Ep. 205 Spring Ephemerals: Discovering Hidden Woodland Treasures | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator at the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Mac Omb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. Spring ephemerals, the things that kinda pop up before everything else starts to pop, you know, before the trees leaf out, we get all of our normal perennials and shrubs going. These things show up early in the landscape. And you know I'm not doing this by myself.

I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Hello, Chris. So they're they're starting to pop up here in in Jacksonville in our yards. So I think I think it's safe to say spring is here.

I am in agreement with you. Yes. There's been a little bit of of course, I think it's the wild, wacky spring roller coaster that we have become accustomed to here in Western Illinois where we have I think we've had almost a near 80 degree day a few times now in March and maybe February. It's hard to keep track anymore. Times acts funny when you get over a certain age, doesn't it, Ken?

Yes. And I think COVID has forever changed my perception of time.

Yes. Yes. I agree. So I I have had things in microclimates that have popped way super early. You know, things close to the house, maybe things that have a really good southern exposure in my yard.

But then some of the other things are a little farther away from the house or maybe they still have, like, lot of mulch and leaves and things on top of them. They have not started to emerge yet. And before the show started, I was we were looking at pictures and such, and I was like, oh, man. Some of these plants were blooming together, you know, a few springs ago. And now one's doing its thing and the other is still not showing up.

Yeah. I'm trying to think. I need to start keeping, like, notes of one thing's bloom. So I'm trying to think back to last year if things are on reading stuff last stuff said last year was much earlier than normal, but and I guess maybe this year we're a little early too because I don't seem too much different from from last year.

I I remember so last year was cicada year, the big cicada year, and we were, like, almost two weeks ahead of schedule when it comes to some of that, soil temperatures and some of that phenology things that do tend to occur. Not maybe not quite two weeks, but we were, you know, we're pushing that mark last year because we were all watching the soil temperatures waiting for those cicadas to pop up.

That's why don't remember. All I was thinking about was cicadas.

That's right. You're like, I'm hungry. I need some cicadas. Well, today, Ken, the topic is spring ephemerals, and it would probably be a great idea for us to define what exactly is a spring ephemeral. So what do you think they are, Ken?

Tell me. Can you learn me something here?

So I think, you know, at least how I think of them, and I'm hoping this is accurate. You know, the our flowering plants are coming up early in the year. You know, like you said in the intro, typically are some of our first blooming plants. But then they're they're up, they flower, they set their seed, then they're dying out or dying back, going dormant. A lot of times right when the trees are starting to leaf out because a lot of these are going be in the more forested settings.

So once that canopy closes up, not as much sun's getting to the ground, those plants are done for, until the next spring. Mhmm.

I the way I like to think about it is it's sort of how the outdoor world wakes up from its spring or sorry, its winter dormancy. You know, it sort of starts from the ground up and, you know, all of the life and the everything starts just pushing out of the soil from the roots into the plants themselves, pushing up, and you see this kind of this emergence from the ground up, and then it's winds up in the canopies of the trees. And this just how the energy cycles through the natural world. Yes. The good hippie dippie stuff.

So that's much more poetic than mine.

Well, you know, I've been sitting there just looking outside trying trying to write my poetry though. There you go.

Yeah. Nice nice haiku.

Oh, man. I can't do haikus. I don't understand haikus. I've never committed the the necessary, like, sentence rules for haikus. So maybe I just made haiku.

I don't know.

Was it five seven five or something like that?

Yeah. Something like that.

A long time ago.

I don't

need to

know it, so I don't know it.

English was not my strong subject in school.

Would you surprise your high school English teacher if she knew that or he or she knew that you were writing for a on a regular basis for a living? Very much so. Me too. Alright. Well, so they they they start out in the spring.

They gotta get their work done before the trees leaf out. I guess what would be a good spot to go find them? If you're gonna go somewhere to look for them, where would we go find spring ephemerals?

I would say probably you're looking at more forested, like a forest reserve, forested areas, provided they are not overrun with honeysuckle or invasive species like that, because those are gonna choke everything out typically. So you're probably looking at a little more of a high high high quality, forest setting where you don't have a lot of invasive understory plants that are going to choke things out.

Mhmm. Yeah. And it seems like reading the different plant descriptions that we're going to talk about here in a little bit, a lot of them suggest kind of that need for some rich organic type soils, just a lot of organic material in those soils. Yeah. So something you might find in a forested setting with a lot of leaf litter.

And I would say some of these you know, know here in Jacksonville, some of the parks in town have some of these spring ephemerals. So, I mean, they've got trees, but they're not definitely not forested. So they're some of these will you can incorporate into to landscapes as well too.

Definitely. Yeah. And I did wonder, you know, we we we focus and I think we're probably gonna just pretty much focus on woodland ephemerals. Are prairie ephemerals out there. I I tried to do a little bit of research.

The only one I could come up with was the shooting star, which can be found in prairies in early spring. I I did wonder, though, if if plants like prairie smoke. You know? It's a very early plant to show up on in in the prairie. I was, like, trying to figure out, doing some reading.

