Bloodroot and Blue Hepatica

The patch of Bloodroot in the front garden had a few more flowering plants come up. You can see how leaf grasps the stem to help keep it safe. They only lasted three days this year, the Twinleaf actually lasted longer! 

If I ever get more Blue Hepatica I'll be sure to plant it around the Bloodroot. The combination of the big white flowers of Bloodroot and the small ones of the Hepatica would be a nice combination. Though I don't think they could be mixed together very much as the Bloodroot would likely shade the Hepatica out... though the Hepatica is evergreen...

Hepatic flowers for a longer time and slowly changes color. Pictured here is the same flower as the one above it, but a day sooner. You can see how they start to fade over time.

My second Blue Hepatica has more flowers on it this year than it did last. Neither is in good shape but hopefully this is sign they're starting to establish. When they were all planted in the front yard they did start to reseed.

The majority of my plants have either white or pink flowers to them. Which I'm pretty sure are also the ones that reseed regularly as they tend to have far more flowers. They're pretty but I can only take so many white flowering plants. Need something to break up the monotint especially with such a large clump of Stonecrop right next to them which will turn into a carpet of white flowers in a week or two. 

More Wildflower Shots

Jeffersonia diphylla, The same Twin Leaf that I posted about earlier, was open again even more so than the day before. The petals have since fallen off of course so it flowered for all of two days.

Thankfully I have a couple dozen of these plants growing now and with others that have yet to flower. I still don't really have an overlap of bloom so cross pollination is questionable at best. All of these plants should go on to produce seed pods with seeds in them, but ones that are cross pollinated will make seeds that are better about growing into a plant.

Got a better shot of the Hepatica too. And a very detailed shot of one of last year's leaves.

Mason Bees are flying about mostly breeding at this time but I see a few other types of bees pollinating things like Spring Beauty and some of the other nonnative weeds in my yard.

The first Trillium has opened up so I'll be taking pictures of that along with a few others that started to bloom.

Wildflower Season Begins!

Alright it's spring time and you know what that means; it's wildflower seasons! Yay!

I got a new camera for this season along with a fancy new lens that does a great job at showing a real depth of field. So far I've found it to be ideal at photographing wildflowers, but smaller things like ants are going to be more difficult with it. Larger insects will likely be okay as well, but it captures too big of an image to really home in on just an ant or two. It's a manual focus too so I have to take like 20 images of the same thing lightly adjusting the focus to hopefully capture a good one. I'm still learning.

Ideally here I wanted to see the inside of the flower, Twin Leaf, Jeffersonia diphylla, but I didn't get one where it was in focus enough to really get what I was going for. I planted a tone of these last year and I'm really happy to see they're all mostly coming up, and at slightly different times of one another. Even though they're next to each other, it seems the amount of leaf litter and sunshine they get really effect the bloom time of this plant. It's both a shame and a good thing for me. Twin Leaf is notorious for only flowering 8 hours to 2 days long, making pollination very unlikely on most years. It's good though because I get more chances to photograph the flower.

Here is a Hepatica which I had an easier time photographing. The one failing though is the flowers wanted to aim towards another plant that I couldn't get my camera and twin flash into. So I ended up having to take the second bloom (out of focus behind this one) and putting it in front. See below. 

This second flower isn't quite as blue as the first one but it's just as pretty.

STUDY: Mutualism fails when climate response differs between interacting species
I recently learned that Hepatica may set their seed "early" for our local species of Aphaenogaster (an ant) to take interest in dispersing their seeds. At least for where I am in New Jersey. The Aphaenogaster rudis we have in my yard and forests throughout New Jersey apparently become active "later in the year," than a different species, Aphaenogaster picea. To be honest though I didn't understand what the author meant in the study when they talked about later in the year or active earlier. A. picea is more common in northern parts of the US and Canada for sure, and apparently they're better about taking an interest in Hepatica seeds than A. rudis. However, when the Hepatica in my yard are dropping seeds it's already May or June and Aphaenogaster rudis very much "active" at that time. I'm not sure why the A. rudis don't bother with the seeds, maybe it's because the Hepatica I grow were all store bought and not a local genotype, but something is a miss here. Elaiosome should = ant food and for Aphaenogaster of all genera to ignore it means something is up here.

A Native Garden Growing Old

One of the absolute joys of having grown native plants for close what has to be ten years now is finding some of the more finicky plants reproducing in the yard.

It's nice when nurseries tell you the lighting conditions and how much moisture a plant loved but there's so much more to plants than that. What's the moisture supposed to be like over the winter? Do they like sandy soil, rocks, clay, loam? If so, is it just that they're tolerant of it, or is this a soil type they would naturally like to grow in? It's things like this that often leave gardeners wondering why certain plants never establish or do well in some locations.

