This week in the woods, we’re trying to hold onto some sweet spring things before they grow up, move past bloom time, or lose their tenderness. These red fox kits (two of four siblings we counted) rested from a bout of roughhousing outside their den beneath a shed in Thetford, Vermont. Kits emerge from their dens after the first 4 to 6 weeks of their lives, at which point their parents begin introducing them to solid food. Within another 4 weeks, they will be weaned, and sometime between the end of the summer and February, they’ll disperse to find their own territories.
Along with its cousin the Virginia spring beauty (which has narrower and pointier leaves), the Carolina spring beauty is among the earliest wildflowers to appear, showing off tiny sets of petals striped with shades of pink. The spring beauty miner bee has an almost-exclusive relationship with this spring ephemeral; the males linger lazily around the flowers, awaiting females, and the females make one-egg larval chambers stocked with cakes of spring beauties’ pink pollen. The spring beauties themselves are particular; they prefer undisturbed ground in mature forests with moist, rich soil. In his article from the Spring 2019 issue of Northern Woodlands, Benjamin Lord advises, “Look for rock outcroppings rich in calcium and other soluble minerals that leach into surrounding soils.” In such nutrient-rich places during this time of year, when the roots of leafless or leafing-out trees absorb less water, rapid wildflower growth prevents essential elements such as potassium and nitrogen from washing away.
In the same wooded seepage area in the woods behind Elise and Tig Tillinghast’s home, we also saw blooming patches of Dutchman’s breeches, with puffy, pronged white blossoms stringed from stalks above finely dissected compound leaves, and scattered trout lilies, perhaps the most common spring ephemeral, with pale-orange flower bells drooped over leaves patterned like the splotched sides of rainbow trout. Sharp-lobed hepatica (shown here) and round-lobed hepatica both show pink and purple sepals in addition to white. As Assistant Editor Catherine Wessel discusses in this week’s Outside Story, hepatica fit the loose definition of spring ephemerals, blooming in early spring before the canopy closes, but they overwinter with their leaves, making them evergreen. (Dutchman’s breeches, trout lily, and hepatica belong to the 4.5 percent of plants, discussed two weeks ago, that rely on ants to spread their seeds.)
Early saxifrage (or Virginia saxifrage) showed its branching clusters of small white flowers on a ledge above the seepage. In this piece from our archive on the “doctrine of signatures,” Allaire Diamond describes how medieval doctors once believed saxifrage – which takes its name from the Latin saxum for “rock” and fragere for “to break” – to be useful in breaking apart kidney stones. While such a claim does not stand up to scientific scrutiny, this saxifrage has much more evidenced use for winged pollinators early in the spring.
Nearby, twoleaf miterwort (or bishop’s cap) showed off its tiny, delicate flowers for those who would look closely, and early blue cohosh bloomed in subtle clusters among its similarly dark leaves.
The striking, goblet-shaped devil’s urn (also called black tulip fungus or crater cup) fruits early, opening as it matures between March and May. You can find this leathery, dark-brown fungus growing in clusters on decaying hardwoods as a parasite or on fallen dead wood.
In Lyme, New Hampshire, these ostrich fern fiddleheads still hadn’t completely uncurled. Most ferns go through the fiddlehead stage – and make for a perfect example of a fractal. However, people most often mean the ostrich fern in particular when they refer to edible fiddleheads. These Kermit-colored signs of spring have smooth, inverted-J-shaped stems with a U-shaped crevice and ragged brown papery scales, and you may also see in their proximity the towering brown fertile fronds remaining from the year before. For more from our archives, see Sheila McGrory-Klyza’s article “Fiddlehead Season,” Todd McLeish’s “Sustainable Fiddlehead Harvesting,” and a poem by Patty Crane: “all it takes,” she writes, “is a quick snap to hold tomorrow in your hand / and feel its paper-thin sheathing.”
What have you noticed in the woods this week? Submit a recent photo for possible inclusion in our monthly online Reader Photo Gallery.