in honor of mother's day, some observations of flowers' families

I went up into the woods this morning armed with only the iPhone because it's kinda overcast and I figured any pictures I took would suck. So I'm standing there, looking around, when eventually I notice a whole clump of trillium flowers, about twenty feet away. I've noticed clumps of trillium on one other occasion and it made me curious to know how that comes about. Are they all related to one another - perhaps descendants, or siblings, or ... ? Poking around today's clump, I found another one right nearby.

Only, unlike with the clump two feet away, none of these have flowers.  

They remind me of an elephant family: a couple of big mamas, some teenagers, and a few wee little ones. I'm beginning to think, the more I look around, that some of these spring flowers are perennials. Meaning, those wee little ones are new this spring, and the medium size ones are at least a year, possibly more, older...these guys live from one year to the next, until they've got enough juice to send up a flower. If I were faced with suddenly having to live off the land, I would look for plants like this. There is bound to be some carbohydrate-rich root-type thing, like a tuber, that serves as a bank account from which to draw for each new spring's set of leaves. I would look for these plants, so I could harvest and eat those roots. Assuming they're not poisonous.

But back to my theory: that size is an indication of age, that a plant takes a while before it makes a flower: how else to explain the enormous size of this trout lily's leaves? I'm used to little two-inch long guys, barely bigger than canada mayflower leaves - but these were easily eight inches long, two of them, flanking a now-decaying flower. Only one leaf is in this picture, but trust me, it has a mate.

(Oh, and notice the solo baby jack-in-the-pulpit triplet of leaves in the background, above.)

I've seen a ton of single trout lily leaves here and there this spring - even some along the shared driveway - but hardly any flowers. But this morning, once I looked around some more - my brain by now humming and fizzing merrily - I saw them everywhere. The freshest one, still a bit yellow, was at the base of a tree.

Alas, the phone focused on the trunk lichen, but you get the idea. Those LEAVES! They're ginormous.

And another one. An embarrassment of riches. The moral of this story is, don't blow off going up into the woods next spring, sarah... I nearly missed the trout lilies entirely. Let's not let THAT happen again.

In the meantime, I started to use what I'd just learned to see if I could find any jack-in-the-pulpits. See, before I found the trillium with which this post started, I saw FIVE jack-in-the-pulpits within ten feet of me: thus doubling in one fell swoop the total number of jacks I've seen this spring, total. 

Once I sussed out the trillium / trout lily situation, I started noticing little jack-in-the-pulpit plants, just the one stalk with three leaves. I recalibrate my visual filters. There MUST be jack flowers right around here. Ask and ye shall receive: boom, they just started coming and coming. 

That was just two. There were many, many more. Up to a couple of feet away from each of these, were little colonies of the-ones-with-just-leaves.

And then I remembered, just cause a species' flowers have largely come and gone doesn't mean the story is over. Remember the trout lilies? Under those decaying petals we have....

A seed pod thingy forming! I don't know what the resulting seed(s?) look like, so I'll be vague. Here's another one. 

If I hadn't started getting curious about what I was seeing, and deliberately looking for certain things, I never would have stumbled across all of this. This is why I love hanging out in the woods. It wakes my brain up. 

By now I was starting to head down the hill back to the house - Saturday mornings involve pancakes and bacon in our world - but the jacks kept stopping me.

This one was the blond kind, speckled with tiny orange dots. 

When I finally got back to the house, I paused to admire the apple tree, because, PINK.

And I checked in on the Buddha...

And then came the best part: the ultimate fruit of all the adventures up in the woods.

I was heading down our driveway, cause I'd looked at the time and realized I had plenty of time before pancake o'clock, and I saw one of those jack-in-the-pulpit leaves-only plants. I thought, "hello, miracle baby! where did you come from?"

ACTIVATE PERCEPTUAL FILTER. 

Not five feet away, in plain sight, under three screaming daffodils, where Kevin and I have walked every day, multiple times a day, I find...A DOUBLE.

Here, I'll help:

Un-fucking-real. I kept walking, found ANOTHER along the shared drive because I now knew where to look. I went inside after a while, found Kevin was awake, dragged him outside to show him, and what does he do? HE FINDS TWO MORE. 


This is one of them. A huge honker, hiding in plain sight. 

Wow.

the nature of the void.