I've found a lot of native plants are drought tolerant, but sometimes that's at the cost of them flowering and or going on to produce viable seed. 

One of the first natives I planted was a Hepatica acutiloba. Just one. This is a little seedling of that plant that's come up adjacent to that original plant. While I've since moved the parent, I still occasionally find seedlings sprouting up in that location.

When I found this species in the wild it was several plants nestled in a rocky slope on the shady bank of a river, just above the flood line. The seeds do have packets of elaiosome on them indicating that ants are the ideal method for planting them, however I've never been able to see this in action even after handing the seeds to the ants! The ants mostly ignore them, except for the invasive pavement ant, Tetramorium caespitum, but I'm 99% certain they'd eat the seeds instead of discard them in the nest for planting. This can happen even with native ant species too, it's just odd I haven't found a species that takes interest in the seeds to this plant. Maybe I'm using the wrong Hepatica species?

Something else I find odd is that the plant would produce a hairy stem this early on. I've read that the hair on the stem are to prevent ants from stealing nectar from the flower.... so why is it on a fresh stem, to a leaf, on a first year seedling, that's no where near a flowering age? The flowers on adult plants are produced higher early in the spring before any new leaves are pushed out.

And speaking of adult plants, the new ones I installed are finishing up their bloom phase. Soon they'll be pushing up new leaves. These flowering stems will lose their petals and slowly lean outward as the star-like cluster of seeds develops. When they're ready, the star of seeds basically falls apart. (I wonder if the seeds have to be wet for ants to take interest in them as the elaiosome isn't stored in a pod.) Another theory as to why the ant seed dispersal hasn't worked is the lack of cross pollination. Well this year I've seen mason bees working the flowers on sunny mornings so I might be able to rule that out, assuming they don't require a specialized pollinator.

Another page in the joys of seeds walking away from me comes in the form of Trilliums. Here a new Trillium seedling has pushed up its first leaf right in the lawn. (Either that or its a Pikmin) Thankfully it's a shady spot that never needs mowing, and also they're pretty easy to transplant. I've been growing Trilliums for years now so it's great to finally see this occurring.

Many of the Trilliums I've been growing have either diminished in root size or otherwise fluctuated between good and bad years but never really expanded. I believe this was because the soil wasn't healthy enough for them to really establish well thus their population stayed steady. Something that I started doing was allowing the leaf litter to stay on the flower beds I had Trilliums planted in. It's taken forever but finally the leaf litter has mulched itself in and I'm starting to see the established plants doing a lot better. Some of the smaller plants that never flowered before are dividing like crazy this year. I've got at least two plants that are pushing up a dozen stems, and even some of those have blooms on them. They're still pushing through the soil so I don't have an exact count but I'm impressed with the progress.

Another issue I was having was, some species weren't getting enough moisture over the summer months. So they'd come up and flower pretty but they couldn't maintain a seed pod once the summer heat set in, and watering them didn't seem to be helping much either. The leaves looked like they were cooking in the sun almost, despite the full shade conditions. I've since transplanted these to a different garden bed and they seem to do okay, though I won't know for sure until I see them flower and seed this year. At any rate they're getting more shade and are closer to the hose now.

Jeffersonia diphylla, Twinleaf is the other gardening triumph this year. I started with three plants, only one of which would flower. I was having the same issue where some years I'd lose the seed pod to lack of watering over the summer so I decided to move the one that flowered into a wetter flower bed and it died! The other two I basically ignored until last year when I noticed one flowering. It had a single bloom on it if I recall and this year it's produced eight!

This is one of the hardest wildflower to find flowering in the wild. From the time the blooms open you have roughly 8 hours to 2 days to see them and get your pictures in. Something as simple as a windy day will make them drop their petals and that will be it for the year! Because of this, pollination, and especially cross pollination isn't that common. I'm not sure that cross pollination is necessary to produce seed but I've heard it does help the plant make larger packets of elaiosome to entice more ants to transplant the seeds. My fingers are crossed that the seed pods develop because I'd rather not risk transplanting them again.

I've since found a wholesaler for Twinleaf, and Trilliums, and I'm reasonably happy with the product they sent me this year. It's just great seeing plants I've established are also trying to save me money.

Hepatica in Bloom

And so begins another year of Wildflower watching. The plants of Hepatica acutiloba (or Liver Leaf as they're never called,) I acquired from Prairie Moon Nursery and Prairie Nursery are doing well. I believe most of these are from Prairie Nursery which were slightly larger than the plugs I got from Prairie Moon. But they've also had an additional year to establish. Likewise I'm not entirely certain I've planted them in the correct type of soil. A lot of our ephemeral plants do best where the leaf litter has naturally mulched into good soil. Decades of raking out the gardens probably isn't doing them any favors. (I've also planted ~80 Trilliums this year, so we'll see how those do.)

