Spring is the time of flowers, and here in New Hampshire, the earliest flowers are often the hardest to find. Wildflowers of the woods are usually not showy, but they're all the more interesting because of their complex and subtle adaptations to their challenging environment.
One thing all early flowers have in common is that they are perennial plants that live in a dormant state through the winter. This is the only way a plant can have enough metabolic energy available to produce blooms in the first days of spring.
Here are a few examples of the first blooms of spring, and where to find them. They're not necessarily great beauties, but they are interesting plants.
Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus). Not a pretty name, and not a pretty flower, but a fascinating and unique plant. The skunk cabbage can actually produce heat, and often melts its way up through the last snow and ice of winter. Like all members of the arum family, it produces dozens of tiny flowers on a thick, fleshy club called a spadix. The spadix is enclosed in a leathery sheath called a spathe. (You can call it a sheath if you want, but I believe in calling a spathe a spathe.) The spathe can be purple or green, but is usually green flecked with purple. The leaves, which come a few weeks after the flowers, give off a foul odor when torn, giving the plant both its common and scientific names. It grows in very swampy areas, blooming in early April in the Manchester area, until May in the White Mountains.
Eastern roundleaf yellow violet (Viola rotundifolia). One of the prettiest early spring wildflowers in New Hampshire, it blooms in moist woodlands on sunlit slopes while the snow lingers in the shade. It carpets the ground along the upper reaches of the Ripley Falls Trail in Crawford Notch State Park in late April. I think the environment is right for it to bloom along the Marion Davis Trail on Pack Monadnock or other southern New Hampshire mountains in early April, but I haven't found it there yet.
Hobblebush (Viburnum alnifolium). This small woody plant - something between a tree and a creeper - produces unusual clusters of white blossoms, with small flowers in the interior and much larger flowers around the rim of the cluster. Its blooms illuminate the forests in late May in the White Mountains, but is much more uncommon in southern New Hampshire. You can find it blooming in mid-April on Pack Monadnock and in the Beaver Brook Association lands in Hollis.
Wood anemone (Anemone quinquifolia). One of the earliest spring flowers, it is hard to find among the leaf litter. Look for it in any dense hardwood forest, such as the oak forests of Nashua's Mine Falls Park, beginning in mid-April. It is finished blooming almost everywhere by late May.
Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense). This tiny plant carpets every hardwood forest in southern New Hampshire, blooming from mid-May until July. It is less common in the White Mountains, where it blooms later.
Swamp honeysuckle (Rhododendron viscosum). A large bush that often overhangs water, its blooms open in late April, just before its leaves come out.
Goldenthread (Coptis groenlandica). This plant grows everywhere, but it is very hard to notice. It blooms in mid-April in moist woodlands in southern New Hampshire, such as Beaver Brook in Hollis. It can also be found in dry, coniferous forest along the Wapack Trail on Pack Monadnock, where it blooms in late May, and it blooms in late June in the alpine bogs and forests of the Presidential Range. It is also difficult to identify, having anywhere from four to seven petal-like sepals. The most consistent feature is the triple leaflets, similar to those of wild strawberry but more gently scalloped. Just to keep things challenging, the plant consists mostly of a bright yellow underground runner (whence the name), and the leaves may be very far removed from the flowers.
Pink lady's slipper orchid (Cypripedium acaule). Our state wildflower is rather rare (and protected by law). A few can be seen blooming in almost any woodland in southern New Hampshire beginning in early May, but the best place I know to find them is in Greeley Park in Nashua. The woods at the top of the hill are covered with thousands of orchids over more than five acres. On Pack Monadnock, along the upper reaches of the Marion Davis Trail, you can find a few unusual white specimens in late May. Along the Arethusa Falls Trail in Crawford Notch, they bloom in June and into July, and most of them are white or very pale pink.
Author Resource:-
Chuck Bonner is a lifelong hiker and amateur naturalist, and webmaster of www.HikingWithChuck.com. For photos of many of these and other wildflowers, which you can download for free, visit http://www.hikingwithchuck.com/Downloads/PicsFlowers.htm You can find descriptions of the places mentioned in this article, and many other great places to hike, at http://www.hikingwithchuck.com/Where/WhereIndex.htm
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