Wildflowers Are Finally Here!

We had a wonderful walk along the Bruce Trail yesterday on a sunny but cool  afternoon.  Luckily, the chief spotter accompanied me, and I'm pleased to report we saw the first of many spring wildflowers.  Finally!  I can't believe it, but this is my 500th post here, and I'm so pleased to have my favourite topic to focus on - a walk in the woods.

My favourite is the Trout Lily or Dogtooth Violet.  There are millions of their mottled leaves suddenly up across the forest floor, and lots were in bud, but it took awhile to spot one in bloom.   My wife has an uncanny ability to do just that, and soon we were seeing quite a few. And she kept pointing out flowers for me to photograph the entire time.

The trail we walked stretched south of Johnson's Sideroad on the west side of the Beaver Valley, just a short distance from our place, through a forest with a number of huge old gnarled trees.  We ended at the un-named waterfall in this section.  I'll bring you some tree and waterfall pictures over the next couple of days. This is one of our favourite sections of the trail here, with big trees, wildflowers, a waterfall, and a lookout if you walk far enough.  It's one of the first walks we did with our grandson.

We saw one large patch of Spring Beauty at the base of one of the huge old maple trees, just at the peak of their bloom.  They're usually one of the first wildflower blooms here, a little before the rest of these.

And there was a little patch of Bloodroot, so named for the bright red juice in the roots.  It unfolds and blooms with the leaf wrapped around the stem like this, then unfolding to form a very large and unique shape easily recognized the rest of the summer.

In a few days, these leaves will be spread out flat, and the blossom too will be held up flat; this one was just starting to unfold.

I've always found the Blue Cohosh, which is this remarkable deep purple when it comes up, is difficult to photograph against the background of forest leaf litter.  But this group conveniently placed themselves in front of a boulder, enabling me to get a better picture.  These emerge incredibly fast from the ground on warm spring days, growing 2-3" a day sometimes; by the time the leaves unfold they've turned green with a tiny yellow flower.

One pair of Trilliums, almost in bloom, but not quite.  There are other places where I will walk to get pictures of large stands of these when they're in full bloom in a week or two.

And of course the wild Leeks, which some people gather for their mild onion taste.  They grow in the reverse sequence of most of these species, putting up their leaves first and then their flowers later.  The leaves don't actually last long, but they take advantage of the leafless early spring to grab the sunshine while they can.  I do not encourage anyone to gather wild leeks or other plants, because I've seen people with several large garbage bags of these!  I wonder if they realized why there were none growing there the following year!


And to try and document the season, this is that early spring period when it's starting to dry out; the landscape is no longer saturated, and the trail was surprisingly dry.  There is little sign of the trees being even ready to burst into leaf, so the sun reaches the forest floor strongly.  Under bright blue sky, the light was glaring; the only other colour was the green of leaves emerging on the ground.  All these plants are the 'spring ephemerals', taking advantage of the brief 2-3 week time period when it's no longer too cold, but there are no leaves on the trees yet - a critical short period for the growth of many forest plants while sunlight reaches the forest floor..

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