Up close this is one of the most charming wildflowers you'll meet. Six nice little petals glistening in the sun. And on occasion you'll find a mason bee working one. Honeybees do work these but only in mass plantings that can take years to establish. Flowers only produce pollen so they're not a big hit with Honeybees. Blooming seems to happen just after the earliest Crocuses have faded but by then the Willows are out and other types of trees like Maple, non-native Magnolias which may be offering up nectar as well. 

Hepatica comes in a variety of colors, though white is certainly the most common. By luck I've been given a few pink ones but I don't find these to be as pretty. Many of them have a big green stigma in the middle and I find the color combination unappealing. Darker shades of lavender and even a solid blue look a little better. Actually the solid blue ones I treasure above all else but none seem to have flowered and I won't even know if they survived the winter until they produce new leaves for the year.

One of the white ones appears to be a double flowering type. Instead of the standard 6 petals I count 10.

Others have 11 so it would seem to vary somewhat.

My goal with this plant is to finally get some plants that produce viable seed so I can see what ants like dispersing the seeds. In past years I've had plants make seed but the ants never bothered with them. I suspect poor pollination had lead to inadequate eliasome production; that is, the packet of ant food on the seed wasn't of a quality to the ants liking. Probably due to poor pollination.

Flowers Before the Frost

Here are some more wildflowers I found blooming out in the yard yesterday.

Twinleaf, Jeffersonia diphylla, among the hardest wildflowers to catch blooming. The flower only opens for ~8 hours sometimes lasting over night if you're lucky before the petals abruptly shed off. Seriously someone needs to develop one with a longer blooming period. I feel like a double flowering variety would be welcomed for this species!

The flowers come up with the first few leaves and opens a few days before they do. The seedpod resembles a green fleshy acorn. They need to grow in a slightly moist location or otherwise get watered in the garden periodically in order for the seed pod to develop. It can't be too wet though as I found out; I transplanted one to a wetter location and I don't believe it survived the winter sadly. 

I actually have a bunch of Hepatica planted in the yard. I assumed they were all white or slightly pink, but this one seems to be almost a lavender tone. I'm hoping they'll self seed around a little and in a few years I'll get the deep blue shades that are so pretty.

Trillium luteum is the first Trillium species in my garden to start flowering. (Others I photographed earlier were at the Mt. Cuba Center.) This is among the easier Trilliums to grow, and better smelling too. Actually most Trilliums don't smell at all but some can wreak of fermented apples, or dead fish. T. luteum actually smells faintly of oranges, and is very pleasing. The petals are currently a bright green but they slowly turn yellow.

And now the bad news... It's dropping down to freezing tonight, it's supposed to snow lightly, and at the very least we're going to get a frost. I'm curious to see what survives.

Well Deserved Wildflowers

After the winter we had, it's time for some well deserved wildflowers.

Hepatica sp., Liver Leaf, so named because of the shape and spotting on it's leaves. This is often a semi-evergreen with last year's leaves finally rotting away just as it flowers. New leaves will soon emerge.

They come in Pink, Purple, Blue, and White. This was the first time I'd seen anything other than white though.

Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis. A member of the poppy family. They flower before the leaf uncurls, clasping it perhaps to hold it up.

They offer an abundance of pollen to pollinators but are lacking in the nectar department. Note how few petals this one has.

Note how many petals this one has. There are double flowering forms that have twice the petals to them, though I'm not entirely certain this is a good example of that as I've seen them with more.

A non-native Windflower, Anemone blanda, I must admit these are very attractive.

They look similar to Bloodroot but come in the same colors as Hepatica.

Anemone blanda, is another nonnative that's a bit more colorful than the native counterpart.

False Rue Anemone, Enemion biternatum, has an ordinary looking white flower but what it lacks in color it makes up for with thick foliage, forming a dense carpet of leaves with flowers all around.

Corydalis sp. flowering unusually early.

Cardamine diphylla, Toothwort.

Claytonia virginica, Spring Beauty.

Jeffersonia diphylla, Twinleaf. Among the hardest wildflowers to witness in bloom. The flowers open and quickly shed their petals 8 hours later.

Trout Lily, Erythronium americanum. These form vast colonies of mostly single leaves in the springtime. It's said that less than 1% of the population will flower on a given year. I'm told growing them on hard stones, so their roots can't grow too deep, is enough to stress them into flowering. Blooming can otherwise take 15+ years to happen! (For those that get tired of waiting, the bulbs are edible.)

Trillium pusillum, Small Trillium... which is actually not the smallest species of Trillium but it is pretty small at around 6 inches.

I love the little hint of pink on the anthers.

Trillium nivale, Snow Trillium. This one is actually FINISHING it's bloom period!    

It's among the shortest species of Trillium there is, and pretty much after flowering it just wants to lay down.