The spring ephemerals are the first to show their stuff!
Always a welcome site, these little beauties bloom before the trees unfurl their leaves. As the sun starts to warm the soil, these plants burst from tubers and bulbs and put up leaves and flowers all in a few weeks. Don’t cut them for your bouquets, many of these plants do not have a perfumed scent, as in the case of the purple trillium, a.k.a. Stinking Benjamin. These “stinking” plants attract flies for pollination. The spring ephemerals are often gone from the visable landscape by summer, but they have produced seeds and stored nutrients in their bulbs by this time and will be ready for next spring.
In our area we see Bloodroot, Spring Beauty, Trout Lily, Hepatica, Squirrel Corn, Dutchman’s Breeches, Trillium and Twinleaf blooming in our shade gardens and woodlands.