Is this considered or technically classified as a spring ephemeral? It looks like it is not, but there are a few places that say, yes. It is. So I suppose, you know, some of those very early emerging plants in the spring, they they are just classified as simply perennials. But but we are talking about perennials here.

Right, Ken? They they are perennials.

Yeah. Yeah. They're just just not they're not doing much above ground most of the year compared to what we typically think of as a perennial that's going be out for you know, our herbaceous perennials are going be up above the ground for months, you know, majority of the growing season, whereas these are typically early in the growing season and then gone till next year. Yeah. They're still they're still there just hanging out.

True. True. True. They're they're just leaving the party early because, you know, all these other kids are showing up and they don't wanna hang out with all this other competition. In my research, Ken, I also did see that there's sort of this debate about is a spring bulb considered a spring ephemeral?

And I think they pretty much are. Now there are some differences, but but here's a similarity. Interesting that a lot of our spring bulbs, with the exception of daffodil, and our spring ephemerals, they can commonly be browsed on by other mammals, things like deer. This is something that you might encounter because it's one of the first food sources to arise in the springtime. So a lot of our ephemerals and a lot of our bulbs or spring, ephemerals and bulbs are favored by mammals.

But kind of the the biggest difference though is that our femerals, as we've described, that foliage dies back a bit faster than, say, a bulb might do that. A daffodil or tulip foliage might last a little bit longer, push a little bit farther into that summer months. But, of course, we have exceptions to all of these rules. You know, there are some spring ephemerals that have foliage that push well into maybe the middle of summer, and and they will be around a little bit longer than others. There's also the just kind of the basics or the definition of these two types of plants is that spring ephemerals can have root systems.

They can have other storage organs like tubers. They can have bulbs. They this includes bulbs. Spring bulbs are just bulbs. Usually, it's what we would say you go buy these or order these from a store or an online source, and then they will send these to you to plant in the fall as a dormant bulb, and you can do that.

And then finally, kinda where I've landed here in terms of, you know, what kind of care these two different types of plants require is that spring ephemerals really don't like being taken care of. They don't wanna be watered except for maybe after you've planted them, and then they really don't need any type of fertilizer. Spring bulbs on the other hand, they might benefit from water during a dry spring and also an application of fertilizer after they've done flowering. So, you know, are spring bulbs spring ephemerals? I guess I would vote yes.

This they're probably more commercial and non native. And pretty much what we're gonna talk about today later on is gonna be native. What are your thoughts, Ken?

Yeah. That's think a lot of people wanna think spring ephemeral, they just think native plants. There would still be some non like, we were look at their pictures. There's non natives that would be kind of fit that same description that we're giving our native, spring ephemerals. And I know going back to the the deer browsing, I do think, you know, in some areas, especially Eastern US since deer populations have really exploded, you know, with them coming in and feeding on plants.

Yeah. I think in some locations that could, I guess, endanger the survival of those plants because it's the only thing that's green. They come in, they mow them off. Those plants aren't flowering, they're not reproducing and stuff. So I don't know what the answer is to that except but but it's just something to, I guess, ponder, think about, keep in the back of your mind.

Yes. We can write some poetry about this later. Yes. Well, Ken, I guess to make something a spring ephemeral spring is sort of a broad term anymore. Though I don't know.

When does spring really start? We have meteorological spring. We have the calendar spring. When would we see spring ephemerals begin to show up in the landscape typically in Illinois?

I think for the most part, we're we're looking at March a lot of times. You know, some like skunk cabbage could be earlier. I think a lot of them are that March, April, into early May time frame. I think when I think of them, it's it's typically that March, April time frame. I think it's gonna be a majority of them, but have some money that are into that as well.

Yeah. So

and and then, know, like, growing conditions. We talked about, you know, we see or find a lot of these growing in forest. Now you had described, like, park districts in your area or parks in your area. They have some of these ephemerals. So what about in, a home landscape where, you know, if I wanted to plant some of these ephemerals, can we do this, or do we do we need a forest in our backyard?

No. You don't need a forest. So I I can say in our yard, our back fence line, there's some trees in there. So it's it's gets shade during the summer and stuff. That's where we've planted some bluebells.

We've done Trillium, Jack in the Pulpit, Bloodroot, a lot of these spring ephemerals. It's probably a little bit drier back there than they really like. So some of them have struggled. Maybe even a few of them have disappeared. I'll have to see if they come up this year.

We have that that nice organic, good amount of organic matter in the soils, that dark soil, some good moisture retention. You don't want it flooded or really soggy. So it's going to drain well, still going to retain some of that moisture for plants. And it's something like spring beauty, and we'll talk about that later, that People have that growing in their lawns. It's not necessarily shaded at all either.

So, you know, it can depend on the plants. Some of them may want a little more that forested setting, but others can do just fine in a quote unquote typical lawn.

