Spring Ephemerals.....small flowers, big statements!

I really don't get out much, but even on my daily commute, I am surrounded by gorgeous wildflowers. My daily ride through rural Chester County is especially beautiful in the spring, with a section of road completely given over to one of the miracles of spring in PA - spring ephemeral wildflowers! Here is Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), close-up and then covering a hillside (someone's front lawn!!):


Whew! Don't you wish you could live there?

Then there are the intriguing flowers of trout lily or dog-tooth violet, Erythronium americanum. These little yellow, nodding flowers rise up from foliage that is attratively mottled. It can form colonies which are very large, but not particularly dense. Again, there is beauty both close up and from a distance:

I could go on and on, but I'll stop with Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica. This incomparable blue beauty colonizes in low-lying areas that never completely dry out. Happily enough for the rest of us, it is also comfortable in drier soils, although it won't spread out so much there. When Virginia Bluebells finds a home it likes, it moves in for the long haul.


All of our spring ephemerals can happily co-exist with other perennials or shrubs that emerge or leaf out just a bit later. Once they die down after flowering, their place can be taken by ferns, wild ginger, or any number of flowering plants.