A snake in the grass... and some flowers along the way

A summer walk down a grassy path will quickly tell you one thing—there’s far more here than meets the eye. From beneath the tangle of green, field crickets sing, unseen in the heat of the day. Grasshoppers, startled from their hiding spots, lift suddenly with a golden flutter like small birds to a new resting spot, feet beyond my steps. With the rattle of freshly dried wings, a dragonfly frees herself from the thickness of tall stems and takes to the air. And a tiny toad, barely the size of my toenail, tucks himself silently into the safety of the uncut roadside.
I think about what I cannot see—for the most part, so as not to miss something I might find interesting. But also, for my safety, as well.
There might be venomous snakes.

American-Ipecac,
Gillenia stipulata

In my county in southwestern Ohio, I walk without concern. But traveling a few counties to the north or a few counties to the east quickly puts me in different territory.
In wetlands, I wonder…Massassauga rattlesnakes?
In the unglaciated hill country, I think…timber rattlesnakes?
And, when the dirt beneath my feet turns from beige to blushing brown, I know to beware…copperheads.

I’ve never seen one in the wild.
I’ve always hoped to discover one, though—watch it carefully from a distance as it warms itself in the afternoon sun or slithers across the path a few feet ahead of my footsteps. As long as we both see each other and give each other space, I really don’t worry about encountering snakes. It’s just the thinking about what I cannot see that reminds me to be ever vigilant and keeps me safely walking on the mowed paths when I travel.

Downy Wood-Mint,
Blephilia ciliata

The prairies of Adams County have held a special allure for me this spring.
In the past weeks, I’ve walked there 5 times—on different paths, each vastly changed as the season has progressed.

Narrow-Leaf Mountain-Mint,
Pycnanthemum tenuifolium

With each trip east, as the clay gives way to sand, as the farm fields roll up and over hillsides and rain-carved furrows in the pastures reveal the rusty soil, I’ve watched summer unfold a prairie landscape so rare that it feels like I’ve walked back...into a time before Ohio saw settlement.

Prairie-Dock,
Silphium terebinthinaceum

Tall prairie grasses and the broad leaves of prairie-dock fill the small opening in the surrounding woods of post and blackjack oak. The ground is gritty and dry. Of prairie types, this is described as “xeric limestone” and its southern exposure and hilly terrain offer little water or shelter from the afternoon sun.

Prairie-Bluets,
Stenaria nigricans

The plants that grow here are tough as nails.
With long taproots and leathery leaves, they grab and hang onto each precious drop of water, endure drought and fire, resist everything--except the plow.

Pale-Spike Lobelia,
Lobelia spicata

Eying a tall, slender spike of tiny, faintly blue flowers, I stepped carefully one foot off the trail and focused my camera. Caught in my peripheral vision, a flattened, coiled object the size of a dinner plate lay motionless in the grass a few feet away. I glanced quickly down and froze in my tracks, the orange scales at my feet making my heart pound, my camera drop lazily around my neck.


More aware of my intrusion than I had been of her presence, she eyed me as well and flicked her black-tipped tongue without flinching--a large garter snake warming herself in the safety of the tall prairie grass. But in my head, she had become the copperhead I knew was also hiding there.
Lesson learned: pictures from the path, snakes in the grass.




The Eastern Garter Snake, Thamnophis sirtalis, is one of 3 species of garter snakes found in Ohio. Usually between 18-26 inches in length, this individual was close to 32 inches—still a bit less than the outer range of 48, but the largest garter snake I’ve ever seen!
Usually marked by 3 light-colored stripes, one dorsal and 2 laterals covering rows 2 & 3 on each side, eastern garter snakes have varying colors (blues, browns, greens) and patterns (stripes, checkerboards). Most active during the day (diurnal), they are frequently found basking among vegetation or in low shrubs. Although they tend not to climb, they are good swimmers and may be prefer sites close to water.
Because of having an adaptable diet, garter snakes are found in a variety of habitats and although always carnivorous, may eat worms, frogs and toads, mice, bird eggs and even carrion. Because they are not constrictors and do not have venom, garter snakes rely on powerful jaws to overpower prey. It is thought that a mild toxin in their saliva may subdue frogs and toads until swallowed.
Garter snakes have live birth (ovoviviparous) but give no care to their young.
Though not aggressive, if approached, they will coil and strike and are known to vigorously defend themselves by biting and musking.

