.
The First Spring Beauties