Right. So there is hope for my yard, that I can get some of these in the ground, and hopefully, that will thrive. Are there any we talk about deciduous trees. I do get this question actually, in the past about somebody wants to plant something underneath their pine tree or their spruce tree. Should we be planting spring ephemerals underneath our evergreens?

Probably not. So, you know, if you if you have your evergreens like they normally wanna grow, you're gonna have branches down to the ground, basically. And even if you're aluminum up, that's still gonna be some pretty, usually gonna be pretty dry shade under there. There's not so the the needles are gonna intercept water. The plants, the trees themselves are gonna take up a lot of water.

So that's usually a lot lot drier than we would see in a typical deciduous Mhmm. Under a typical deciduous tree. Yeah.

And there's a lot of places I think online where you can go to order these different types of spring ephemerals. I have ordered a few of them before. I I had recently I think two years ago, it's probably my most recent purchase, I did order mayapple. And I had a choice between ordering, like, live plants, but it wasn't really a live plant, but, like, you know, living roots or seed. There's, like, seed and things that you could harvest as well.

I definitely went with the living plant or the live roots. And basically, what I was shipped was this this bundle of of roots. They were different plants, and they were all rubber banded together. I got, like, four or five in total. And I planted those in, I think I planted them in the springtime.

And they emerged, they grew, they emerged, and then they died back. I lost them. I don't know where I planted them because I sort of scattered them out. And and so but I came back the next year and I found them. So if you do this, good idea to mark them wherever you plant them.

That's a great idea because, again, they go away. You might lose them. But with if I would have opted to do seed, which would have been cheaper, it would have taken years and years and for that plant to become established, to really start growing good foliage and then flowering. And I might not have even been able to break that seed dormancy. You know?

Maybe I wouldn't have planted it right or I wouldn't have stratified it correctly. So I I opted for the living roots or plants to to order those. And it is a bit more expensive, but you're gonna get faster results by by doing something like that.

Yeah. That's the one we've done. We've done the the live plants. And I give you when we've gotten our Ziff showing up in the fall, so these are bare root dormant plants that we're planting. So, yeah, it is.

It's a little more expensive, you know, several dollars a plant as opposed to a packet of seeds, which is a couple of dollars. But I will say with the seeds, like for spring beauty. That's one we've tried planting in our yard. We've gotten seeds several times. And I don't think anything would have really taken.

But I don't if for a lot of these, you need to plant the seeds right away because especially, I know for Spring Beauty specifically because we've looked into this. They don't they don't have a very terribly long shelf life, so to speak, once they start drying out. That viability really drops quickly. And for spring beauty and I would assume probably for some the other ones, but not for spring beauty, they need a double dormancy. So we're used to, like, you need your cold, wet stratification, like milkweed, stuff like that.

The spring beauty need they need a warm moist period and then a cold moist period. So you have to have that double dormancy to break that. So those seeds aren't even germinating. You you plant them in the spring, they're not going to germinate again. They're not going to germinate until the following spring.

Wow. So you've got a kind of a year's wait there, before they do that. And then I know those, it can take three, four years because they're developing bulbs or corms, whatever they are. And I've read things like trillium, trout woolly, they can take seven, eight years before they start blooming. So if you're going go seeds, be prepared to to wait and be patient.

In my old house, we had, I I guess, the former owner I I I know their their grandchild who is a a great gardener, operates a CSA in our area. So this would have been his grandparents we would have bought the house from, but they had all kinds of bulbs in the backyard, in the lawn. And I swear some of these were spring beauties, but I I don't think I ever saw them flower. Maybe I just hadn't waited long enough. I tried to avoid mowing or I'd mow very high, but we would still get crocus.

We would still get all these other spring bulbs and spring, you know, ephemerals, bloomers popping up in the lawn. And I could swear, I'm like, you know, I these look like spring beauties. I would dig some up, and they would have little bulbs at the bottom of the plant and the same leaves, foliage that spring beauty would have, but I never saw the flowers, which makes me disappointed to hear that because I've also seen I think, Ken, you might have shown me a picture where I've seen, like, just these blankets of blooms of from Spring Beauty. So I yeah. It's been done, just not in my yard.

Yeah. So here in in Jacksonville, out of Duncan Park, part of that park is I've I've noticed I haven't driven by the part where most of them are at, but along the curb in one area there, there's blooming. But there's a whole section of that park. There's nothing but spring beauties in the spring. It's so we can pop up a picture, but, you know, nice white pink flowers.

Yeah. It's it's pretty pretty impressive. If you're ever in Jacksonville, it's done by Duncan Park this time of year. It's it's pretty cool.

It's like walking on snow.

Yeah. And then well, since we're on the the subject of seeds, think we had this later in our outline, but a lot of these plants when they're producing seeds, they're they're gonna be distributed by ants. So they have a structure called an elastosome on there, which is just like a fleshy structure. It's just full of lipids, full of fats. So that the ants will take these, will take them back to their nest.

