I spent a good part of the day on Friday, chasing the spring woodland wildflowers near my rural Missouri home. My target species was Bloodroot, but none were found blooming. However, I did find a lot of wildflowers in bloom. The Virginia Bluebells appear to be near or at peak right now, making the woodland floor a “sea of blue” … quite a wonderful sight to see! Several other species were blooming quite profusely and I will be featuring some of those wildflowers over the next few posts.
Today’s post features one of my favorite woodland wildflowers, the Trout Lily, aka the Dog-tooth Violet (Erythronium albidum):
The Trout Lily is sometimes a bit difficult to find on the woodland floor. As the flower shoot aries, it is very thin and easy to overlook. But when the flower petals begin to bend and rise upward, it is much easier to spot. In the eastern U.S., this plant is sometimes known as “thousand-leaf” because, when it grows in large colonies, literally thousands of leaves cover the ground (note: on one of the woodlands I photograph, this is the case). A very slow grower, it takes at least 4 years to raise a flowering plant from seed.
Coming up … more spring, woodland wildflowers.
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark III body
- Canon 180mm, f/3.5 macro lens
- Bogen 3021 tripod with ball head
- ISO 200 (all images)
- Aperture f/3.5 to f/6.3
- Shutter 1/160 sec. to 1/640 sec.