First field trip of 2020 – Eva Russell Chandler Heritage Preserve — 2020-02-14

This has been an unusually mild and wet winter down in the Southeast. Lately, I’ve been seeing images of early Spring wildflowers on Flickr and FaceBook, so I figured I should check out a few nearby locations to check the status of our local wildflowers. So I drove about 45 minutes to one of my favorite South Carolina state heritage preserves — Eva Russell Chandler Heritage Preserve.

Dimpled Trout Lily

On the drive up, I was not seeing anything but bare trees, dead leaves and a few evergreens: Pine, Rhododendron, Holly, Mountan Laurel, and Hemlock — a typical winter scene. I had my fingers crossed for some color, but I just was not sure I’d see any. As I approached the place where I usually park to enter the preserve, I realized that the road had washed out just a short distance from my parking area. There is a creek leading from the large pond that feeds the cataract that is the main feature of this preserve, and although it is only a few inches deep and maybe a meter wide during “normal” weather, it had risen 8 feet (2.5 meters) or more and crossed the gravel road, taking much of the surface with it. We have experienced 10 inches (25 cm) of rain already in 2020. I hope that doesn’t mean a dry and scorching summer…

Anyway, I managed to scrape across (not very gracefully) the washout and park my truck. As I unpacked the camera gear, the sun peeked out from the clouds and cheered things up a bit. Normally, I hope for overcast skies, but most of the preserve is in deep woods, so the bright light would not be much of a problem.

As I walked the path, I began to see some green poking out of the ground. No color yet, but I did see some of the winter leaves of one of our fairly common terrestrial orchids: Tipularia discolor or Crane-fly orchid:

The lumps/bumps/warts on the leaf in the first image are typical for this orchid species. I’m not sure if I’ve heard of a satisfying explanation of their appearance, but nevertheless, there they are. The leaves usually appear toward the end of autumn (October or November). They make use of the lack of leaves on the trees overhead to allow sunlight to pierce the canopy and allow photosynthesis during the winter months. Because we have little snow during the winter in our area, this photosynthesis can carry on for at least 6-8 months, allowing the plant to produce enough energy to produce a flower spike around mid-July. By the time the flower spike appears, the leaves have withered and are no longer needed. Here is an image of what the flower spike looks like in full bloom:

BTW, this is one of the very few orchid species that produces non-symmetrical flowers. One of the flower’s sepals is usually bent either right or left, and the flower is tilted on its axis, causing a misshapen flower and lending credence to one of the common names, “Crippled Crane-fly orchid“. This characteristic is fairly easy to see in the following image:

As I continued down the foot trail, I began to see signs of one of our earliest bloomers: Erythronium umbilicatum or Dimpled Trout Lily. All along the margins of the trail and deep into the woods were thousands of the beautifully mottled leaves. I had to walk farther down the trail, however, before I saw my first bloom. At that point, there were many dozens of small, bright yellow flowers scattered on the forest floor in dappled sunlight. Here is a selection of many of the flowers I photographed on this trip:

I ended up spending a couple of hours on these bright yellow beauties. Before leaving, I took the time to search for flowers of another early Spring bloomer: Hexastylis heterophylla or Variable-leaf Heartleaf. I found quite a few plants off the trail, but only a handful were in flower. The flowers are quite unusual but attractive, in my opinion. They are not visible until the leaf litter is gently brushed away from the center of the plant’s growth. Because they are at ground level and usually well hidden, one might suspect they are pollinated by a ground-dwelling critter. In fact, it has become general “knowledge” that ants or flies pollinate the flowers, but this may, in fact, not be true. It seems that your guess may be as good as any, including self-pollination. Much more research needs to be done before we can arrive at a final, accurate answer…

Here are a couple of images of plants with open flowers:

I was fairly pleased with the result of my first outing of the year. The coming Spring season (which begins in about a month in our region) will bring many colorful ephemeral wildflower species. This year, I hope to visit some new (for me) locations to sample what they might offer as photographic opportunities.

Stay tuned…

–Jim