For our April meeting we welcomed Margery Winters, Assistant Director of Roaring Brook Nature Center. The virtual program was “Spring Wildflowers.” We discovered why they bloom in the spring, where to find them, how they got their names and what makes these plants so special.
Margery is the Assistant Director at Roaring Brook Nature Center in Canton and manages their native plant gardens. She is a past President of the Simsbury Garden Club and past Chairman of the Federated Garden Club Landscape Design Study Program and is a Master Landscape Design Consultant.
Some of the spring wildflowers that we learned about are shown below.
Skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidusis, is a perennial wildflower that grows in swampy, wet areas of forest lands. This unusual plant sprouts very early in the spring, and has an odd chemistry that creates its own heat, often melting the snow around itself as it first sprouts in the spring.
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Jack- in-the- Pulpit, Arisaema triphyllum, is either male OR female, some of the plants should be known as “Jill-in-the-Pulpit.” Usually a jack that makes male flowers has only one main leaf while female plants have two.
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Liverwort, Hepatica, is a spring-blooming herbaceous perennial which also goes by the common names liverleaf or liverwort. The common name comes from the supposed resemblance of the leaves to the human liver, both of which have three lobes.
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Trout Lily, Erythronium americanum, also known as the yellow trout lily, or yellow dogtooth violet, is a species of perennial, colony forming, spring ephemeral flower native to North America and dwelling in woodland habitats.
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Fringed bleeding heart, Dicentra eximia, is native to the Eastern United States. It is found naturally throughout forest floors and shaded, rocky out-crops. This native variety is also known as wild bleeding heart.
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Dutchman’s Breeches, Dicentra cucullariais, is a true spring woodland ephemeral species. It flowers early in the spring when sunlight hits the woodland floor before the canopy of the trees fill in. This is an ideal time for the first emerging bumblebees to find and nectar on the flowers.
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Trillium, There are 39 native trilliums in the U.S. All trillium species belong to the Liliaceae (lily) family. Native to temperate regions of North America and East Asia, the genus ‘Trillium’ has 49 species, 39 of them are native to various areas across the United States. Because leaves on the plant stalk are near the flower, if you pick the bloom, the plant won’t be able to collect sunlight and nutrients and it may take years to recover — or it may never recover.
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False Solomon’s Seal, Maianthemum racemosum, grows from shallow rhizomes, and has foliage that is arranged in a zigzag formation along its 12- to 16-inch arching stems. This is a woodland plant that occurs in moist forests and along streambanks. Flowers become fleshy, round berries, showy and measuring 5 to 7 mm across.