Fun at the Cloister at Three Creeks. Our guest host introduces some new findings.
Signs of spring, he declared. Well, I suppose so … heavily ‘processed’, however.
In the ‘this ain’t no sh*t‘ department, we did have some new blooms opening today. This first one is the strange flower of Blue Cohosh. It’s a very common Oak-Hickory understory plant in dry settings, shoots up quickly to reach 18 inches to two feet high, but the flowers are oddities. The fruit is a dark blue berry.
Today I spotted the first emerging May Apples. These umbrella-leaved plants are not common around the Cloister. The deer love them, and so in places they have been browsed back to near-extermination.
Rue Anemone was the real star wildflower among those appearing for the first time. Here are two views. Such a delicate looking plant with such a showy bloom:
Found the nearly pure-white Canadian violet blooming:
And chanced upon a cluster of round-leaved yellow violets putting on a great show.
Always love the mosses after a good soaking rain that fell last night:
Then there was this Tolkienesque discovery: The evil fortress tower of Barad-dûr.
And finally, though I feature a whole field of them in the video, I’ll further celebrate the one-month anniversary of the very first spring flower sighting at the Cloister–the Spring Beauty. Here’s an especially colorful specimen:
That’s about it for today, April 1st, from the Cloister at Three Creeks.