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Wildflower of the month A
se By Dr. Lynda Richards I owe my love for wildflowers
and for all of nature to my parents, Mary Virginia and Myrlin James
Richards. One of the last
adventures I shared with my mother, before her stroke curtailed
traipsing around outside, was a visit to Skunk Creek in Ames, Iowa.
We noticed a delicate fragrance on the breeze and looked down a
steep slope toward the stream bottom and a sea of celestial blue
Virginia bluebells. Virginia bluebells, Mertensia
virginica, turn the tables on the sky.
That color belongs above, not underfoot!
In some rich sandy Ozarks river bottoms they grow so thick you
can hardly avoid stepping on them. Every
year I schedule a “wildflower walk” in mid-April—because that’s
when the bluebells bloom. Sometimes
we brave a steep rocky trail down into Big Piney River bottom in Mark
Twain National Forest. The
campground at Maramec Spring Park near St. James is another favorite
spot. A lot of local river
bottoms, especially places that flood big-time every couple years,
support this native wildflower. Once
April 15 rolls around, it’s time to go looking for them.
If the weather turns hot and dry, as it does so often, the
flowers don’t last long but quickly go to seed.
And by July, these same river bottoms transform into a jungle of
stinging nettles and jewelweed, the bluebells withered away into the
soil, dormant until next spring. One of the charms of these
delightful flowers is the way the buds start out pink and then turn blue
as they open. But flowers on
some individual plants stay pink, instead of blue, and occasionally you
run across a plant with flowers that are white.
The plants are over a foot tall, with rather weak stems and big
soft oval leaves. Often you
find white violets or yellow violets growing along with the bluebells.
Shiny buttercups and lavender phlox or “wild sweet William”
are there too. Each blossom consists of five
fused petals forming a tube with a flared bell. The flowers are about
one inch deep. Butterflies are said to be the most common pollinators,
because they can easily perch on the edges and reach deep into the
nectary for the nectar. Pollen
grains get stuck to their body hairs and are carried to another blossom.
Quite a few butterflies are active on warm spring days.
Orange tips and zebra swallowtails are two of the butterfly
species seen this early in the year. Virginia bluebells are native
all over eastern USA except for Florida and Louisiana.
In Missouri they occur over most of the state except for the
southeastern Osage prairie region. Just
one more reason to stay put here in the Ozarks, where life is good, and
spring is just about as good as it gets. Dr. Lynda Richards, of Rolla, retired Mark Twain
National Forest ecologist, leads Wildflower Walks for the Ozark Rivers
chapter of the National Audubon Society and is a Phelps County Master
Gardener. |
