April 20
Catesby’s Trillium (Trillium
catesbaei)
Crested Dwarf Iris (Iris
cristata)
This trillium
usually is pale pink when it blooms in spring, but it often
becomes a deeper rose color after a week or two. Since my
plants are usually about twelve inches tall and the flower
hangs down below the leaves, it is good that mine grow on
the hill behind our house so we can look up into the
blooms. Other native perennial wildflowers on our hill that
look best when seen from below are Perfoliate Bellwort (in
my April 11 painting) and Solomon’s-seal (fruit shown in
the September 14 painting). Crested Dwarf Iris is only five
to eight inches tall but the bloom looks up at you. It can
spread by rhizomes to make quite an impressive colony.
I’m so glad we didn’t dig that hill up to amend the soil
and then plant camellias. We would have altered the seed
bank and root stock in the soil, and the environment there.
Our native plants are suited to that hill and keep coming
back each year without any help from me. I do, however, at
this time of the year, pinch back other plants that have
come up, such as asters, goldenrod and mint. We can then
easily see the bloomers, and the pinched back plants will
be bushier and showier in late summer. I must avoid
pinching back phlox or penstemon though because they are
waiting in the wings, the next act to come on stage.
A friend, who knows that I like to include insects with the
plants, asked me where the insects were in this painting. I
told him they were the tiny mites which had fallen out of
the catkin on the ground to the left, because they were the
only ones I found—and because I really didn’t want to put a
bug on my pretty trilliums or iris. He was obviously
disappointed so I went back to the painting and added the
Ground Beetle (in the Carabidae
family) which
you see sneaking out the back door at the lower right
corner.
I keep a collection of insects of all kinds which I or
friends have found. I record when and where each insect
was. So, it was easy to find one who would be happy in that
location on April 20th.
(Click on the picture
for a larger image)
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painting)