Happy spring ephemeral season! After most snow melts and before the overarching tree leaves fully develop, these plants take advantage of the brief window of sunshine. Play Spring Ephemeral Bingo to see how many spring ephemerals you can find! Download the bingo board here.
Marsh Marigold is indeed a plant of wet places, but is in the buttercup family. The flower’s petal-like sepals look shiny gold to us, while the center appears an ultraviolet “bee purple” to pollinating insects.
Dutchman’s Breeches are named for their resemblance to tiny yellow-belted pants hanging on the line. Squirrel Corn gets their name from the yellow, corn-like underground corms (storage structures) on their roots. Squirrel corn is closely related to Dutchman’s breeches, but their flowers have more rounded lobes and no yellow belt. The feathery finely-cut leaves of the two plants are nearly indistinguishable.
Spring Beauty flowers have brilliantly striped petals – landing pattern lines for pollinating insects to the source of nectar at the base of each petal. The petal color ranges from white to deep pink. While the darker flowers are more attractive to pollinating bees, the chemicals that cause the flowers to turn white protect them from herbivores. Get close to take a whiff of their delectable scent!
Red Trillium is also known as Stinking Benjamin for the foul odor that attracts flies to pollinate their fetid flowers, although the flies are rewarded with neither carrion nor nectar.
Trout Lily is named for their mottled leaves that resemble the dappled Brook Trout. Trout Lily reproduces mostly through vegetative means – look for their double-leaved plants with flowers in sometimes massive clonal colonies.
According to the doctrine of signatures (philosophy that a plant could cure the body part it resembled) – hepatica’s evergreen leaves could heal the liver – hepatitis is Greek for liver. Often the earliest wildflower to appear on the forest floor, Hepatica have protective hairs on their buds and stems to protect them from the cold temperatures of early spring. Their coloring of white to pink to indigo seems to be genetic.
Wild Ginger gets their name from their spicy root. Emerging flies are attracted to the decomposing flesh-colored flower and enter the flower to escape the early spring cold and dine on the pollen (although flies have not been confirmed to pollinate the flowers).
Blue cohosh is named for their cobalt blue fruit-like seeds and “cohosh” is attributed to the Algonquin word for “rough” referring to the texture of the roots. Blue cohosh flowers attract flies with the rotting-meat-colored flowers.
Bloodroot gets their name from their red sap. A single leaf hugs the bud in on cold days to protect them like a blanket.