Malabar Farm naturalist, Lisa Durham leads a contingent of visitors on a “Wildflower Walk” held recently at the farm. My friends Jenny Lezak, right rear, and Birdie Moore, next left, and I joined about two dozen other folks on this popular, annual event.
A BLOOMIN’ GOOD TIME—
If you walked really quietly in Malabar Farm’s marshy lowland—Shhhhhh—you could almost hear the spring wildflowers flexing their organic muscles and popping skyward through the warming soil.
Naturalist Durham led our half of the day’s visitors; stopping frequently, as she did when she knelt and prodded the soil gently with her pencil and popped the sub-surface tuber of a Cutleaf Toothwort plant into view.
“Here, taste this,” she said as she passed around the smaller-than-cashew shaped tuber which crunched like a carrot and tasted a bit like mild horseradish. “It’s very nourishing” she exuded as several of us tip-toed into the adventure of edible wildflowers.
Another sparkling example of Malabar’s early spring is the native Bloodroot with the delightful white petals sprayed around its delicate yellow center (pictured right)
The suffix “...wort” on many wildflowers does not denote a bumpy skin blemish. It is simply a Saxon word for “Plant” she noted.
“And over there is a Trout Lily,” she said (pictured bottom) as a delicate and small yellow blossom splashed its spring color on the drab, decaying leaf background. Its green leaves were mottled by a dark hue of spots—not unlike, well, a trout; the fish variety.
Up near the farm’s “caverns” we were treated to delightful groupings of Dutchman’s Breeches
(pictured right lower) That’s along the “...Butternut Trail—which, by the way, we have no idea where this trail name came from—we do not have any Butternut Trees,” she mused.
This delicate little plant with the perky blossoms that do indeed, resemble a Dutchman’s britches, suffers with the scientific name “Dicentra cucullaria” for those of you with scholarly instincts.
I enjoyed learning the name of the wildflower “Spring Beauty” a quarter-sized plant with five white petals delicately striped in shades of purple or pink. I see them in abundance on my hilly, wooded trails.
I also have lots of Touch-Me-Nots, known as Jewel Weed but I did not know the word “Jewel” comes from the tiny drops of water or dew that commonly form on the two dime-sized leaves that first emerge in the springtime.
One of my favorites the Trillium—Ohio’s official wildflower—was just beginning to appear with its readily identifiable leaves soon to be adorned with the plant’s distinctive white, three-petal blossoms.
Lisa provided the visitors with a sheet entitled Ohio Spring Wildflowers. It lists 25 families which contain 56 different varieties of these visual delights of springtime.
She also recommended Newcomes Wildflower Guide as a dandy reference, field book for those of you who might be really curious.
____________________________________________
Click here for the Malabar Farm State Park home page: http://www.malabarfarm.org/
Trout Lilly or Dogtooth Violet
A BLOOMIN’ GOOD TIME—
If you walked really quietly in Malabar Farm’s marshy lowland—Shhhhhh—you could almost hear the spring wildflowers flexing their organic muscles and popping skyward through the warming soil.
Naturalist Durham led our half of the day’s visitors; stopping frequently, as she did when she knelt and prodded the soil gently with her pencil and popped the sub-surface tuber of a Cutleaf Toothwort plant into view.
“Here, taste this,” she said as she passed around the smaller-than-cashew shaped tuber which crunched like a carrot and tasted a bit like mild horseradish. “It’s very nourishing” she exuded as several of us tip-toed into the adventure of edible wildflowers.
Another sparkling example of Malabar’s early spring is the native Bloodroot with the delightful white petals sprayed around its delicate yellow center (pictured right)
The suffix “...wort” on many wildflowers does not denote a bumpy skin blemish. It is simply a Saxon word for “Plant” she noted.
“And over there is a Trout Lily,” she said (pictured bottom) as a delicate and small yellow blossom splashed its spring color on the drab, decaying leaf background. Its green leaves were mottled by a dark hue of spots—not unlike, well, a trout; the fish variety.
Up near the farm’s “caverns” we were treated to delightful groupings of Dutchman’s Breeches
(pictured right lower) That’s along the “...Butternut Trail—which, by the way, we have no idea where this trail name came from—we do not have any Butternut Trees,” she mused.This delicate little plant with the perky blossoms that do indeed, resemble a Dutchman’s britches, suffers with the scientific name “Dicentra cucullaria” for those of you with scholarly instincts.
I enjoyed learning the name of the wildflower “Spring Beauty” a quarter-sized plant with five white petals delicately striped in shades of purple or pink. I see them in abundance on my hilly, wooded trails.
I also have lots of Touch-Me-Nots, known as Jewel Weed but I did not know the word “Jewel” comes from the tiny drops of water or dew that commonly form on the two dime-sized leaves that first emerge in the springtime.
One of my favorites the Trillium—Ohio’s official wildflower—was just beginning to appear with its readily identifiable leaves soon to be adorned with the plant’s distinctive white, three-petal blossoms.
Lisa provided the visitors with a sheet entitled Ohio Spring Wildflowers. It lists 25 families which contain 56 different varieties of these visual delights of springtime.
She also recommended Newcomes Wildflower Guide as a dandy reference, field book for those of you who might be really curious.
____________________________________________
Click here for the Malabar Farm State Park home page: http://www.malabarfarm.org/
Trout Lilly or Dogtooth Violet 
No comments:
Post a Comment