Dog-Tooth Violet

The plants that botanists sometimes call “spring ephemerals,” including trilliums, common violets and hepaticas, always seem magical to me. They push up through bare earth when warmer weather is still a vague suggestion, and proceed to flower, set seed and disappear, all in manner of a few months. Intellectually I know that ephemerals are always … Read more

Watching Wildflowers

Everyone loves wildflowers.  Several weeks ago, when a wildflower “super bloom” occurred in a small section of southern California desert, tourist volume swelled to gargantuan size and the internet went crazy.  It is a reassuring sign that we have not completely lost touch with the natural world. Despite all that love, wildflowers are disappearing in … Read more