Ghost Cap

Wild Ginger

Green Dragon

 I finally found the green dragon (Arisaema dracontium) is extremely rare and fragile.  It can grow up to 3 feet tall and has a single subdivided leaf in as many as fifteen segments.  The tiny flower on the spadix look like a dragon getting ready to spit hot fire.  I love this woodland plant and have spent a long time on the hunt for dragons.  Hopefully everyone will get a chance to dance with this dragon! 

Sweet Cicely

Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza longistylis) erect stem grows up to three and half feet and flowers May to June.  Their leaves are fern like and divided into three parts and then further subdivided or deeply toothed.  Sweet Cicely has tiny white flowers which look umbrella shaped sometimes.  It's sometimes called wild licorice because the root has an aromatic licorice smell.  Native Americans made wide use of sweet cicely, they used it to treat wounds and season foods.

Columbine

Nestegg

Garlic Mustard

This plant will destroy all are woodland flowers if we don't stop it!  More to come!

Jelly Fungi

 

As soon as I get some time I will identify this specimen!

Morels Everywhere

This year there has been a explosion of Morels!  Their popping up everywhere, remember to look for dead in the woodlands and morels wont be far away!

Virgina Waterleaf

I figured out what this pretty white spotted leaf was thanks to some help from Alex Fales.  Virgina Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum) is a woodland ground cover.   Its newer leaves are solid green with white spots appearing as they age and later disappearing in early summer.  Virgina waterleaf has been giving me the magic trick for years!

Wild Geranium

Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum) blooms from April to June in Iowa.  It has a three to five toothy lobes on its leaves. The flower is mostly shades of reddish-lavender with light veining. The flowers as with the stem are somewhat wooly. The perennial rootstock has been used by Native Americans in a tea like drink to treat toothache and diarrhea. 

Bishop's Cap

Bishop's Cap (Mitella diphylla) is found more in the northeast half of Iowa growing on cool north slopes in shady organic soils. But this one was found today at Ledges State Park. The leaves very with lobes and are toothed with a most interesting "opposite connected" leaves in the middle of the main flower stem. Although sometimes there can be another leaf above these.  Bishop's cap can have five to twenty tiny white flowers that look like "caps" each individual flower has seldom more than quarter inch has five petals.   

Creek Walkin

I love it! Iowa creeks have water again for the time being.  Everything has "put on a green shirt" after the recent heavy and much needed thunderstorms.

Morel

May is also for morels!  Its a peculiar time of the year for me being a student of nature in every season.  My favorite woodlands get overran with crazy people looking for this little fruit. Where are they the rest of the year when the seasons change and birds abound?  If there isn't anything you want and can get from the woods then what point is there to even to a hike through?  Well nature has evened the odds on our peculiar species, this is also time of ticks!  Ticks seem to come out the exact time morels do and deer ticks that can carry lyme disease. 

Bellwort

I just love this plant Bellwort (Uvularia graniflora) so much.  It reminds me of how I feel about the state of our forests here in Iowa.  Unfortunately its edible and becoming more rare like the forests we all treasure.

Mammatus

Mammatus clouds look like puffball fungi of the sky to me!  Mammatus clouds form when a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud is in the late stages of development often hanging from the anvil of the thunderstorm.

Decomposers

I wish I was a mushroom expect because they are neat and valuable parts of the circle of woodland life.  Without their ability to break down logs and woody material there would be no room for pretty flowers on the forest floor!

Spring Beauty

Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) has five petals with pink stripes and is found throughout the state.  They often occur in large patches.  The flowers are very delicate and will turn to the sunlight on sunny days.  On cloudy days and night they clinch up.

Buttercup

Buttercup (Ranunculus species) is often found growing in wet woodland areas even in shallow water.  I got was walking across a log over shallow water when I spotted this pretty yellow flower.  Native Americans crushed the root up and used it as an antiseptic wash for wounds. 

Downy Serviceberry

 

This is the flower of the Downy Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea) its the first woodland tree to flower in the spring and provides a welcome sign spring is here!  Its often called Juneberry because it has tiny berrylike fruits that are available in early June.  These berrylike fruits taste nice and make great jams.  Downy Serviceberry rarely gets taller than 35 feet under perfect conditions and is usually no more than a tall shrub. 

Jack-in-the-pulpit

Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) is a unusual and beautiful plant.  The leaf is very interesting with three pointed oval leaflets that can be up too seven inches long.

Jack-in-the-pulpit had many uses for Native Americans.  The corm or root was most often used.  It was used to treat just about everything from sore eyes to snakebites. 

Jack-in-the-pulpit undergoes a mid life sex change going from male staminate changing to female pistillate at about three years old.

May is for Mushrooms

Check out this sweet specimen Tyler found today along the Skunk River!

Wild Onion

This is actually one of four different wild onions this particular one is nodding wild onion (Allium cernuum).  Wild onions have grass like basal leaves nodding onions have a bend at the tip.  They're edible and have a very small onion bulbs.  Like all edible wild plants wild onions are disappearing fast from our few wild public forests I think its best to leave them for the wild animals that depend on them and so we have some left to help are brothers and sisters of the future identify.  Unfortunately there is just way more people in this world than wild places and plants left.  So its illegal to harvest wild plants from public forests in Iowa and around the United States.  Mushrooms, fruits, and nuts can be collected and eaten because the plant will still be there to reproduce next year.  Plants with tubers or bulbs can be extremely old sometimes over a hundred years and can take up to 15 years to reproduce.