Spring Beauties

Spring is like high school.  It is the beauties who get our attention but sometimes even beauties are overlooked.  A beautiful child is often ignored if she is dressed poorly, has bad manners, or his family history is unacceptable to our community.  Such is the fate of the lowly dandelion. It shows up in our yard uninvited, blocks our invited grass from growing well, In general, it doesn't fit in with what we have planned for our yard.

But the composite bloom on a dandelion is beautiful, especially when seen away from manicured yards. I found this lone flower centered in one of our woodland paths, perfect in its roundness, the way each petal is cupped and curled inward, loosening from a tightly wrapped center. If I had found it in my yard, or garden, I would have looked on it with disdain and may have pulled it out of the ground, missing what it had to show me.

The middle English, Dent-de-lioun is a give-a-way of the history of the French name, tooth of a lion referring to the tooth shaped leaves of the plant.  As far back as 1373 the dandelion was documented as a herbal medicine.  The young leaves are good in salads and the plant has been used to make wine for centuries.  I love an earlier name for dandelion which is a pretty strong diuretic, piss-a-bed.  As suggested by this middle English name, salads made of dandelion leaves are better eaten at the noon meal rather than close to bed time.

This morning, I again visited the bloodroot patch.  There aren't many blooming plants left.The leaves have fallen off and lay scattered on the ground beneath each plant.  This one plant, still wet with the morning's dew was a late bloomer.

For most plants, in place of the flower is a tiny tear drop - shaped fruit, subtile, yet pretty on its own with a tiny mustard tipped stem standing tall against the exotic backdrop of a bloodroot leaf. Beneath the plant is its dark red root that makes a nice red dye, but is toxic so best left alone.  Spinners who use wool dyed with bloodroot should always wear a mask which still might not be enough to keep the toxins from causing respiratory problems.

As I expected, the squirrel corn blossoms  have now replaced the fading bloodroot along the creek beds.  Unlike bloodroot, which currently sticks close to the stream, squirrel corn cover a much larger area. On our farm, they cover not only the area of the creek, but also the rich shaded hillside. It is interesting that they are spread by ants in a process called myrmecochory.  The ants eat the seed covering then place the seed in their debris pile where it is protected and allowed to germinate in a  nutrient-rich surrounding.

Squirrel corn is considered a spring ephemeral, a group of plants with high photosynthetic rate.  They bloom and store energy quickly before the overhead tree canopy blocks the sun from reaching them. Ephemerals also do not keep their folliage through the summer so thy aren't wasting energy needed for reproduction.

Their early bloom allows them to be pollinated when there is less competition for the attention of bumblebees and honey bees.  Bumble bees force apart the petal tips to reach the nectar with their long tongues.  The picture below shows a squirrel corn blossom that has been reached first by a honey bee which bored a hole into the petal tip to reach the nectar.

Some more perfect petals await full of nectar for the bumblebee.

My garden has its own share of beauties, each with its own story.  The goldenseal was saved from being buried by coal refuse.  Like bloodroot and dandelion, goldenseal Hydrastis canadensis has a long history of use.  It has been used for medical purposes as an anti-inflamatory or a laxative among other uses. Goldenseal was used by early native americans to treat cancer and has been documented to cure goiters.

I use it to make me smile.

 I first planted the plant in in the deep shade of my periwinkle bed, but but through the years the goldenseal has slowly walked forward so that it is in the morning sun.  The flower stems lean forward toward the sun so that its seeds are dropped a few inches closer each year.  My goldenseal is surrounded by periwinkle, trillium, wild geraniums and bee balm during the summer. This, my first flower bed has the most diversity of plantings and also includes Virginia bluebells, bloodroot, rue anemones and wood poppies.   The white trillium, Trillium grandiflorum  made its first appearance on Easter Sunday this year which is interesting as its distinctive three leaves have been used to represent the trinity in some stories.  When the flower is picked, most people also pick the three leaves which seriously damages the plant, stealing its power to reserve any energy for a whole growing season. The beauty of a the flower will not continue without the power of all three leaves working together to create it.

Bloodroot

"Surprise" beauty imbeds itself onto our brains securely.  A beautiful scene is nice, but fades mored readily if it is expected. Such was my find of bloodroot in the woods a few days ago. While it may be a common plant for many people, for me it was a surprise that has even made its way into my dreams. I dreamed last night that I found the same spot over and over again in places where I had been many times before. 

I did go back Saturday to the patch I wrote about a couple days ago to see how the plants looked when in full bloom.  When I arrived at the spot, I was again surprised to see more plants than I could count.  The sun was almost directly overhead and too bright for good pictures, but I captured a few to share. I especially appreciated the plants growing among squirrel corn.

