Take a hike through your oak and hardwood forest this early spring. These are some that I find in my backyard that start to bloom in April, depending on Mother Nature’s mood, of course.
WHITE FLOWERS: Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) – Starts blooming as early as March with eight to ten petals and a golden center. The leaves can be up to seven-inches long, cupped up around the flower stalk and deeply lobed, possibly with a bluish-green tinge. The underground stem or rhizome produces a red juice that was used for dying baskets and clothing, as well as an insect repellant.
Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) has nodding flowers hiding underneath a pair of large deeply lobed leaves. They can up to one-foot across atop a single stalk rising from the ground. The apple-like blossoms turn into a golden colored fruit that can be used in jellies.
Rue Anemone (Anemonella thalictroides) is a more delicate plant only reaching eight-inches tall and with several smaller flowers arising from the same stem. There are several small three-lobed leaflets in a whorl (all coming from the same area around the stem), below the flowers. (Columbine leaflets look the same except that they are long-stalked rather than whorled. It is tough to tell these two plants apart in very early spring. They are both in the Buttercup family.) Another relative, Wood Anemone only sends up one flower stalk with a deeper cut lobe to the whorl of leaves, but still only reaches eight-inches tall.
Wintergreen or Teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens) is in the Heath family and usually doesn’t bloom until May. But you may see this semi-evergreen creeper with a bronze tinge in the spring. The leaves are leathery and taste like wintergreen. The flowers are nodding and bell-like but may only reach 1 / 4-inch in length. The extract is used to flavor gum, teas and extracts.
PINK FLOWERS: Round-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica americana) is another March bloomer in the Buttercup family. The three-lobed leaves stay low but send up several hairy flower stalks with usually six petal, pink and fading to lavender-blue or white. There can be up to nine petals on a single flower. Whereas the Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) flower has only five petals and they are striped with a darker pink. The leaves of this plant are in a pair and linear or grass-like placed part way up the stem. Carolina Spring Beauty can also be found with broader leaves. They grow from underground tubers like a small potato with a chestnut-like flavor.
There are many varieties of wild geranium that grow in Minnesota. They produce clusters of five-petaled flowers ranging from pink to lavender to a rose-purple. The leaves are palmate like the palm of your hand with your fingers widespread. When the geraniums have gone to seed, they resemble a crane’s bill, long and skinny. When they dry, the beak opens and twists.
YELLOW FLOWERS: Dogtooth Violet or Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) has unique leaves. They are brown and green spotted like a brown trout and borne in pairs like a lily. A single flower stalk portrays a nodding flower, yellow inside and bronze-colored outside. The white root is shaped like a dog’s tooth. There is a White Dogtooth Violet with white bell-shaped flowers tinged with lavender. And don’t forget Minnesota’s own Adder’s Tongue, which is the pink-flowered version with a bulb that forms halfway up the stem.
Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris) is also called Cowslip with glossy heart- or kidney-shaped leaves. Shiny bright yellow flowers appear on a thick, hollow stem. They look like large glossy buttercups with an aroma you don’t forget. Bring a bouquet of flowers in the house, just try it! It may not be the flowers that literally stink, look at the soil that they are growing in. There is also a floating relative with smaller white to pinkish flowers.
Bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia) looks like drooping narrow bells on a stalk with grass-like leaves that are opposite each other. This plant is difficult to identify from Smooth Solomon’s Seal or False Solomon’s Seal. There are also three other varieties common to Minnesota. The only way to tell them all apart is by how the leaves attach to the stem, and where the white or yellow colored flowers are located.
BLUE FLOWERS: Dog Violet (Viola conspersa) actually looks like a violet with some purple veining on the lower petal. The leaves, which are heart-shaped and scalloped-edged are on the same stalk as the flower. It’s relative, the Common Blue Violet has separate leaf and flower stalks. The Marsh Blue Violet has a darker blue coloration and the flowers stand way above the plant. If it has hairy leaves and stems, it could be the Sister Violet. Any relation of yours?
Virginia Bluebell (Mertensia virginica) or the Virginia Cowslip is in the Forget-Me-Not family. It has smoother gray to green oval leaves that boast cluster of pink flower buds that open light blue. The trumpet shaped flowers put on a show as quite a few plants grow together around the two-foot height. Minnesota has a taller variety also called the Tall Lungwort that blooms a bit later.
RED FLOWERS: Columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis) is also in the Buttercup family only with bi-colored flowers. Once you figure this flower out, you will never forget it. The red and yellow flowers actually nod, with upright colored spurs that have a somewhat bulbous tip. I was confused when I first moved to Minnesota. Someone called this April bloomer Honeysuckle. This wasn’t the Honeysuckle that I knew. Then they picked a flower and put the tips in their mouth. It tasted like honey, thus the non-horticulturalist version of honeysuckle. No wonder the hummingbirds love this plant!
Most Minnesota reddish-flowering natives bloom later in the season. The ditches will be full of Orange Hawkweed, Black-eyed Susans and Turk’s Cap Lily come July. Take another walk then. You’ll see such different natural colors.
Lady Slippers. . . Minnesota’s state flower. . .they are self-explanatory. They are the only flower of its kind, a slipper, that comes in pink to white to small or large yellow, to rosey-veined. The leaves are lighter green and the veins run parallel. Look for clumps of this wide grassy-type foliage since they are a bit later blooming. But what a show-stopper!
And you can’t forget the Trilliums, leaves of three with flowers either nodding or upright in shades of pink, maroon to reddish, white that fades to pink, or all white. This is in the same family as the Bellwort, but they bloom later.
More leaves of three, drooping and tinged with a reddish color, truly leave it be. It actually is one form of Poison Ivy (Rhus radicans). It grows throughout America in many forms, ground cover, upright, shrub-like, trailing or climbing. Don’t wreck your spring ephemerals hike thanks to this plant. Leave that one for the birds for winter feasting on its berries.
On-line information on Minnesota native plants and spring ephemerals can be found on the Department of Natural Resources’ site. Go to www.dnr.state.mn.us. Click on Minnesota’s Natural Resources, then Plants, and scroll down to Wildflowers. You can pick a plant by its bloom color.
Want a go on a hike through the spring woods? Contact Deep Portage Conservation Reserve located at 2197 Nature Center Drive NW in Hackensack. They are hosting a Spring Ephemerals Hike on Saturday, May 13 at 1:30 p.m. Contact Kathy at 218/682-2325 or 888/280-9908. Their website is www.deep-portage.org. There is a $5 charge per hiker.
References:
National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers, Eastern Region, by William A. Niering, and Nancy C. Olmstead, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., copyright 1979, 1995 by Chanticleer Press, Inc. New York.
Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening, copyright 1978, The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., New York.
forests. 