They feed on that those fats, and then they'll discard those seeds in their trash pile or or somewhere in their nest. And that's that's one way these plants can be distributed is by ants. So, you know, if you are planting your own plants, you know, they can be spread by ants. Know there's some research in the Carolinas that yellow jackets can be important for Trillium. Dispersal, they'll feed on the elastosomes, Trillium, and help spread those as well.

And I think it was things like spring beauty, they can eject their seeds on their own to a couple feet, but then they will also be spread by ants. So I know Spring Beauty is one, Bloodroot, trout lily, Dutchman's breeches, some examples of those are those elastosomes and are spread by ants.

Well, that's fascinating. So they are working hard in that leaf litter early in the year, moving some seed around. I could see them, yeah, taking them to their ant burrows or dens, bringing them inside. Oh, look. You've just planted a seed.

Way to go, ants. So pretty neat.

So, yes, thank an ant for all your your spring ephemerals moving around.

Excellent. And interestingly, when it comes to mayapple, the box turtle is considered one of the primary seed dispersers for mayapple. It's it just puts that fruit right within reach of that little turtle running around the forest.

Mhmm. Get some box turtles. That's right.

Yes. Well, we it sounds like we are diving into the details of these plants, Ken. Maybe we should dive into the details of specific plants. So first on our list, you talked about you might be interested in growing this particular one, skunk cabbage. You know, it it can emerge in February.

It can start stinking things up. Why why are these particular plants an allure to you? Is it an allure to a particular type of insect that you're when you see more of?

Why not? So yeah. So skunk cabbage, you know, as their name implies, they don't smell particularly good, so they're drawn in flies and stuff like that to do their pollination. So you see let's see if we can find a picture because I don't think either one of those grow I've I've looked like I have not found anywhere that actually sells skunk cabbage because I don't think many people actually want to grow it. But it's kind of like kind of a roundish, almost cabbage like looking flower, so to speak.

I think it looks kind of like if you're familiar with pitcher plants, kind of like the top of a pitcher plant. And that's the outside. The flowers are actually inside of there. So it's drawn in flies. And then one of the cool things with, that I think of was skunk cabbage is that they can generate their own heat.

So you can have snow on the ground and these things can generate enough heat to melt the snow around them and then emerge with their flowers and So I think that's that's the big draw to me is, is the not that we get that much snow anymore or I'll never be able to see it. But I think they do think they need a little more, a little more on the moist end of things, which I probably don't have in my yard. So even if I could find a source, I'm not sure how successful I would be.

I I'd be game for growing some skunk cabbage in the backyard. If if not just for the the enjoyment of going out and seeing these little you know, if it does snow in February ever again, that there's these little pockets of bare ground growing in amongst the trees in the backyard where there's this smelly cabbage, a skunk cabbage with flies just circling around there. Oh, yes. That would be great.

Probably a reason nobody comes to my house.

Ken's gonna make us smell a skunk cabbage again. Oh my. Well, this next one, I I really like this next one. It is something that I think I've encountered. It's Dutchman's breaches.

And the reason why I I I think I've encountered it is I have to confirm if whether I have been seeing Dutchman's breeches or have I been seeing squirrel corn. And these are two very similar looking plants. Dutchman's breeches though, the flower is a white flower and it it's sort of like kind of like a kinda looks like a Dutchman's billowy pants, know, pantaloonies or you know, they they look like these billowy pants, white pants. And it's sort of like a a heart shaped if the the lobes, the top lobes of that heart were, you know, much taller. And then it comes together at the bottom, and it opens up with these kind of yellowish I guess, what oh, I don't know what we call those.

Would those be the actual petals of the flower there? These yellowish petal like structures there at the base of this plant of these pantalones, pantaloonies, or pantalones. And and so that that is the the flower, the structure of the plant itself. Now squirrel corn looks just like that flower, except I think squirrel corn, it's more more heart shaped. I think the tops are a bit more rounded to look more heart shaped, so it's a bit more of a stout flower, whereas Dutchman's Breeches are maybe a little bit more elongated.

And I know I have pictures of this somewhere. I just have to confirm whether it was Dutchman's Breeches or Squirrel Corn. But hopefully, we'll have found some pictures. We'll be popping those up here all over the place right now comparing and contrasting the two.

Yeah. I think the pictures I have are Dutchman's breeches, and I think it's one of those if you if you squint, they kinda look like bleeding hearts, just pink or white instead of pink. I mean, there are white bleeding hearts too. But I think if if you wanted to go kind of a native alternative, even though they're blooming different times, but they have that similar look. I think the the leaves are don't know.

Lacey is not the right term, but a little finer textured leaves and stuff on Dutchman's Breeches. And there's some bleeding hearts that have similar leaves to that too. Mhmm. Yeah.

It is like a miniature bleeding heart almost. Yeah. And where I encounter these every year and I think every year, I go and I look up, you know, what exactly I'm dealing with, and I'll be like, oh, it's squirrel corn. I think it is squirrel corn. But it is covering this this this bank behind my parents' house in the woods, and it's just just awash with this particular plant.

