Last Spring Walk

A-a-h-h-h, Spring, There is no better place to be than in a temperate climate during the spring. Spring gives us cool, crisp mornings with clear sunny days.  A different plant blooms each day.  Each morning brings a new bird call to our ears. But the season is much too short.
Today, the calendar says "spring" but the thermostat says here in the mid-Ohio valley we have moved beyond that.  Here is your chance to dawdle in our late spring woods for my last walk before the temperatures soared into the 90's as they are today.

2011 Spring has brought us a climate more like the Pacific Northwest than what is normal here.  All that moisture has resulted in an explosion of mushrooms, tree ears and all sorts of fungi.  This beautiful brown one was squeezed out of a crack in a dying tree. Its skin, like the fur of a woodland mammal caught my attention through a thick patch of multi-flora rose. 

A few weeks earlier I had found an area of woods with flowers I had never seen on our property.  The problem was that this was not our property. 

Wild Oats (Uvularia sessilifolia)

Here, the woods have been left un-timbered for over forty years, leaving the forest floor shaded with no briars and grasses to compete with more sensitive plants such as this Solomon's seal (Polygonatum biflorum).  I have often searched for this plant through the thirty-four years I have lived here. It delights me each time I discover something new right under my nose.

We have plenty of False solomon's seal (Maianthemum racemosum). Notice that the flower is at the tip of the leaf stem rather than hanging beneath the plant as in Polygonatum biflorum.

Tiny Jack in the pulpits (Arisaema triphyllum) grow all over this section of the woods.  This particular type stays tiny, no taller than seven to ten inches.

Tomorrow, we'll continue onward, stepping across the property line to see what awaits us.  

Enjoy the rest of your Memorial Day weekend.