(HOST) Depending on variations in elevation, latitude and weather patterns, commentator Tom Slayton says a walk in the Vermont woods this weekend may still offer us an opportunity to see some of the first wildflowers of the season.
(SLAYTON) These days of early spring draw me outside like a magnet. After a long winter – or even a short one – I have an almost physical need to get out and wander in the woods, looking for wildflowers or birds or whatever else I may come across.
I found the first spring beauties of the year three weeks ago on Irish Hill – tiny white blossoms, streaked with pink, sprinkled across a forested hillside that was dead brown, but brightened with the bright green strands of wild leeks. I’ve eaten wild leeks as a potherb, and they say you can do the same with the tiny leaves of spring beauties; but I’ve never tried it. They feed me in a different way.
On the way back, I found coltsfoot blooming like miniature suns alongside a little brook. And the first hermit thrush of the year skimmed through the undergrowth and perched on a log long enough for me to admire his olive back and rusty-brown tail.
There were red trillums alongside the path, budded up but not in bloom that day. They’re probably blooming right now, attracting pollinating insects with their faint rotten-meat odor. Some people call them Wake Robins because of their early blooming habit, but most Vermonters I know refer to them with a less delicate name: Stinking Benjamin, they call them, for their smell.
You might find hepaticas now, also – little pink and pale blue cups blossoming in the woods, or trout lilies – tiny bell-like yellow lilies with mottled leaves that somewhat resemble trouts’ markings. Soon I’ll be on the lookout for Canada mayflower and starflowers. They carpet the forest floor with tiny white blossoms so delicate you half expect to see elves or gnomes peeping out from behind the nearby trees.
Scientifically, many of these very early flowers are known as spring ephemerals. They belong to several different botanical families – spring beauties, for example, are members of the purslane family; while trout lilies are – you guessed it – lilies; and starflowers are distant cousins of the primrose. But they share a common ecological strategy – they bloom as early as possible, before trees leaf out, fill in the forest canopy, and block the sunlight these tiny wildflowers need to blossom and seed and thereby reproduce.
If you ever wonder about the meaning of life, spring wildflowers give us a clue. The meaning of life is to continue, they say – if possible – to continue with beauty.
They focus all their energy into the few brief weeks between the time the ground thaws and the maturation of the forest leaves. After that, their flowers quickly wither and disappear. In several species, like the trout lily and spring beauty, the plant itself shrinks back into its subsurface roots and corms, virtually disappearing by midsummer.
But in the meantime they are scattered along the forest floor, filling the woods with little patches of delicate beauty. Now is the time to get to know and appreciate them, before they are gone for another year.