Kev and I went out for a walk this morning. I say "morning", even though it was really early afternoon; such are the wonders of being able to sleep in of a Sunday morn. I foolishly didn't bring either the Mighty Lumix or the Nikon, but being me, I dawdled here and there, snapping crappy close-ups with my phone. And all this rubbed off on the dear boy, because he was looking attentively all around him, and spotted a couple of jack-in-the-pulpits for me.

Not even opened up! Way to go, Kev-o. Later on in our walk, we were headed toward the beaver pond for a status update, and I found my own jack - like the one of the other day, close to the bottom of the driveway.

Each and every one of these is a thrill. 

AND, Solomon's seal abounds as well, along the way to the pond.

She's filling up nicely! 

Hours later, while Kev was off to softball (a double-header, no less) I headed out again, and again, didn't think to bring the 'real' cameras. After all, it was past 6 pm, the light wasn't that great, and "what is there to see?"

Silly me.

I found a mess of teeny Golden Alexanders on the north side of the field on the way out to the road. 

Oh, for the Nikon's zoom lens...

And some type of fern encased in... foam wrapping.

or at least that what it looked like to me.

By now I was pretty close to the pussy willows near the mailbox, I wonder what they're up to...

busy, busy, busy...

Next, I bring you - drum roll please - my oldest white baneberry friend. I've known this guy for like, six or seven years now. Kevin spotted it first, on our walk together earlier, but the best picture of the several I took was from my solo walk:  heaven forfend I arrange pictures out of order. It would violate the... journalistic integrity of this project.

Check out the way the flower buds look like they're being clasped by a hand...I guess that's a leaf, wrapped around them. "Journalistic integrity" indeed... I suspect you need actual readers for your writing to count as anything vaguely journalistic, and I'm pretty sure I'm typing merrily into a void. Who has the time/patience to read this? 

"If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?" comes to mind.

Where was I? Oh. Flowers and whatnot. We're just inundated with trillium. Trillia?

This one was up in the mystery woodland. It pleases me to find 'em under the trees, regardless of whether anyone is there to see them. 

The saxifrage, on the other hand, I knew to expect. I promised The Void that I'd get to this with the Nikon: first sunny day! First sunny day!

Blurry because they're friggin' TINY.

I leave off with a magnolia queen upon her throne. 

when in doubt, fetchez la caméra la plus proche

Happy Saturday...here's where we're at here in West West, Vermont...all of these courtesy of the phone, because the Mighty Lumix (the little guy good for macros, particularly in awkward shots like underneath a flower two inches from the ground) is in Kevin's car in an airport parking lot. And the Nikon with its awesomeness is...oh, it's on my desk, but I'm lazy, so without further ado...

Maple leaves unfurling...

ahhh, the beaver pond, gradually getting bigger and bigger...

New discovery! Those fuscia party hats the gray birch wears? Turns out they're packed with leaves as well...

Must retrieve Mighty Lumix from the boy's car..

Today Today Today was the day the magnolia in the back yard went *boom*.

Saxifrage! This one deserves the Nikon. Stay tuned.

How many back-lit pictures of trillium can I take? 

A lot.

And now for the side view...

Not bad for the phone...

TRILLIUM.

It's my day off, and the sky is an expanse of deep blue. Mmm mmm good. There's been this strange cold virus out and about - it nips your heels for a week or two, and then when you're not looking, it sucker punches you. Then, a few days later, when you're all "I'm on the mend, yay!" it kneecaps you. So the running has been a bit erratic lately. But today, I finally got a solid run in. I NEED to get a couple of half marathons on the schedule for this summer. Or...this fall, at the rate I'm going. 

I wasn't going to photograph the daffodils today - "it's just daffodils" - if you ever find yourself saying shit like that? "just daffodils"? You need your head examined. 

On the way to greeting the daffodils, I realized the playtex tampon applicator flowers were in full bloom. 

They're actually a heath.



I was heading out toward the mailbox to check out the pussy willow situation.

Huh. Somewhat worse for wear. Not sure what happened. 

Another kind of willow is just starting to pop.

This one's half in half out of its cloak.

The basswood down by the stream says "who are you lookin' at?"

AND BIG NEWS, because I knew to look for it and ONLY because I knew to look for it, TRILLIUM!!!!! I counted eight.

O Happy Day. 

bugs: cute? or scary?