It's interesting that as the bloodroot fades, the squirrel corn will come into bloom continuing with bright white, probably attracting the same pollinators.  The larger, upturned bloom of the bloodroot may be what initially attracts the insects that keep coming back to find then smaller, squirrel corn flower hidden beneath its delicate leaves. 

My mother told me of when she was young - eighty years ago - driving to Pippen Hills, the small white country church she and her mother attended.  The dirt road roughly followed the creek and in spring one turn brought them upon a large patch of bloodroot.  She could count on them every year to appear in that damp, shady part of the woods. The church was built beside a cool spring that flowed right out of the mountain then ran alongside the church.  My grandfather had built the church (actually had it built) and her mother taught Sunday School there.  It is also where my grandmother's funeral was held before being buried at the family plot at Algoma, back up the road.

Hedgehog Elegance

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery is a book about beauty. It uses the beauty of language to help its readers discover what is beauty and what is beautiful. The author directs us to think of a hedgehog who appears ugly with its cruel quills covering its body. It is hard to see beyond the quills to the gentle beautiful hedgehog hidden beneath.

 Wonderfully translated from French, the novel describes the encounters of a beautiful child who only sees life's ugliness.  In response she plans to end her own life from a world and family that is not worthy of her. She then meets the apartment concierge who is, herself, plain, and does everything to to be sure that no one sees beauty in her.  Each of these characters is more brilliant than her surroundings both in the power of her mind and in her perception of the world. Paloma, the child, sees beauty in a moment of time as a rose drops from its stem forever changing the space of time during which it dropped.  Renee, the concierge recognizes that beauty is universal, seen in both a still life of Vermeer and the kindness of a friend.

A third character, Msr. Ozu is introduced late in the novel.  It is  Ozu who transcends age, class and culture leading both females to discover their own beauty; the death of one awakening the desire to live in the other.

In nature we see this trait of beauty.  Often, when looked at from clouded eyes we see the ugliness of nature; erosion brought about by human interference. A perfect sugar maple is struck by lightening and left to rot amid fallen leaves and a stream forms from spring rains cutting a gash through mossy ground leaving an open wound as moss and earth slowly tumble toward the river. A well driller dozes through the forest leaving mud holes and discarded tools in his wake.

But ugliness might only mask beauty not destroy it. I saw a vermillion fungis exploding from under the decaying maple. Its edges, outlined in creamy white, had small pieces bitten off, but by whom?

 The damp earth has caused me to stop in my tracks as I pondered crossing a new chasm without covering my shoes with mud.  I paused as a piece of orange plastic caught my eye, out of place against the green moss. But wait, the plastic is not plastic at all, but a bright orange newt almost translucent in the shaded woods.

The opposite side of the hill is still littered with metal junk left from a past landowner who was not a land steward. I've avoided this spot in the past in an effort to spare my eyes from the ugy scattering of metal car parts and plastic, broken in some long-grown child's past.

But my avoidance has been a disservice to beauty.  I might argue that beauty does not exist until it has been witnessed and recognized - like the proverbial tree falling in the forest.  I tend to believe, though, that the beauty of the newt and the red fungus were there whether I saw them or not but my sight - my perception - brought about something else. Through my witness beauty became a space in time not possible except through the connectivness of creation.  

Only an hour before I had been driven to refuse a nap and visit the woods on a rainy Sunday afternoon. The rain had driven a horde of mountain chorus frogs to an orgy in an alge-rich mud hole where their deafening  "reek-rake" calls drew me in an vain effort to photograph a frog.  The mud, along with a fallen tree, forced my path into a ravine where erosion runnoff has cut through a mossy bog, driving a bright orange newt with its perfect circular spots out from under a rock to find an orange fungus from which it makes a meal. All this happens as I stumble onto the scene; a scene I would have missed had I not been stopped by the stream in my effort to get back on a proven path.

My arrival caused the newt to freeze in the hope that I would not notice it. But how could I help but notice its beauty, seemingly incongruous with its surroundings? I had become part of a moment, a beautiful space in time.  I became beautiful for my part in it.

As I contemplated my "lucky" find I saw a tiny plant emerging from the boggy ground. 

Bloodroot!

Never had I seen bloodroot growing in the wild! I have a few specimens garnered from two of my sister's gardens. They are nice, but could never match this scene. More than a dozen tiny plants with white spots hovering above like angle-white raindrops were scattered around my muddy feet. I gasped when I saw them for they truly took my breath away. I almost missed them, and would have had not the frogs croaked, the well men not drilled, the rains not poured, the tree not fallen, the newt not eaten and I had not paused to be aware of them all. 

I saw the newt and the newt saw me.  God bless the newt and God bless me.

(with apologies to mother goose)