Wildflowers of May

All those showers of April, and also into May, have done their job well. The woodland wildflowers look quite lush! At Rondeau Tuliptree Trail, Spicebush Trail and South Point Trail (the drier, west side) are all great places to find an abundance of wildflowers, although many of them can be found in other woodlands elsewhere in southern Ontario. While these trails are also popular for birders in their search for birds, the birds are sometimes hard to come by. Wildflowers, while they are in bloom for a few days, are a pleasant diversion and certainly more predictable when the birds seem scarce.

 What follows are just a few of the wildflowers that have caught my eye.

Many readers will likely recognize most of the ones I include on this post. Probably the most recognizable one is the White Trillium, the provincial flower of Ontario.

 Less recognizable is the Red Trillium, at least in the form shown next. Trilliums are known to have peculiarities, and sometimes some real unusual ones appear. Normal trilliums have three petals. For some reason this plant got double! Actually this photo was taken a couple of years ago. It didn't show up in 2017, and when I went to check on it in 2018 it was already well past its best.

Wild Columbine is always a treat to see. Hummingbirds are on the lookout for it as well, as they hover beneath the flower and stick their long bills and tongues up the flower tube to get to the nectar in the little bulb at the tip. This next photo shows a typical Wild Columbine.

 As in the case of the Red Trillium, there can be some unusual forms of Wild Columbine. They can occasionally be a pale reddish orange, but very rarely do you see a pale yellow, almost white, version. In fact I have only seen this on two occasions at Rondeau. I came across this plant a couple of years ago, and so far it has reappeared in successive years. I'm not sure what the hummingbirds think about this colour form. White wine vs red wine???

Wild orchids are always a treat to find. This next plant is Showy Orchis (Galearis spectabilis). It is a small orchid and is generally very uncommon in rich deciduous hardwoods forests.

 Next is White Baneberry, also known as Doll's-eyes since the fruit is white with a black dot on one side, looking like the eye of a doll.

 Wild Geranium is widespread.

 Sweet Cicely is common in woodlands. Its flowers are small, and once they finish flowering you hardly notice them, until they go to seed. Then you find out the hard way, if you go walking through a stand of them, that those seeds are hard, pointed and can be somewhat painful. They have a tendency to get stuck in pants, socks and whatever they can latch on to, with their pointed ends jabbing your skin underneath.

 Violets are numerous, and one of the most common ones is Downy Yellow Violet.

Much less common, and restricted to sandy open woods is Wood Violet, shown next. The flowers don't look all that different from other bluish-purple violets, but the leaves are distinctive.

Another uncommon plant is this next one: American Gromwell.

It was on the Rondeau plant checklist, but it had not been seen since the early 1960s. It had been ranked as 'historic' for Chatham-Kent. Last year I came across a single clump, and included it in a blog post about a year ago. When I was in its locale this year, I did a more careful but quick check and noted there were about 10 clusters. Another person alerted me to the location of another clump and when I went and found it and did a more thorough check of the overall area, I came up with 17 clusters. Undoubtedly there are others, too.

From even a short distance away, it blends in with the lush vegetation it grows amongst, so it isn't surprising that it can be missed.

 If you looked at the individual flowers and thought they looked like those of a puccoon that you might find on the sandy beach dunes, good for you! The flowers are indeed similar, but yellow instead of orangey-yellow. And they are of the same genus: Lithospermum.

The heavy overcast days were great for finding and photographing wildflowers. It was also ideal for forest photography.

At least a few of these will continue to bloom well into June.

Colourful May Wildflowers

A few weeks ago I posted about April showers bringing April flowers, of which there are many that show up late in that month. However May seems to have the greatest diversity of flowers, especially in woodlands before the trees leaves get too dominant. The profusion is amazing, especially along some trails. In fact I have had birders tell me that when the birding got a bit slow, they thoroughly enjoyed the abundance of wildflowers.

This first one shown started in April, but May is its normal flowering period, and this population did persist flowering well into May.

Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis)

Forests with developing heavy canopy have the earliest species. Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum) is abundant.

 Less obvious is the Virginia Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum)

 White flowers, such as this Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza claytoni) don't stand out as much as more colourful ones. This is one you need to watch out for, especially if you venture off a trail, since the developed seeds are black and sharp-pointed and will penetrate clothing and prick you.

A similarly looking white flower is White Baneberry (Actea pachypoda), sometimes known as Doll's-eyes since the white berries with black dots were used by pioneers as eye's for home-made dolls.

Wild Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricata), sometimes called the pinwheel flower, is plentiful. It is just as often pinkish-purple or white as it is blue.

Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), in peak flower in May, should prossibly be called Juneapple, since the little apple fruit seldom occurs until June. Parts of the plant are poisonous.

On one occasion when I was getting ready to photograph some of the wildflowers, I encountered a species I had never seen in Rondeau before: False or American Gromwell (Lithospermum latifolium). In fact until I came across this small clump, it was considered an historical species for Chatham-Kent, and hadn't been seen in Rondeau since the early 1960s. It is nice to update the historical records.

A fairly rare woodland wildflower blooming in May is Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica). There are historical records for Chatham-Kent, but a fabulous colony of them occurs on a private property along the Thames River in Elgin County.

In more open woods, especially where there are lots of oaks and leaf development is slower, are a slightly different mix of wildflowers. Wild Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) is widely scattered, and often sought out by hummingbirds which can sometimes be seen hovering beneath the flower with its long bill up into the flower searching for nectar.

 On a very few occasions, you might encounter a pale yellow form of this normally bright orange-red flower.

 Robin's Plantain (Erigeron pulchellus) is quite restricted to sandy/grassy openings of the oak forest.

 False Toadflax (Comandra richardsonii) is another very restricted species, and not nearly as large and colourful as many others.

 Wood Betony (Pedicularis canadensis) on the other hand is usually quite abundant in these oak forest openings. They may be purplish, as shown in the first image, or yellow, as shown in the following one.

 An abundant member of the Lily family, growing in sandy soils along oak forest edges, is this Starry False Solomon's-seal (Maianthemum stellatum).

Just a few of the more obvious and sometimes less obvious, herbaceous wildflowers to be found in May, with some of them persisting into June. Herbaceous plants aren't the only ones with flowers. Woody plants have them too...some are obvious and some are so diminutive they aren't noticeable unless you look really, really hard for them. Some will be featured in a future post.