Some Early Bloomers, Often Overlooked

No point in going out today to look for spring wildflowers.  They'd all be buried under a couple of inches of snow, although thankfully, rising temps and a brisk wind are making short work of that snow. And I DID get out yesterday (a balmier day), to the middle section of the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail here in Saratoga Springs.  I like to enter this trail from a spur accessed through the Meadowbrook Estates residential area, for this spur leads directly to a boardwalk that crosses a wildflower-rich swamp.

I particularly like this entrance because both Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) and False Hellebore (Veratrim viride) grow here side-by-side, right next to the boardwalk, so it's easy to notice the differences in their leaves. Although the two might be mistaken for each other from a distance this time of year, a closer view reveals that the narrower False Hellebore leaves have parallel veins, while the veins of the broader Skunk Cabbage leaves are pinnate, with smaller veins projecting to the side from a large mid-vein. As spring proceeds into summer, the False Hellebore will eventually tower over the Skunk Cabbage and bear clusters of small yellow-green lily-like flowers at the top of tall stems.

I came here hoping to find Marsh Marigold opening its gorgeous big yellow blooms in the wetter areas of this swamp, but no such luck!  I saw clumps of their broad green leaves, but no flowers as yet. I did find a few other flowers in bloom, but most were so small or non-showy as to usually be overlooked by the casual observer.

I'm glad I know where a few Leatherwood shrubs (Dircus palustris) grow near the trail, for it certainly would be easy to miss their small yellow trumpet-shaped blooms dangling from furry brown buds, if you weren't standing within a few feet of them.

The same is true for the tiny yellow-green flowers of Spicebush (Lindera benzoin), a few just emerging now from the globular buds that cling tightly to the shrub's slender twigs.

But I bet those two shrub-borne flowers are noticed more frequently than the almost-invisible blooms of Golden Saxifrage (Chrysosplenium americanum).  This plant's small, round, glossy-green leaves are easy enough to find, since sprawling masses of them often grow in shallow wetlands, earning them the alternate vernacular name of Water Carpet. But you have to bend down to take a close look to discover the tiny, red-dotted circular flowers. The red dots are the pistillate organs of the flowers, and eventually some even tinier yellow dots, the pollen-bearing staminate organs, will emerge as well. The flowers I found yesterday displayed only the red pistillate parts.

And talk about RED!  These tiny red flowers strewn all over the forest floor are the flowers of Red Maple trees (Acer rubrum).  I believe these are all staminate flowers, shed by the tree once they have released their pollen on the wind to pollinate the pistillate flowers that grow on separate trees. 

The only other flowers I found were those of grassy plants, neither of which is technically an actual "grass."  This clump of long slender green blades and yellow-stamened flowers is one of our woodland sedges.  It is possibly Pennsylvania Sedge (Carex pensylvanica) because of its slender leaves, although I have read that that species of sedge prefers dry soils, even though it can tolerate wetter ones.  There are many, many sedges I cannot identify.  I usually do recognize sedge flowers when I see them, though, with their tufts of tousled yellow stamens atop slender angled stems, with white thread-like pistils sprouting lower down on the stems.

Although these umbellate flowers atop slender stems are protruding from clusters of narrow green leaves, this is not a sedge, but rather a wood rush.  This is Hairy Wood Rush (Luzula acuminata), to be specific. I believe the fine hairs that suggested this plant's vernacular name are quite evident, even from this distance.  

Only the pistillate parts of this Hairy Wood Rush were protruding today, prepared to receive pollen from other nearby plants.  Eventually, the sepals will open to reveal the ring of stamens within, ready to shed their own pollen on the air to fertilize neighboring plants. When I first saw the open flowers of this wood rush, I thought they were some kind of miniature lily! (I took this photo below one year when I was lucky to find this plant at this stage.)

Oh wait!  I DID find one flower that most folks would recognize as looking like a real "flower," and that was a single plant of Carolina Spring Beauty (Claytonia caroliniana).  There were many other plants of this beautiful native wildflower growing in the same area, but only this one had come into bloom as yet.  My lucky day! 

And here was another lucky find.  A fungus, though, not a flower.  I call it "lucky" because I have never found this mushroom, Xeromphalina campanella, fruiting so generously, except in the fall, not in spring. Its scientific name means something like "little bell-shaped dry belly button," which is indeed kind of descriptive. One of its vernacular names is "Fuzzy Foot," which is also descriptive if you can find the fuzzy mass of mycelia surrounding the bottom of its stem (usually well hidden).  By whatever name it is called, I am always delighted to find its masses of tiny bright-colored disks decorating the rotting wood of fallen logs. The thick green carpet of Broom Moss certainly added to the charm of this find.

Here's a closer look at Xeromphalina campanella, revealing how adorably cute its teeny tiny mushrooms can be.