Seeking the Ephemeral Beauty of Native Plants

Polemonium reptans or Jacob’s ladder

There’s a low hum to the earth. It’s not just the boxwood buzzing with flies, wasps, and other tiny pollinators or the first bumblebee stumbling through the daffodils. Spring has arrived. The soil is warming up. The trees are breaking bud. And my part of the world is waking from its long winter dormancy.

It’s a good time to perambulate the estate every day and see what’s happening. Did you know our native Jacob’s ladder is purple when it first emerges? Such a sexy bronze! It will turn green soon, but then be covered in a cloud of tiny blue flowers for weeks. I’m letting it go to seed and wander around. I like to see where plants choose to grow.

Of course spring bulbs and hellebores are flowering, but I love our ephemeral native wildflowers. The first flowers are nearly open on the prairie smoke and the sharp-lobed hepatica is cheerfully blooming away with crisp white flowers. The bloodroot blossomed for three days before a rainstorm took its petals. Spring beauty is waving to us with pink striped white flowers so dainty and delicate they belie their toughness.

What’s blooming in your explorations?