Thursday, July 11, 2013

Spring 2013, a few ephemeral Missouri wildflowers

Spring had enough rain (for my purposes, anyway), so it went well. Here begins 2013, still getting caught up, but stick with me, there’s some awesome things coming up in future posts from the past!

Here is some February-March-April, rounding up a few of the usual wildflower suspects, with some surprise extra growing things.

trillium trillium silvergrey

Looks like two different species to me…Missouri has 7 species of trillium.
Need. More. Field guides.

virginia bluebell and dutchmans breeches buds
Mertensia virginica (left) and Dicentra cucullaria




















Virginia bluebell and Dutchman's breeches, buds and leaves. Not the most compelling image, but I liked how they were right next to each other, and both at around the same bud stage. Perhaps they know each other outside of work.

dutchman buds
Dicentra cucullaria buds
Every year now I get carried away with these. I just can’t get over the shape of the buds. If you were to ask most people to describe a flower bud, they would not come up with anything close to this.
dutchmans breeches  buds

They sway in the breeze, and they are tiny, so I have a hard time convincing my point-and-shoot camera to focus on them. Still, they are lovely. They look like watercolors to me.

Dutchmans breeches

Their soft feathery leaves are quite nice, too. There is a hint of blue in them.

unknown brown bracket

No idea what that is, above (some kind of bracket polypore), but I know I like the shapes.

false rue anemone Enemion biternatum
Enemion biternatum



















That’s false rue anemone. I bet everybody who has a nature blog probably has a picture of those flowers, but I am posting it here to tell you the easy way to tell these apart from real rue anemone. False rue anemone flowers almost always have five petals, and they're mostly white, and how many letters are in the word “false” and "white"? Bam!

Of course there are many other ways to tell them apart when they’re not in bloom, but at least now you have that.

false rue anemone leaves Enemion biternatum
Got mucro?

All those little white dots on the false rue anemone leaf tips are called “mucro.” A mucro is a point on the end of something. Don’t use that word unless referring to something in biology or zoology (or Scrabble).

I wonder what they’re for.

Houstonia pusilla, tiny bluet-001
bluets

Above are some sweet little bluets, Houstonia caerulea. The whole flower is only about 1/4” across.

I don’t see these every year, I wonder if they’re short-lived and I miss them by not hiking on the right day.

Houstonia pusilla, tiny bluet seed pods-008
Houstonia caerulea seed pods



Found some seed pods too.

Cladonia lichen

Cladonia! A type of lichen.

Cladonia lichen close

I first saw this in February, and two months later it was still there, unchanged as far as I could tell. Lichen is persistent! See text accompanying the jelly lichen for why all I have is the genus for this.


1 comment:

  1. I can't tell you how much I enjoy your posts. I'm in western Kentucky so your woods look like our woods. It is always a treat. I especially like your lichen shots.

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