Spring Saves Her Best For Last!

 The best? Well, let's say "the showiest." Lord knows, I adore the pastel-colored blooms of hepatica in earliest spring, then the shy violets that follow,  the trilliums of earlier May, and who could not adore the lovely aptly named Starflowers still holding their own in the woods?  But WOW!  Just LOOK at the colorful spectacle these gorgeous blooms produce, as the chill of spring makes way for the warmth of coming summer! These are only a few of the glorious flowers I encountered just this past week.

In the deep-shaded swamps and on forested river banks, Early Azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum) is as brilliantly colorful as its flowers are intensely fragrant.

It's hard to believe that the dryest, most low-nutrient soils of sandplains and pinebushes could provide the favored habitat of one of our most generous and beautiful bloomers, the Sundial Lupine (Lupinus perennis).

As I said, a truly GENEROUS bloomer! (The photo below was taken at the Gick Farm Parcel of the Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park, which manages this property to produce such floral abundance of the lupines to provide larval food for the endangered Karner Blue Butterfly.)

 Moving from the lupine meadows into the pine woods, I am often amazed by the vast carpets of blooming Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense).  Individually, one probably would not call these flower clusters all that "showy," but such an abundance of bloom most certainly is!  And their fragrance is lovely, too, especially on warm humid days.

The acidic soil under pines is also the favored habitat of our gorgeous Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), one of New York State's nearly 60 species of native orchids.  Many of our native orchids are the opposite of what could be called "showy," but not THIS one!

The Yellow Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum) is equally as showy as its pink cousin orchid, but it prefers a more basic, lime-rich soil, in shaded, often rocky habitats.  Oddly enough,  that could be just a ditch along a country road, which is where I photographed these.

Now, I doubt anyone would classify the tiny, yellowish-white terminal flowers of Tower Mustard (Turritis glabra) as "showy."  But oh, have you ever seen another species so rigidly erect? I found this multi-height population along a sandy path quite delightful, like the vertical lines on a sonograph, a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies in a sound.  I playfully imagined these plants were representing a happy spring song.

Here's another charming view of the Sundial Lupine, "showy" if you look closely at the crystal drops at the center of its radiating leaflets.  The lupine leaves are textured in a way that they can't be wetted, so the misty rain falling on them slid right into the center to form a single droplet. When the brief shower passed and the sun returned, the entire acres of lupine leaves sparkled like a field of diamonds.