March 23 - Spring Beauty and Yellow Trout Lily

Another unseasonably warm day -- in the 80's! As you can see below the wood is getting a bit greener.

I found two new wildflowers today!  The first are Spring Beauties.

Spring Beauty

Spring Beauty wildflowers appear white or pink depending on the light. You can identify them by their flower clusters and thin leaves. Notice the striping on the leaves. According to "Wildflowers of Michigan Field Guide" by Stan Tekiela, these serve as "runways" to insects to guide them to the nectar in the middle.

The root of the Spring Beauty is an edible tuber! But the flower has been over-gathered because of this, so unless you are starving, please don't pick them.

The next blossom I found was the only one I saw so far, although I see its leaves all over the place. It was a Yellow Trout Lily. I expect to see a bunch more later because it's one of the more common spring flowers. However, the flowers only bloom once every seven years, so I might not, even though there are bunch of trout lily leaves all over the place!

Yellow Trout Lilies can be identified by their mottled leaves (hence the "trout" name) and 6 backward-curving petals. These flowers are also called "Dogtooth Violets" because the white underground bulb is shaped like a tooth.