It's a it's an entire ground cover in the springtime. And it's absolutely lovely. I I would love to have something like that in my backyard, but I I will try to figure out if it is indeed squirrel corn as I think it is or is it Dutchman's breeches.

So the next flower on our list, Jack in the pulpus. I know this is the one we've we've got in our backyard. And I know I've seen the flowers, but I don't know if I've ever taken pictures of them because usually I don't have my phone or camera with me. Mhmm. And I don't think about ever going back.

But these have, so they send out a flower was it a spade? Spadex is in the middle. So it's a circular or columnar spathe with a little, kind of a little top on it. Again, familiar with pitcher plants, squint, looks pitcher plant y ish. And you got your little spade x in the middle, that's where the flowers are at.

And these are, are kind of cool. They look cool too. But with the pollination with these, you have separate male and female flowers for these. And the flowers cannot give off a fungal scent. So fungus gnats, the bane of any seed starter's existence, can be important pollinators for these because they're attracted to that fungal smell.

So they'll go in, you know, thinking this is somewhere they can lay their eggs. Eventually they'll realize it's not, but they have a hard time escaping because the sides of the flower, spathe or earth kind of slippery. They have that lid over it, so it makes it kind of hard to fly out. So in the male flowers, when they're trying to escape, they're getting covered in pollen and there's a small hole at the base of the flower that the flies can climb out of. And they can go out and and check out other, flowers and stuff.

When they land on a female plant, you know, if they're covered in pollen, again, they're searching around, they're transferring all that pollen, but the females don't have that little escape hole. So once they get in there, typically they're going to die. So they kind of have this unique, trap like funnel where the males you can escape, so you can escape with the pollen. Females you get in, game over. Usually, don't make it out.

But while you're trying to escape, you're transferring pollen.

A femme fatale. My goodness. I I've encountered a lot of Jack in the pulpit, again, in the woods behind my parents' house. But, of course, yeah, I've never pulled the camera out to take a picture of it. They are really neat.

They're it it's probably one of the more uniquely shaped plants that you will encounter in the woods back there.

And then they will you know, the female flowers when they're they get pollinated, they'll produce these green berries that will turn red in the fall. So this is one that sticks around a little bit longer, that exception to the rule of disappearing rather quickly. Then birds will feed on those on those berries. And and the actual leaves of these because they got three leaflets. I think they're actually are they all three separate leaves?

One to two leaves originated from the base of the stem, which are then divided into three almost equal leaflets.

Alright. So the leaflets are in threes. And so like you mentioned, trilliums also have leaves three leaves. But from what I've read, and I think I'll have to go back and check my pictures now to see which ones I have, there's a jack in the pulpit. Those leaves, leaflets are more of a t shape.

So you have two that are more across and then one pointing 90 to 90 ish degrees from them. Whereas trilliums, those three leaves are more are evenly spaced. So if you see three leaves, that's one way you could potentially determine if you've got a trillium or a jack in the pulpit if you don't see the flowers.

Now I need I got a lot of these plants that I need to put in my backyard. So I but Trillium are one of those. There's so many different species of Trillium also. I don't think we have it on our list today, but it's definitely a a noteworthy mention to throw out there. The Trillium, it's probably its own podcast because there's so many different types of them out there.

There's there's white flowers and purple flowers. I know and I've got pictures of one that's got mottled leaves and and purplish flowers. So

You just need a Trillium expert.

Emily did an article on them. She can be our expert.

We'll bring her back on here and talk Trilliums. Well, maybe one of my favorite is not my not it's not the favorite. I it's coming up. But one of my favorite spring ephemerals out there is Virginia bluebells. I have those in my yard.

It is something that I look forward to every single year. Really starting about now, I I was just out in my backyard this morning, and I have not seen them poking their heads out of the ground yet, which is this is the strange thing because in my photos I'm looking at, I see the the the daffodils, which are in full bloom right by my house. And in these pictures, I'm pretty sure I've got daffodils blooming, and I've got the Virginia bluebells, the flowers start you know, the buds starting to push up out of the ground. So there's, like, at least some green coming up. I think so far, it's still nothing.

So hopefully, they're still there doing their thing. But with our Virginia bluebells, they really they started in one spot off the back of our deck, and then they've sort of moved a little bit. They go where they want to. And I've seen a few Virginia bluebells pop up in another part of the yard. So what happens is they they send up their flowers.

Usually the stem of these bluish flowers that will open up. Kind of the tips of the flower beds are almost purplish, and then they open up to reveal that blue color. And then the leaves will then follow after that. But every so often, I think people say they encounter like a white Virginia blue bell flowering flower. So I haven't seen that yet.

It might have always been blue, but I'm keeping my eye out for any potential white flowers out there. And I pretty sure I routinely, every single year, see some type of of an insect pollinator foraging on these flowers. Very often, it's like a bumblebee and sometimes much smaller bees or or smaller insects. But almost routinely, I'm I can go out there while that plant is flowering and see a bee on it.

