Finally Spring.
After two postponements the first wildflower walk of the season was April 6.In 2012 we saw Bloodroot and Skunk Cabbage a month earlier
http://medfordleasarboretum.blogspot.com/2012/03/march-17-wildflower-walk.html
This year March was a bust. Only the Lesser Celendine came early. There were five of us: Anita Solomon, Karin Sanwald, Barbara Trought, Mary Chisholm-Zook and me (Maggie Heineman). We started down the ramp near the theater, passed by the bridge to the "Island" -- which wasn't an island - quite dry in fact. Skunk Cabbage was starting, but not as abundant as it will become. It was young. Later in the walk we did see some with the emerging dark red spathes which surround the spherical flower heads, the spadix. As expected we saw plenty of Lesser Celendine which are especially attractive in the stream bed of Pebble Run. Bloodroot was in bloom. Anita identified the bushes coming into bloom as Spice Bush, Lindera benzoin. It seems that we saw quite a bit of Trout Lily coming up-- not in bloom. Karin said it was Trout Lily and I was skeptical because it was so abundant. However, looking at photos of Trout Lily leaves, Karin was right. Barbara spotted some Trillium - not in bloom. Mayflower was coming up, only about 4 inches high today. We saw a lot of something with chrysanthemum-like leaves. Not mugwort, I'm guessing that it was Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) which is another early invasive. See photos in that March 17, 2012 post that is linked above. Not sure because there were no flowers.
I didn't take photos of the plants which we all could recognize. Instead what follows are the photos of plants- not yet in bloom - which we were curious about, These pictures are for Jane Bourquin and for anyone else who can tell us what we saw. We followed the Red Trail and then took the cut-off that leads to Meditation Garden where the Hellebore is in bloom (it's also in bloom at the Atrium.
Two lovely Magnolia Trees were in bloom in Court 2. Neither Anita nor Mary had seen Court 7, so we stopped by there, and then again at Court 4 where Betsy Snope took the photo of our group.
With Spring Beauty coming into bloom soon, and maybe Trout Lilies, plus our various mystery plants, we decided we really must have another Wildflower walk this month. It's not on the monthly calendar but it will be on the weekly calendar. Tuesday, April 23 at 9:00. Dog show at 11:00.
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| Barbara, Maggie, Anita, Mary, Karin and Taco |
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| Internet photo of the Skunk Cabbage's spherical spadix with flowers, inside the leaf-like bract called a spathe this is my favorite page about skunk cabbage: http://natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic4/skunkcabbage.htm |
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| Lots of Trout Lilies? Note the mottled leaves |
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| Internet photo of Trout Lily - mottled leaves |
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| Mystery bulbs - leaves flat like Iris, snowdrops leaves are different. |
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| Red mystery plant |
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| Spice Bush starting to bloom. A nice page about spicebush http://www.radfordpl.org/wildwood/today/Plant_Spp_pp/Spicebush.htm |
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| Scouring Rush -- see the comment below this post. |
Jane Bourquin says that the "green thing" is scouring rush. Here's a link with photos of scouring rush.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/grasses/plants/scouring_rush.htm
Yes, The "green thing" at the bottom of the post does have long stalks from last year. and I saw one photo that showed the basal leaves and they're the right shape. Most of the pages about scouring rush have to do with eradication because it's invasive, but here's someone who likes it. http://web.extension.illinois.edu/dmp/palette/060813.html
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ReplyDeleteEmail from Anita:
ReplyDelete"I'm quite sure plant we saw was not equisetum. The stalks of equisetum are jointed and much thicker than the ones we saw, tend to be evergreen. and equisetum spreads into thick colonies quite rapidly. These were isolated clumps. And the basal leaves were nothing like the equisetum I grew in North Carolina.
However, there must be some equisetum somewhere in the Medford Leas wetlands.
It may be a sedge or rush -- I don't seem to have kept my books on grasses (including sedges and rushes); After I finish [...] I'll borrow a book from the Nature Center."