A Quiet Explosion
Appalachian wildflowers
I have always viewed spring and autumn as two different women. Autumn is the archetype of a “lady of a certain age” who wears her best furs with pears and her brightest lipstick, even if it’s “too much”. Spring is a quieter type of fabulous-pastels and blush and demure introductions, “So happy to be here. Thank you for the invite. It’s a pleasure.”
But this spring has knocked my allegory on its head with a quiet explosion of wildflowers.
Not that I haven’t noticed and enjoyed spring wildflowers before, but some recent spring hikes must have just hit the perfect peak for several species. Trilliums, featured below, are some of my favorites. Spring ephemerals bloom so briefly, until the forest canopy chokes out their sunlight, that coming across them feels like a special secret between you and the mountain.
And did you realize the Appalachian mountains are home to about 52 species of orchids? I’ve always associated orchids with exotic, tropical wildernesses, but you can find several close to home, if you are careful to look at precisely the right time.
Lady Slippers are particularly exciting finds and best practice when sighting these flowers is to NOT geotag them. The more people that know precisely where these flowers are, the more likely they are to get picked. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, that they don’t realize these orchids can take up to 12 years to flower, and not that they are willfully destroying delicate and rare flora.
If you want to go hunting for Lady Slippers, here’s some clues: they like partial shade and dry to moderately moist, well-drained soils. They especially like coniferous trees. Please take only pictures and do your best to leave only shallow footprints.
Anyway, during my self-imposed sabbatical this spring, I have found great enjoyment and a dollop of inspiration in running across all the spring wildflowers. Maybe it’s a natural extension of being a “closeted birder”, but identifying both known and unknown species via the PlantNet app is my newest nerdy obsession. It has helped me look at my familiar surroundings through fresh lenses. Recently, I took Fergus on a walk on a tediously familiar trail and snapped these two pictures. The first is a very common flower I’ve seen frequently, but never knew the name of—the dwarf larkspur. The second picture is obviously a frog, but as my newly downloaded iNaturalist app informs me, it is 98.5% certain to be an American bullfrog.
Honestly, I have my doubts about the frog identification. If that’s a bullfrog, it’s a baby one. I used to see bullfrogs regularly when I walked Fergus near a particular pond back in our old stomping grounds in Lexington, KY. Those suckers were the size of dinner plates! But, I guess even those behemoths started off like this guy, and I’m truly no expert, so I’ll take iNaturalist’s word for it.
Regardless, as spring flourishes into early summer, I hope you get a chance to witness your own quiet explosion. There’s probably one going on in your yard, or even in the drainage ditch at the edge of your neighborhood. Please find something bright to enjoy this week.