Yeah. I think of the the ones in our backyard, they've started pushing up some of the leaves and stuff. I didn't it's been a few days since I looked. I didn't see any of the buds. So usually, the buds will start off kind of pink and then and then color up.

Yeah. I have to go back and check. But I think bluebells is one that I think you see a little more widely and not necessarily in in forested areas. I think usually when I do see them, they're still near trees. I think this is one where or it's pretty easy to incorporate in a a typical backyard, front yard landscape.

Yeah. Where I have them, they are growing amongst some hydrangeas. There are some the hostas that will pop up then as a kind of an edging plant once those bluebells begin to fade out. So once the bluebells fade, the hostas come up and sort of takes over that space, and then the hydrangea just leaf out. And it's you sort of forget about them for the rest of the year.

And it's it's a nice little surprise. Every single spring, see the bluebells pop up.

Yeah. And some some random information. So the the the flowers of bluebells, the the color is changing because, you know, they start pink to to purplish to bluish, because the pH in their cell sap changes. So as the pH drops, they get more blue. So sometimes if you're growing in more acidic soils, you have deeper blue flowers.

Well, that's interesting because as we found out last week, I do have very acidic soils, so that might be why they're so blue.

So, yeah, don't don't adjust your pH now.

It's I can't. I won't.

Alright. Think let's see here. Next on our list, got yellow trout lily. So like I mentioned earlier, this is one that can take, quite a few years, seven, eight years sometimes in order for them to flower. So, again, probably buying transplants, live plants, bare root plants, whatever you wanna call them, is probably the way you want to go with these unless you're going to wait for a while.

Unless you're willing to wait for a while, to get flowers off of those. So these are the ones I've that we have planted in our yard and we've we've had them blooming are are yellow. So send out the single, yellow flower that we can pop a photo in. There's also another species that is white produces white flowers. With these, the foliage, I can pop a picture in this.

The the foliage is the leaves are green, but they also they have this brownish, purplish modeling on there, which I guess looks like a trout. So less trout lily.

And I think one of the the benefits of trap lily and and also a lot of our spring ephemerals that that through our reading was that because these plants are popping up earlier than a lot of the other others that are beginning that would leaf out later is that they can help to tie up or hold some of those nutrients, like nitrogen, that would otherwise be washed away with our a lot of our spring rains. And so something like trout lily, it's growing all of these leaves. It's flowering, and it is using those nutrients in the soil. It is tying up some of those nutrients. And, yes, it is gonna, photosynthesize.

It's gonna use that to grow, create it more food for itself. But then as that plant goes dormant, it also can release some of that nitrogen, some of those nutrients back into the soil that then a lot of our plants coming up along further down the line can then utilize. So that's kind of an added benefit there. And and when I was reading about trout live lily, it specifically talked about how it can hold nutrients in the spring for plants sprouting later. Another reason to grow them.

Exactly. You need more roots in the soil. We need more green up in the ground up up in the air. We we just we need more plants. So, Ken, this next one is my favorite spring ephemeral, and this is the may apple.

I I love the mayapple. I grew up, you know, roaming through the woods as a kid with my dogs, and we would I would just, like, just run through these mayapple patches in the woods. You know, I'd be exploring. I would take a stick, and sometimes I would just, like, swat at the mayapples and just knock them down. So I I have to I have to plant a lot of mayapples to make up for all the ones I I knocked down with with a stick.

But, yeah, I just absolutely love this plant. It is a favorite. I have seen this growing in a lot of residential yards. Seems like this is a popular ground cover for, you know, early spring, in many cases. And so it's, this particular plant, if you're not familiar, the may apple, it it's, shoots up a single stalk, a leaf.

It's kind of like an umbrella shaped leaf, on a single stalk. And it would be if you thought there were woodland fairies, it would be where they lived. They would live underneath these plants. It creates this nice little little, like, miniature canopy on the forest floor. And and so the the leaves are up photosynthesizing before the deciduous trees leaf out, and they will then produce a white flower, which is drooping down towards the it it droops facing the ground, and it just hangs underneath.

It gets pollinated. And then, you know, once it's pollinated, as we described, you know, all manner of things will come through and and eat that fruit that develops all types of mammals, squirrels, chipmunks, things like that. But primary seeds disperser is the box turtle. And I think the foliage, it lasts a little bit longer than a lot of other of our spring ephemerals. Usually, once that canopy closes in overhead, you'll still see those those leaves up.

But usually, by the time we get towards the May, into June, they begin to just sort of vanish in the in the woods.

Man, and they spread a little more readily, and this is relative, than some of the other springer feminals too. Right? Mhmm. I mean, none of them really spread terribly rapidly, but this would be more of a spreader than some of the others.

That that is correct. And that's why when I ordered my five may apple plants, that's why I I could have maybe clustered them together. But my hope is the reason why I planted each plant a little bit farther apart is that they would create their own colonies and maybe grow eventually into each other to create a much larger colony. Again, I have to go out in the woods every year and find where those original plants are each time. And this year, I'm gonna put a flag by them.

