CalArti

I still have tons of wildflower shots that haven’t made it onto this blog. Here’s another shot of wild columbine, from May 2009.

Continuing on with the wildflower round up - Jack in the Pulpit. I don’t run into these flowers as often as I used to, and it seems to be even rarer to find one in good shape for photographing. This one is from May 1, 2009.

The 2009 spring wildflower season is all but over. But every year I learn something new that helps me with future shoots. This year’s revelation is a simple one – watch for the pollinators. In those early days in spring when you’re not sure if the wildflowers will be out or not, check to see what bees, flies, and other pollinators are flying around. If they are out, the flowers are out. Of course.

Here’s a native bee in a trillium flower:

The spring wildflower season has passed, but I have quite a few images here that are waiting to be posted. So… It’s time for a Wildflower Roundup. Ummm - not the herbicide, but rather some wildflowers shots, with little commentary, from the last few months.

This was taken in mid may - a fine time for May Apple. It’s easy to miss the lavish flowers that these plants bear, since they are hidden under the large umbrella like leaf.

Here are a couple of shots, taken in the Allegan Forest.

Hiking around the Allegan Forest earlier this week, I trudged down the remnants of a small two track that was cut into the side of hill along the Kalamazoo River. I guess people used to drive down there to launch small boats, but the DNR did a good job of dumping tree stumps at the start of the road, and it’s been unused for years.

Now the hillside is full of wildflowers. Earlier in the season I stopped by this spot to photograph some hepatica. This week the hill is covered with May Apple, the last few blooms of Spring Beauty, Canada Violet, and the green and waxy leaves of Hepatica.

Here and there were some wild columbine plants – pretty large and full of blooms. A splash of sunlight caught the front boom on this pair of flowers in just a little more light than the one behind it. It’s wonderful when things work out.

Forty Two. I just took a look at the “pending uploads” directory on my computer, and found 42 images prepped and ready for upload to this blog. There are lots of hepatica and other spring flowers, a few shots taken on the road last fall, one or two curiosities.

I’m beginning to see a flaw in my plan for this blog. As things start to pick up, the supply of photos will continue to grow. Heck, if I just post four images a week, I’ll still be busy through July. I could stop photographing things altogether, and just sail along with the supply on hand. I’d continue on like a freight train with the brake lever pulled,  propelled only by momentum and inertia, the planned destination  now irrelevant.

Well, maybe the answer is more quicker shorter posts that kick out images faster. So in that spirit – a shot of Bellwort taken the week before last. This drooping spring flower is easy to miss, and like the nodding trillium requires a really low angle approach to be photographed. 

As May progresses, I lose interest in the woodland wildflowers and find myself drawn to the oak savanna. I don’t know why.

This dry and barren place comes to life more slowly than the fertile lowland forests. Maybe it is the sight of the first spring dragonflies on the wing. Maybe it is the fading redbud and the fresh dogwood. Maybe it is the weird creature – coyote? fox? dog? - that charges across my path as I wander into the woods…

But the Allegan forest still calls. Some days I just drive around in my car, listening to the radio, bumping along two tracks till they end with barriers made out of tree stumps, torn out of the ground, roots and all.

The lupine is blooming now. It started last week, it’s probably peaking now, and in a few weeks will pass.

I trudged around the woods today, toting the trusty Pentax LX packed will Rollei IR 400 film, hoping to get the IR effect in a few shots. The weather did not cooperate as a dense bank of clouds rolled in shortly after I started shooting. No matter – I shot the film and then turned my attention to the lupine.

I’ve shot this wildflower before, and have found the leaves and foliage to be as interesting as the flowers. But I never studied the immature flowers – the nascent buds building up strength, waiting to open. There’s always something thing new, waiting to be seen.

The Rollie film is hanging in my shower as I type - drying. Maybe something for a future post…

Spring ephemerals carve out their environmental niche in the early part of the season. They flourish in the early days of spring, when sunlight streams through the leafless trees and hits the ground with full force. As trees leaf out and sunlight is cut off from the forest floor the wildflowers retreat for another year.

