I noticed the first Jack-in-the-Pulpit blooming this spring, but with all the new plants sprouting up, the plant might have been a Jill-in-the-Pulpit last year instead as plant has both male or female parts and they change gender from year to year depending the success of the previous year.
Little Jack-in-the-Pulpits
The poor little Spring Beauties haven’t open much as they keep closing up on the cloudy and rainy days. Their small size doesn’t flash a lot of color and even less when they are not fully open. Next week it is supposed to be sunny so maybe if they haven’t gone to seed yet, they can enjoy some sunshine.
Spring Beauties Needing Sun
With the sun out, the Wood Anemone open up tiny blossoms instead of being tear drop shape on cloudy days. The small white specks stands out against the green mat of foliage, but with an oak leaf in the foreground, you can tell the wood anemone are not a big showy flower.
Little Wood Anemones
A day made a big difference with the wildflowers as the great white trillium opened up, although the blossom is rather small because the deer eat the flower most years before it can put much energy into the rhizome causing smaller blooms or kills off the plant. I wonder how many days this lonely trillium will last before the deer finds it.
Season’s First Trillium
This yellow trout lily is close to blooming but hopefully it waits a week until it is done snowing and below freezing nights. I have several patches of single leaf trout lilies but those do not flower, only the plants with two basal leaves will blossom. So hopefully the deer won’t nibble on this one when it finally opens since I have so few of them.
Lily Not Open Yet
Enjoying some sunshine today, the bloodroots finally started to open up this spring. With reddish sap throughout the plant, especially when root is cut, gave its common name of bloodroot.
Bloodroots Opening Up
Spring has arrived, or maybe summer is here temporarily with an 86 degree day, and with the warm day, three different flowers opened up, including the native wildflower Hepatica which blooms before its leaves sprout up. The fruits of the Hepatica are reported to be a favorite of chipmunks so maybe that is why I have so many of those rodents around.
First Wildflower
Eleven years ago, spring did come early and the white petals of the Bloodroot blossoms carpeted the woods in late March, but with the current depth of snow and the tall snow piles, I will be lucky that I am not mowing around snow piles in May let alone seeing March flowers this year.
Bloodroot White Blossom
Bumblebees crawl deep into the blossoms of the turtleheads and the blossom closes and hides the bees from view until they back out of the flower, but they might want to stay wrapped in the petals during the past several frozen mornings.
Bee Heading In
As summer fades into autumn, a few patches of fireweed still had some blossoms, which is good as some people believe when the last blooms open on the top of the stalks, summer is over and I’m not ready for winter yet. The blooms begin to open from the bottom and since the fruit matures quickly, the fruit, blossoms and buds can appear at the same time on the same plant.
Fireweed By River