They have survived at least two years in the this wooded area behind my house, and so I'm I'm hopeful they will come up again this year. You know, there's some probably difficulties for some of these plants. We have been encountering stretches of drier weather, stretches of drought in the summer, drought in the fall. And then was it 2023? We had a spring drought, kind of an unprecedented spring drought.

Now I know they survived 2023. They they shot up in 2024. But the thing you gotta know gotta sort of a guess, like, were they using the last of their resources that they had in their root system? Because I don't water them. I don't take care of them.

It has been very dry, at least in Macomb where I'm at. Our soil is dry. We didn't get much snow cover this year again, so we'll see.

Yeah. I think so, yeah, we can go to our next one here. I think maybe that's why so bloodroot Mhmm. There's another popular one. This is one we planted, and I don't think ours did much last year.

I'm wondering if 23 stressed them out a little too much. But with bloodroot, these have these really bright white, like pure white flowers. Like, I don't know, they say white flowers, other things are white flowers, but these are these are white.

Yes.

Yeah. It's very, very bright. I don't even know. I can't think of another flower that would compare as it like that, like pure of a white flower that I can think of. What with yellow centers on them.

I get lower growing plants. And with these, you know, these rhizomes, if you break those, they have this reddish orangish sap which gives them the name bloodroot. So Mhmm. And I think there's another one may stick around a little bit longer. Relatively speaking when it comes to spring and feminals.

But this is yeah. Again, you know, pick your favorite one like picking your favorite kid, but I'd say this would be this would be Up there. Top of the list for Yes. I think just because of those the flowers. I I can't really think of anything else that's that's similar to them.

Mhmm.

I've first time I learned about bloodroot, we were actually at the one of our master gardener sites up in Galesburg. It's the Carl Sandburg historic site. It's where Carl Sandburg, the poet hey. There's a lot of poetry in today's show. It's where he I think it's where he grew up.

But we have bloodroot growing as a ground cover, and one of the master gardeners plucked a leaf with the stem attached, handed it to me, and said, take a look at the the cut end. And sure enough, there's this orangish reddish sap oozing out of the the cut end of that stem. So I think I got a picture of that. I'll throw that up on the screen.

Yeah. We'll have to have to check and see if ours are coming up. I when I looked last week, I didn't assuming I'm remembering the right place where we planted them. No. There is nothing popping up.

Yeah. I I looked for our Mayapples this last weekend, and I'm a little worried. We we do have some some ash trees in the woods behind the area, and a lot of the top side of the trees that have been killed by emerald ash borer, a lot of the top side of these trees have snapped, and we've got a lot of debris on our forest floor. I am sort of debating whether or not I should clean that up to to to to give some more room to some of those spring ephemerals and some of our we have also a a very good colony of elderberry that is also part of the the woods back there. So, yeah, I'm trying to debate whether or not I need to clean some of that up to to let some of these other plants let them get room in there.

Because it does seem like where you let where where you're giving a little bit of an inch in your woods, garlic mester shows up or bush honeysuckle or we've got barberry, we've got Norway maple. We've got all of these plants that just keep showing up in these open spots in the woods, and it's really hard for spring ephemerals to compete against these plants. We've said it before in the show, but it's just just worth repeating. The reason why I think a lot of people don't know much about spring ephemerals or not exposed them as much is because most of our woods these days are full of invasive plants that have outcompeted a lot of our spring ephemerals.

Yeah. And then, I mean, if you need to clean it up, lot times they'll they'll come back Yes. Eventually. Mhmm. Just gotta keep at it.

Yes. The the work never stops. So it's a never ending thing. People always ask me, well, when do I stop doing this? Like, you don't stop fighting invasive species.

You don't stop promoting native plants. You know? It's it does not end. Well, Ken, that brings us to our last one today, the spring beauty. We've already talked a little bit about this, but I the only again, the only thing I know about this is I think I had it growing in my backyard at the old house, but you've seen this one more than I have.

Tell us more about the spring beauty.

Yeah. So this is, a smaller plant, you know, six inches tall. The the leaves look similar to grass. They're so much broader leaved Mhmm. Plants.

So, you know, these do well or well, I guess they they incorporate well into lawns because they look somewhat similar. And if you get a big patch of them, you're gonna get this really stunning, you know, view, like I mentioned in in the park. White flowers, some of them will be, pinkish, to to dark pink, a lot of stripes on them. It just kinda depends on on the individual plants. And so, you know, there's been some some research done looking at, the flower colors, so you could darker pink or crimson flowers.

They found these to be more attractive to bees, which are really the main pollinators of them. There are some specialists, I think some flies that may specialize on, or bees. There's some specialist pollinators on, on spring beauty too. But these darker blooms for whatever reason are preferred by the pollinators. Those get pollinated more.

They produce more seeds. But the, there's some chemicals that cause this more pink coloration. But those, the plants that have all those chemicals are creating those darker flowers are also more attractive to herbivores compared to the pure white flowers. So you have kind of have that give and take, you know, you get more seeds, but your herbivores are feeding on them more and stuff. So maybe, you know, while they may produce more seed, more of those plants are getting eaten.

