April flowers - Part 1

The change in daylight hours happens more quickly around the equinoxes. Similarly, change in the forest seems to have moved at a lightning pace since the spring equinox on March 20th. Even early April was a different world. Plants that littered the forest everywhere one looked have been completely altered, yielding the stage to the next eye-catching flower. At first skunk cabbage had the most obvious reproductive structure.



Now these gnome hoods have been replaced by lush leaf spreads.



The first of the more stereotypical flowers were the small white or purple flowers of hepatica I noticed tucked among the leaf litter on April 3.



In mid-April, while hepatica was wide open in a last burst of color before turning to seed pods, the real diversity began to emerge. One native among many was blue cohosh, whose stems rose in stooped forms reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss book.



Blue cohosh has settled in after a couple weeks, retaining just a tint of blue as it mingles with the trilliums and mayapples that dominate the forest floor.



To be continued...