Would you look at the size of his forearms? He’s like the Popeye of little green flies. I have already submitted this to bugguide, and I’ll bet by the time I’m through drafting this post, some bug nerd  afficionado will have provided an ID. GOD, I love the interwebs.  Nearby, another flower had a visitor of its own:

I thank the lord that I am much larger than most insects I come across. They are truly terrifying, if you think about it. But also?

Sometimes kind of cute. I watched this little one groom itself with its back leg. And look at that fuzz! Don’t you just want to hug it? No?

The other day was apparently a spider hatching day. I let three gray-and-black spiders out of the house. I might have accidentally vacuumed others in a frenzy of cleaning. See, there goes my bug ambivalence again.

Annnnd yes, we have someone out there who thinks that Popeye fellow is an ambush bug - Phymata pennsylvanica. A type of assassin bug. I was just reading about assassin bugs. Apparently at least some of them have these long stabby things they use to suck the innards out of their prey. Yeah, I’m back to being scared. At any rate, the overlords of Bugguide will check into it within a few hours – those folks are serious.

What else can I report…I visited a tree I only got properly ID’d this year as a type of non-native dogwood – “cherry dogwood”. Now I know why it’s called that:

That’s a water droplet on the end – it’s been flirting with rain over the past day. I’ve been living here at dave for five years, and this is the first time I’ve noticed the fruit on this tree. Just goes to show – there is ALWAYS something new to see. (By the way, “dave” = the name of this property. That’s why we’re called “musings from dave”. Read about it here.)

Any other news? Oh, a trillium gone to seed.

Last but not least, we went out to a fundraiser tonight to help with long term recovery efforts after That Bitch Irene – today is the one year anniversary of Tropical Storm Irene, which as you may recall, did a number on us here in Vermont. The fundraiser was a by-donation-only showing of “Singin’ in the Rain”. What an awesome movie – long one of my favorites. It’s a movie, within a movie, within a movie – just like “Inception”’s dream within a dream within a dream. Only with better dance numbers.

superheroes in pink capes, purple grass, etc.

I will be out of town next week – hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with an old friend – and I’m working like a crazed bunny to get everything I can wrapped up at work before I go. This afternoon, I staggered away from my desk, my head and body seemingly disconnected from one another, my spirit nowhere to be found. The perfect remedy: break out the hiking boots (gotta remind my feet about the hiking boots!), grab the point-and-shoot, and go for a four mile jaunt down dirt roads.
I found plenty of entertainment. It is just amazing how many more species there are to admire, just a half mile to two miles from the house. But I started with the locals. Remember those sleepy pink moths? They’re still around.

“Don’t worry, little lady.”

“I’ll save you.”
‘The aptly named primrose moth,’ I am informed. (Schinia Florida)
By the pole barn, where we store firewood, grass that has yet to encounter the lawn mower is in bloom.


Timothy grass, as yet not quite in bloom, with a visitor.

Later on, a mile away, the timothy grass was in full bloom. 

quack grass.
OK, now we’re venturing out away from my typical haunts of late.

Bittersweet nightshade, many of them already in full-on berry mode. These berries will turn yellow, then orange, then red. A veritable rainbow – as if the flower itself weren’t gorgeous ENOUGH.

Herb robert (yes, that’s its name) – I thought the sparkly velvet flowers were done for the season, but I’m pleased to see I was wrong.


Some kind of mutant, gargantuan dandelion-style flower. Sadly, they had ALL already closed up shop, so I don’t know what color the petals (well, rays, technically) are – still, though, I ought to be able to ID it. So far, no luck.

These seed clusters were the size of my fist.


Here’s a new one for me: bladder campion (Silene cucubalus). Later on this summer, I’ll show its cousin, white campion. It grows right next to our mailbox.


Common st. johnswort – which also tends to grow near our mailbox, but I haven’t seen it yet this year.


barberpole sedge. Bonus: see the spider? I didn’t when I took the picture!

Partridgeberry – a ground cover, with red berries in the fall. I laughed when I saw how the insides are fuzzy. Kevin said maybe it’s naturally-occurring velcro.

trillium seed. joy!


red baneberry is possessed of a certain in-your-face charm, no?


this is common comfrey.


a whole hillside of day lilies.

brand-new to me: motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca).
The hiking boots feel good. That’s a relief.