Who are these fuzzy buds poking up?
Hepatica flowers are getting ready to bloom! One of the earliest wildflowers to appear in eastern North American woodlands, Hepatica opens on sunny days in the brief window between snow melt and tree leaf out.
The dense, silvery hairs that cover the stem and flower buds are thought to retain heat or to act as a deterrent from nectar-stealing ants.
According to the doctrine of signatures (a philosophy that a plant could cure the body part it resembled), hepatica’s evergreen leaves could heal the liver. The word hepar is Greek for liver. In the 1800s hundreds of tons of hepatica leaves were harvested for medicine, though modern medicine has shown it has no medicinal efficacy.
Their dazzling color range of white to pink to indigo seems to be genetic. How many shades of Hepatica can you find this spring?