May is the ideal month to go looking for wildflowers, so even though there are dozens of garden jobs that need doing, let's go for a walk in the woods. Better wear your rubber boots, as we're going up along the brook so we can find the sort of wildflowers that like to keep their feet in the water. The one most commonly found in wet areas is the skunk cabbage, whose blossom you might not even consider a flower at all, hidden as it is inside its dark maroon hood.
I have a book in my library that describes this member of the arum family as "vile, disgusting and repulsive; combining the fetid odors of skunk, putrid meat and garlic." I'm glad I never knew that prim Victorian authoress. I bet she didn't enjoy the earthy smell of a cow barn either.
I love the pungent smell of skunk cabbage, which has a very good reason for its unique odor. It's up and blooming so early in the spring that the bees and butterflies attracted by sweet perfumes aren't around yet. The strong ripe smell lures flies and gnats to that hollow house where they find a nice shelter from the heavy March and April rains in return for pollinating the many tiny flowers hidden inside the striped and mottled cloak.
The big round leaves of the skunk cabbage don't start to unfurl until mid-April, but by now they're as big as dinner plates. Lots of folks get the skunk cabbage mixed up with another large-leafed plant, the hellebore, but that's just because they grow in the same sort of swampy wet places. Here's one. See, it's entirely different. Its leaves are pleated, pointed at the end and clasp the tall stem in layers. It has a dirty white cluster of blossoms, already turning green. It doesn't have any smell and its bloom is so drab and stingy that my mother-in-law introduced me to it as "a helluva bore."
Get down on your hands and knees and let me show you the goldthread, a little plant you might otherwise miss. This groundcover has shiny round leaves that are deeply serrated. You could almost mistake them for Jill-over-the-ground (also known as creeping Charlie). If you're ever in doubt, just dig down in the mossy wet earth and pull out a bit of root with your finger. See! Brilliant yellow threads. The flowers of goldthread look like tiny white buttercups and last only a day or two.
Look at all the trout lilies here by the brook. You may call them dogtooth violets or maybe adder's tongue. I prefer the first name since they aren't violets at all, but lilies. Their handsome yellow blossoms look like miniature lilies and their mottled brown-green leaves resemble the speckled body of a trout. Of course if we were being erudite we'd use the Latin, Erythronium americanum, and there'd be no confusion as to which wildflower we were talking about - provided we were all botanists!
Gosh, there must be a zillion little plants here, but I don't see a single blossom. Actually that's not surprising. Trout lilies like to send their bulbs deep into the ground and in the woods there are rocks and roots and other impediments that prevent them from reaching their desired depth. They also like a lot more sun than they get in the woods. I've seen a spread of these plants growing in an open meadow where every single one had a pretty yellow blossom.
Shucks, I brought my camera just so I could take a picture of a trout lily blossom for today's column. Can't we find just one in bloom? Maybe the other reason why so few trout lilies bloom is true; supposedly they must reach the age of seven before they are old enough to flower. I'm not sure that's correct, having merely read it in a book.
Oh, but here's another yellow bloom, a marsh marigold. That should make a nice picture. I think this was one of the few wildflowers I could name when I was a kid, only I called it a cowslip. Big joke - see the cow slip under the fence. Whether you call it a cowslip or a marigold, it's one of the easiest wildflowers to transplant. I moved several to the little brook that runs through the pasture on Locust Hill way back in the early seventies and they're still there and bloom every spring.
There are lots of other wildflowers here - the little false lily-of-the-valley with its fuzz of white bloom, some toothwart or Dentaria, whose white blossoms resemble teeth, trilliums, both red and white, and probably six or seven kinds of ferns. I used to think ferns were pretty much alike, but once I began studying them I found vast differences between one kind and the next, so much so that when I included them in one of my programs, I had no trouble writing a song about them.
A fern may grow in a rock or wall,
In a field of sun or a mountain tall,
In a marshy bog, on a moss-covered log,
At the edge of a woodland waterfall.
A fern may look like antique lace,
Be feathery, leathery, full of grace,
Be thin or thick, be a maverick,
Or even walk from place to place.
A fern may feel like velveteen,
Be olive, emerald, evergreen,
Be gray as lead, or russet red,
So if ferns look alike to you, you're misled.
Time to head back. We'll talk about the ferns another time.
