First trip to Eloise Butler

[pameladean]

Eric and I try to visit the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden at least once a week from the time that it opens in April until one day we go and the mosquitoes have taken over.

Last year was extremely confusing. The late blizzard followed by serious cold and a very slow warming meant that it was May before the garden opened and all the ephemerals were horrified at how late it was and were bursting out and blooming all at the same time with wild abandon.

This year has been much more deliberate. The garden opened on April 8th, having originally announced an April 1 opening but then postponed it because the trails were still snowy and icy. We can't ordinarily go on a weekday, but Eris is between jobs, and we are trying to take advantage of that extra freedom. So on a Monday afternoon, away we went. We weren't expecting to see much blooming or even growing. The first trip, in a properly-conducted Spring, is just to look at the bones of the land, the lovely growth habit of the enormous white oak trees, the light slanting all the way from the tiny meadow to the tiny marsh, unimpeded by leaves. And that's what we saw.

Also, to our delight, the snow trillium, a plant so early that we had missed it for years, was blooming. It's a tiny plant with three leaves veined from stem to tip like a ladyslipper orchid leaf, and white three-petalled flowers facing upwards, with a yellow center. There are several clumps at a place where three paths meet. The larger clump is a little back from the path, but there's a small one right in between the roots of a tree and almost on the path. Here it is, if I've done things correctly.



We had also discussed how we would probably not be able to walk all the way through the little marsh, since the end at which the Friends of the Garden had not yet put in a new boardwalk would be muddy if not actually flooded. But lo! they had put in the new boardwalk. In these pre-leaf days it makes a shining curvy path through a landscape still largely gray and brown, with a few patches of red-osier dogwood or arbor vitae for contrast. We checked the ironwood and the witch hazel, but neither was blooming. There were almost no shrubs even starting to leaf out, although the evergreen of the single mountain laurel bush and the vast patch of periwinkle on its log-littered slope were welcome bits of green in the monochromatic background.

Here's some red-stemmed dogwood and scattered patches of moss doing their best to provide some color:



And here are a couple of arbor vitae enjoying the sunshine in the still-sleeping marsh:



I hope to post about our second trip soon, but wrestling with the images has been a bit much, so this is all for now.

Pamela

Comments

[graydon]

Definitely the first edge of spring!

I had to look twice, but no, that's not Large-leafed Trillium, which is what I'm used to seeing hereabouts.

I shall hope the mosquitoes will be very slow indeed this year.

[pameladean]

It's hard to indicate the scale. That's a very low-growing, tiny plant. And yet so obviously a trillium, as you said. We have large-flowered trillium here, too, and indeed there are huge patches of it in the garden. But on that visit it wasn't even showing shoots yet. On the second trip the leaves were up and starting to unfold. I think I have some photos, which I can put up when I do the next post.

And yes, here's to very slow mosquitoes.

P.

[pameladean]

Sorry, you said large-leafed! But it looks like the same thing. P.

[graydon]

My very limited experience suggests it's worth your rhetorical life to bring up specific trillium identification around Ontario botanists.

Ontario officially has White Trillium, Red Trillium, Painted Trillium, Drooping Trillium, and Nodding Trillium; what I'd called large-leafed is officially White, Trillium grandiflorum, but also Wake Robin or Large-leaved Trillium or Large-flowered after the latin. So not only does it look like the same thing, it is the same thing! (Bother these common names.)

[pameladean]

I suspect that that species is not the only one nor Ontario botanists the only botanists around whom it is rhetorically dangerous to bring up alternatives.

P.

[graydon]

I should be most entirely disinclined to suggest that you might be wrong about this!

[sartorias]

Oh, what a delight--the descriptions AND the pictures!

[pameladean]

More soon, I hope! P.

[rushthatspeaks]

Oh, that sounds lovely! And what an excellent trillium. And wow, the red stems of the dogwood really pop in the general gray-beige.

[pameladean]

I had no idea there was such a thing as that trillium until about three years ago. I think it was blooming quietly before the garden even opened, until they moved the opening time several weeks earlier.

The dogwood is a lovely sight in early spring. It's nice once the leaves all drop and through the winter as well, but the color seems to intensify in early spring.

P.

[vass]

I realised, reading this, that I don't actually know what dogwood is, so I went to Wikipedia:

Cornus is a genus of about 30–60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark.

And now I suspect them of paronomasia.

[pameladean]

I absolutely suspect them of it as well.

P.

[mrissa]

Oh, that's so lovely.

I still sometimes tweak my relatives with "only PAMELA loves me enough to take me to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, if it had been up to you lot I would never have been."

Also I don't usually call out typos but "Eris is between jobs" is such a great and terrifying thought that I had to make sure you got to enjoy it too.

[pameladean]

I have been torn, since first reading this comment, between immediately correcting the typo and fearing what may follow if I do.

We could theoretically go to the garden again, though who actually takes whom depends on your definition. That is, if we could ever schedule anything, which right now seems in doubt. But we could try.

P.

[mrissa]

Indeed, let us make another stab at the scheduling when that feels possible.

[3rdragon]

I'm glad that your boardwalk adventures were successful. We had to give up on ours because all the rain recently meant that the water level was very high, so we got to a point where the boards sank enough when stepped on that the lake went about five inches up the side of my boots, which was the top of my companion's boots.

[pameladean]

I think the Friends of the Garden, the group that funded and planned the boardwalk, put really a lot of thought into it. Most marshes I've crossed on boardwalks have been Right There, oozing gently from time to time even in dryish weather. This boardwalk is up on little legs and it would take a monumental flood to cover the walkway. Not that that isn't possible, I rule nothing out in these days; but regular and even irregular spring rains and melt will not affect it.

I expect to have an experience more like your friend's when we go out tomorrow.

P.