This is the perfect time to go on a wildflower walk, at least that was what I thought until I got out in the woods. I had my camera, assuming I could take some nice photos for today's column, but I came home without a one. The woodland I'd chosen is always carpeted with, Dutchman's Breeches, trilliums, bunchberries and a dozen other spring wildflowers, but not this year.
I'm sure Al Gore would immediately blame it on Global Warming. I'm so sick of all his exagerated scare tactics, especially after I read that Mr. Gore's electric bill averages more than 10,000 kilowatts a month. Mine is a little over 2,000 a month. The weather has been totally weird, however, raw and rainy, then hot, then freezing, so who could blame the wildflowers from being confused.
Having failed to find anything on my walk, I waited through 4 rainy days to try again, but when the sun finally came out I had so much to do in the garden, I couldn't take the time. Then the rain came back and my deadline was only two days away. Admittedly that deadline is self-imposed, but if I didn't stick to it I could get very lazy, so I've spent today at the computer downloading wildflower photographs from the Internet.
It's been uninspiring. I miss the joys of a real woodland walk, the smell of pine needles and wet earth, the sound of songbirds and chittering squirrels, the sight of real wildflowers showing off their delicate blossoms. Here's what I should have found - one of the most appealing wildflowers, the Dutchman's Breeches, a close relation to the cultivated bleeding heart, pictured above. Feathery blue-green leaves and white blossoms looking like little pantaloons hanging on the clothesline. This plant, and its sister, the Squirrelcorn, are so delicate that by June they have melted away. They are so similar that only by checking out their root system can one be sure which is which. The Dutchman has a nubbly white corm while the Squirrel corn has two yellow nubbins beneath the soil that look just like corn.
This is one of my favorites,
the bloodroot. Those crinkly leaves
curl around the flower stem protec-
tively, but can't prevent the soft
white petals from dropping at the
slightest wind or rain, so the blos-
soms usually last less than a week.
The bloodroot is well-named as its
fleshy root literally bleeds when
broken, a deep red that my kids
used to paint their faces. It's as
hard to remove as ink so don't tell
your kids about it.
Everyone knows this wildflower - Jack in the Pulpit. He's also known as the Indian turnip root, as his large root was boiled by the Indians for soup. The root is extremely bitter, in fact it can blister the tongue if not boiled. It was given to young boy as a test of bravery, and supposedly if you could eat one bite without flinching you had reached manhood. Once Jack has successfully attracted a small congregation of flies for polli-
nating, he's done his job and retire on his pension. He takes his pulpit with him, so he becomes hard to identify unless you're familiar with the cluster of red (and poisonous) berries that he's produced.
Can you guess what this wildflower
is? Does its blossom remind you of a
tree you're very familiar with? The
dogwood tree has the exact same
flower as this wildflower, the bunch-
berry. Its flower is a tiny circle,
surrounded by those conspicuous
white bracts. And like the tree, the
flowers are replaced in the fall with
scarlet berries. The Bunchberry has
the same shape and white bloom as
wintergreen, and is often mistaken
for it, but if you bite into one of its
bright green leaves you would know
immediately from both its taste and
odor of chewing gum that it is wintergreen.
I doubt if you'd find this wildflower on a woodland walk in any year it's so rare. It's the trailing arbutus. It's absolutely delicious fragrance was so popular that florists sold it in tired buncheseach spring, uprooting whole carpets of these plants until they came close to extinction. It has leathery evergreen leaves lying flush with the ground and its pinky pearls of bloom appear when snow is still in the woods.
This photo is of the early
Saxifrage, well named as Saxum
mean rock and frango mean break.
Almost always found growing in
clefts of rock, it looks as if its
seed had split the rock as the root
formed. It has a rosette of toothed
leaves at the base, and sends up
little hairy stalks bearing small
white flowers very early in the
spring. The stems are sticky to
protect the blooms from crawling
insects who would like to feast
on the sweet nectar but offer no
help in pollination.
Finding pictures of wildflowers on the Internet just doesn't give you any idea of how appealing they are when discovered on a woodland walk. When I complained to my friend Rona how few flowers I'd found, she said the wildflowers in her woods in Lakeville were all up and blooming. The Icebox of Connecticut is definitely behind. Next sunny day, take a walk and see how many you can find.
