Spring wildflowers

If you have a chance to visit the Garden, you'll find spring definitely well along.

I've made a number of posts about early spring wildflowers on my blog, Natural Gardening, over the last couple of weeks (here's one about Hepatica) from late February). 

Some of my colleagues have posted on the Garden's Facebook page about sightings of Oconee Bell, Hepatica, and others.

This last week has seen flowers of bloodroot and trout lily, among many other early-flowering species from around the world.

Here's a trout lily blooming today in the Woodland Wildflower Garden.

Erythronium americanum (Trout lily)

Trout lilies, Oconee bells, and bloodroot

On a lunch time walk, my friend Meg and I saw our first spring woodland wildflowers. An early bloodroot flower on the Heusel Nature Trail foreshadowed the hundreds that will soon be in bloom.

In the Woodland Wildflower Garden, a single trout lily was open, but a group of Oconee Bells were in full flower across from Crucible (our first nature-based sculpture).

We also admired a lovely deciduous holly (Ilex decidua) full of berries in the Arboretum, near the longleaf pines, along with a prickly juniper (which definitely lived up to its name).

A mystery Juglans species puzzled us; the fruits looked like miniature teasels, and very un-Juglans like -- Juglans is the genus that walnuts are in. (A Google search on Juglans ailantifolia reveals that this should be a Japanese relative of walnuts.... hmm. I think we have an imposter!)