Despite the cool and dry weather, our spring wildflowers are starting to awaken. Every year the understory plants race to bloom and set seed before the tree canopy emerges and casts everything into shade. Animals get all of the good press, but plants fight a vicious battle in the background for sunlight and nutrients.
One of the first plants to flower in our woods is Bloodroot. It always makes my day to find this plant in bloom. The single leaf hugs the flower stalk protectively. It does not stay in bloom long so it is easy to miss. We are fortunate to have many of these on our property. True to its name, the plant releases a red sap when picked. It is said Native Americans used this as a dye.
Spring Beauty is a midseason wildflower we also find in our woods. Growing from corms, this plant can be found in groups along the base of trees. It has a delicate pink-tinged flower. Spring is usually in full swing when Spring Beauty appears.
I found a single Large-Flowered Bellwort in our middle woods. This plant seems to arrive a bit later in Spring, and is nice to find as its yellow color is a welcome departure from white and pale flowers. For some reason, I can never remember the name of this plant. Every year I have to pull my Peterson's Field Guide out to look it up.
The last wildflower I found in bloom this weekend was Wood Anemone. It can grow in large colonies, although our woods seems to yield smaller groups.
I am a bit embarrassed to post this photo as it is not a very good image. I used to photograph wildflowers as a hobby, back when one used actual film. I used transparency (slide) film as it gave the most detail, with a macro lens or extension tubes and a tripod. It is hard to believe there was a time when you had to drop film off to be developed, and not have the instant gratification of a digital image.
Nowadays, my smart phone can take nearly as good a picture as my film camera - but not in all circumstances. Whites are difficult to capture well as their high tonal value can cause them to be overexposed. In a manual camera, that can be addressed by shooting at a higher speed or lower f-stop to let in less light. It is also difficult to hold a phone steady enough under low light conditions to get a crisp image of small objects. The saying used to be that the difference between a professional and amatuer photographer was that the professional had a larger garbage can. Digitally, one can now shoot dozens of photos of a subject and the odds are that there will be at least one decent image.
I have toyed with the idea of investing in a SLR digital camera, but technology improves so rapidly, I hate to waste money buying something that will be outdated quickly. In addition, I feel digital takes some of the challenge out of photography, or at least creates a different set of challenges. Between the ability to take unlimited shots and being able to clean up images in Photoshop, some of the art and fun has been lost. Happily, old-style photographic techniques such as wet plate collodion are making a comeback. The images these methods create can be stunning - they look so much more real than a digital photograph. I recently started following a wet plate collodion group on Facebook. Maybe someday the barn will have a darkroom.
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