Posts Tagged ‘wild flowers’
mayflowers
In spring it is always fun to put all your senses together and search out the elusive mayflower, also known as trailing arbutus. Epigaea repens grows in the open woods where I live. You usually have to search for the trailing leaves and lift them to find the flowers.
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touch: the leaves are furry on the underside and smooth above; the petals of the flower are waxy.
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smell: the flowers are fragrant with a sweet, almost heady perfume.
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sight: the flowers are white to faintly pink; leaves are green with coppery brown surfaces and edges.
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Trailing Arbutus
(Epigaea repens L.)
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on the slope, new leaves
Trientalis, Gaultheria
Star-flower, Wintergreen,
vines of Partridge-berry creep
Maianthemum unfurls
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beneath the din, a melody
weeps Epigaea, evergreen
pressed to the hillside
leather armour, thickened leaves
weather-beaten, worn
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waxy bloom resists
subtle shadow
predator
unrelenting rain
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all my best,
staying at home,
Jane
a moment of beautiful: wild roses
the place: beside the road into our cabin
the beautiful: pink roses in bloom (and the dark pink rosebuds)
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Notice a little spider found his way into the photo (about 12 o’clock on a petal).
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
pink lady’s slipper
This time of year, my husband does an inventory of the Pink Lady’s Slippers (Cypripedium acaule) on our property.
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This year, he found 10. He only saw three last year but there have been as many as 15 in bloom at one time. We never pick them and try to keep our property natural and wooded.
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The Pink Lady’s Slipper prefers acidic soil and partly shady conditions, making our grey woods an ideal habitat. Our flowers are often a pale pink or white variety.
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
uphill and down
While doing a search for a particular plant we know grows in the area, my husband and I took a side road through rural Victoria County in New Brunswick. We drove from Route 109 (near the top of the map), south through Upper Kintore and Lower Kintore, to Muniac, a distance of about 23 kilometres.
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(Map Source: New Brunswick Atlas, First Edition)
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Kintore was settled in 1873 and named for the town of Kintore near Aberdeen, Scotland. In 1898, Kintore was a railway station and had a post office and a population of 75. (Source: New Brunswick Archives)
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church and school house in Upper Kintore 2016
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Interesting to me was the very well-cared-for one room Upper Kintore School, built in 1877.
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Upper Kintore School built 1877
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Our drive took us uphill through Upper Kintore, along Big Flat Brook (a tributary of the Tobique River). The road peaked at Lawson Hill and then ran down, through Lower Kintore. Again, the road followed a watercourse, the Muniac Steam (a tributary of the Saint John River). As we drove we talked about the road — the earliest roads took the easy way, along the brooks. The southern part of the road was banked by steep rocky roadcuts.
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the Muniac Stream near Lower Kintore
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Since I am interested in the plants children might encounter on their way to school, I was happy that this is the time in New Brunswick when most of our roadside wild flowers are in bloom. We saw Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia serotina Nutt.), Red Clover (Trifolium pratense L.), Bedstraw (Galium sp.), Daisy (Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum L.), Bladder-Campion (Silene Cucubalus Wibel) and Meadow Rue (Thalictrum polygamum Muhl.). Quite a bouquet! I have to remain aware that some of these plants have become very weedy and invasive since the early 1900s and may have been hard to find in the 1800s. For example, in the photo below, just above the Black-eyed Susan, you will notice a plant of Wild Parsnip (Pastinaca sativa L.). In New Brunswick, Wild Parsnip is a invasive species, probably introduced by Europeans in the 18th century as a food source.
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Black-eyed Susan along the road
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Do you have any favorite rural drives through communities with interesting histories?
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Copyright Jane Tims 2016
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