As the season progresses, the flowers change. I visited some favorite places last Friday, and found the forest floor to be full with trillium, nodding trillium, wild ginseng, and bellwort. Wild Geranium and Jack in the Pulpit are just starting to appear. Hepatica and bloodroot are long gone. Marsh marigold and anemones are fading. Another year, and another turn…

Trillium grandiflorum is one of the last spring flowers to really carpet the forest floor. Large patches of these flowers fill the moist soil of the spring forest. Their large, white, showy flowers really catch they eye.

Nodding trillium is less common. It has smaller flowers that droop down below the plant’s three part leaves. You can wander right by it and not notice, and to photograph it you have to get really low to the ground.

This spring has been a wet one, and the trials I normally travel through the woods were muddy and washed out. Photographing nodding trillium, which requires getting very low to the ground, is a real exercise in “wet belly photography.” I leave the woods with several memory cards full of photos – and a jacket and jeans full of mud.

Spring is great!

As May approaches, the Hepatica has finally faded for another season. One of the things that I enjoy the most about hepatica is that it is not boring. Many other flowers – wild or cultivated – appear in essentially one form. Consider Spring beauty, Trillium, Marsh Marigold, or other spring wildflowers. They have the same coloration, same number of petals, and often grow in the same formations. Spring beauty, for instance, often grows a pair of flowers, situated slightly diagonally to each other.

Hepatica, on the other hand, demonstrate a lot of diversity. They may have 6, 8, 10, or more petals. They may be solid or multicolored, dark or light - deep blue, pale lavender, or even white.

Some time ago I likened hepatica to snow crystals – although they are similar, each one is slightly different and unique. Combine that with their arrival as one of the very first spring wildflowers, and the rather short period of time they are around each spring, and you can see what makes them so interesting to photograph.

Spring is a season when things change fast. If you watch closely, you can sometimes see the turning point – that particular day when winter’s inertia finally gives way to the compelling changes that come with spring. It’s the day when the grass turns green. It’s the day when the buds on the trees reach a critical mass, and as you look down your street you no longer see wooden skeletons, but the green, red, and yellow fringes of new growth and life.

While this transformation may seem to be abrupt and sudden, it is really is the result of long preparation. Spring is the season of rebirth, but rebirth is not a haphazard or random event. Rebirth comes when elements are mixed together, daring the universe with their potential, and awaiting the spark of warmth, the spark of light, the spark of Spring – that triggers the annual renewal of the earth.

When the skunk cabbage buds burn through the snow in late winter, they are laying plans for spring. When a tree buds out in February, it is making plans for spring. When the first green shoots push up through dried leaves on a cold March day – they are making plans for spring.

At the turning point, those plans are quickened and made real. It’s a not a grand event, not a planetary phenomenon, but rather each square foot of soil builds it’s potential, and then unleashes it when the turning point comes.

This year, here in the place where I am, things turned around 3:00 AM, Friday morning, April 24th. That’s when the first really warm air of the year arrived – I know that because it came in a grand display of thunder and lightening, that woke even me. Although the weather forecasters predicted that Thursday would be a warm day, it fell short and turned out to be a bit chillhy, a bit cloudy, and a bit like March. But once the storms rolled through on Friday moring, the night air warmed and the next day the earth turned green. All the plans that nature had laid suddenly came to fruition.

I visited some of my usual haunts in Cass County. The woodland wildflowers are truly at their peak. Hepatica is still standing, but has faded and is now rare. Anemone – wood, rue, and false – is everywhere. So too is Spring Beauty, Trout Lily, Dutchman’s Britches and Squirrel Corn. Isolated patches of Bloodroot still bloom, but in most cases this early spring flower is gone, leaving its leaves to grow to incredible size.

This is the sweetest time of year, when the trees are just beginning to bud out and have a faint glimmer of green to their branches; and when the forest floor is radiant green, sprinkled with the wildflowers. Looking ahead – Trillium is just staring to open and May Apple is just starting to unfurl it’s umbrella-like leaves.

Like I said, this is the turning point.