So they you kinda get this balance of white to darker pink to in between and stuff. Have the pink lines on on the flowers and stuff. So it's you know, I think they're pretty cool. Like I mentioned, I've we've tried numerous times to get these going in our yard. Again, I just kinda sprinkle the seeds out and I go and look in at where I think I put them.

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong spot, but I have not had any plants blooming yet. And they can tolerate some mowing, but when you mow them, you mow the flowers, they're not coming back. So it's one of those things. If you if you've got them, let them bloom, kinda hold off as long as you can. And then you can mow them, then the plants will can tolerate that.

They'll still have leaf matter up. They'll still be able to photosynthesize and stuff. I know here in Jacksonville, it's it's always kinda sad when they mow. I always think they can wait a little bit longer, but that's not my decision to make. So

Well, it's gotta be awful to see that. The mower comes down and just there goes all the flowers.

Nice and nice and white and pink one day, and the next day it's green.

Yeah. Well, they keep coming back. That's a good thing at least. So they're they're still there.

Yes. Yeah. They haven't. So, yeah, they can they can tolerate some mowing as long as you're not scalping on my personally, if I were doing it, if it was my urine, I would have that mower deck as high as you can make it. Leave as as much of that foliage behind as you can.

Mhmm.

And probably even wait till I got a letter from the city saying I gotta mow. Well, if you if you don't wanna go that route, got a little earlier.

Got a little earlier. Maybe it is worth saying, Ken, because as you're describing that, I thought, well, maybe you could just go out to the park and dig up a chunk a chunk of the lawn there. But everyone, it is important when you see these, it is not the greatest thing to go out and dig these up in the wild and bring them home to your yard. We do recommend purchasing these through, like, reputable nursery dealers. And, again, there are also nursery propagated plants, and there are nursery grown plants.

Feel you can ask questions to whomever you're buying these from. Sometimes nursery grown plants, they are harvested from the wild, and they simply grow them out a little bit in the nursery. But then there's nursery propagated plants. They are propagated. They are sprouted from seed or through cuttings in the nursery.

They're grown out. But it's it's more of a responsible way of of of having these available for sale. So, yes, not a great thing to go out and just dig them up out of the out of the wild. You definitely need someone's permission if that is the route you're gonna go. I don't know if the park district will give you permission, Ken, to dig up part of their park.

But

Probably not.

They may never know.

And I'd say too, you know, if you're in a natural area and you and you see these flowers, leave them. And those plants are only blooming once that year. It's not like they're sending out a new flush, and they don't especially spread all that rapidly. You know, things like trillium and trout lily could take seven or eight years before they bloom. So it can be a while before, you know, these things are we're putting out flowers again.

So avoid the temptation. Just take pictures.

Yes. This would be a good one to teach like young children, to to look at and and not pick. Like like these are particular plants that we don't really want to disturb. You know? Look at them because I know it's very tempting for kids to see a flower and just pick it right away.

This is a good training opportunity for your children. Look. Don't pick.

Teach them how do I need dandelions. Pick those.

Can pick all dandelions that they want.

And I think one thing we we've kinda hinted at, you know, if if you're gonna be planting these in your landscape, they do disappear. So making sure you're planting something else with them to fill those holes. So say in our yard where we've planted, our spring ephemerals, plant a lot of ferns because those ferns really don't start coming up until most of those have died back. We've got some sedges and stuff like that as well. So just keep that in mind that if you're gonna have a big patch of of bluebells or whatever, you're gonna have a hole if you don't have something else in there, hostas, annuals.

If you're going put annuals or something in there, I would flag your plants. So if you don't plant that stuff until after they die back, you're not potentially damaging that plant or disturbing it when you're planting. Yes.

Good. Very good point. Yeah. And I think it's interesting, especially with our bluebells where we have them in our yard, they seem to grow in and amongst the hostas. It doesn't seem to bother them.

We have ferns in there as well. And it's bluebells, they don't care. They'll grow. They'll find their space in and amongst the other plant roots.

Maybe they do get along with each other after all.

Maybe they do. They do. They might beat each other up a little bit, but they're good friends from long ago. Well, that was a lot of great information about spring ephemerals. So get out today.

Go check out go on a hike. Take a look at some spring ephemerals. Don't pick. Leave them where they are. Take some pictures.

Share them with others. They are neat plants to go see. Well, the Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. Ken, thank you so much for hanging out and sharing what we know about kind of the best part of the growing season. Think it's just getting it kicked off.

We're so excited for this to happen. Winter's over. Spring is here. Can't wait to see these ephemerals.

Yes. Thank you. Time to go out and check out the backyard again and see what's coming up and start making a list for new stuff to put back there. And let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. Spring has sprung as we have said and questions are coming into extension offices. We're going to share some of those questions that we are getting, but do you have questions? Feel free to email us. Our emails are in the show notes down below.

Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening. Or if you're watching us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.