Lance-Leaf Bedstraw,
Galium lanceolatum

Time with Trout-lilies

White Trout-lily, Erythronium albidum

I seldom worry that what is found in a day outdoors will not be in some way extraordinary.
In early April, especially, when daily change makes the new of yesterday instantly old, I hate to miss even one day of it.

Sessile Trillium, Trillium sessile

Above the earth and from beneath its surface, life creeps back into a resting landscape.
Birds cross the sky.
Leaves burst from branches and flowers quickly fade.
In a matter of days, the bare deciduous woods have become densely leafed-out and green.

Catching the bloom of the earliest wildflowers of spring, the ephemerals, in their race to flower and set seed in the few brief weeks of penetrating sunlight, is not a task for the timid—for to each part practice, must be added two parts luck.
Brought back to life from their rest beneath the rich soil by warming ground, rainfall and increasing daylight, many get quickly to the business of blooms before their own leaves even emerge, using the reserves of energy held over winter in bulbs below ground. Others, with accelerated photosynthesis, manufacture carbohydrates at an incredibly fast rate, allowing great growth spurts in just several days.
A bare, brown, leaf-covered bank can become dotted with white trout-lilies almost overnight.
While days later, not one of their splayed petals remains.

Trout-lily before opening

The trail through Whipple State Nature Preserve leads immediately upward from a small parking pad just off the main road. Winding our way to the ridge atop the 30-foot dolomite cliffs, one flower appeared, then another.

Trout-lily open!

recurved petals

(all photos click to enlarge)

How many minutes do you spend with each one?

What part of a fleeting life can you hold onto?

Never too many.
Never enough.

Sunset at spring pond

Trout-lily colony

Trout-lilies are early-blooming native wildflowers and members of the lily family, having 3 petals and 3 sepals and 1 or 2 brown/red-spotted strap-like leaves. Sometimes found in large colonies in undisturbed deciduous woods decades old, younger, single-leafed plants do not flower. White trout-lilies, Erythronium albidum, have flowers that are primarily white and tinged with varying degrees of blue and pink.

White Trout-lily
broad pink tint on sepals, narrow band of pink on petals

This post continues last week's adventures with the
Midwest Native Plant Society
and Jim McCormac.

Catching Mice in the Dead Sea

Fallow Field
Adams County Ohio

The fallow fields along the Ohio River may be waiting for seed or plow, but they’re anything but empty on this early spring afternoon.
Covered by a giant purple carpet, they glow from edge to edge with the bright, pink-lipped flowers and soft, fuzzy leaves of an alien mint, Purple Dead-nettle, that quickly moves in to these resting fields, leaving only a few toe holds for the most enterprising of others.

Purple Dead-nettle, Lamium purpureum

Field Pansy, Viola rafinesquei

Step into the ankle-deep magenta sea,
wade past a few field pansies, their heads bobbing as they struggle to rise above the waves, and you’ll find its smallest residents happily riding the current, tails held high.

Mouse-tails, Myosurus minimus

They’re Mouse-tails, Myosurus minimus, a tiny native buttercup in this, its easternmost range. Barely more than a tuft of grass at first glance, these small plants have distinctive slender green flowers that elongate into the tail-like fruit as they mature.

Mouse-tails flowering

Mouse-tails in fruit

But you’d never know they’re lurking there--like the quiet mouse that scurries through the rooms of my old house,
and gives me just a glimpse of him when I have forgotten.

Dead Sea

Henbit, Lamium amplexicaule

Another mint eagerly fills waste places along roadsides.
It's Henbit, Lamium amplexicaule, whose leaves wrap the stem more closely and without stalks.
Again, the bright pink, 2-lipped flower is striking to look at up close!

This post continues last week's adventures with the
Midwest Native Plant Society
and Jim McCormac.

Searching for spring

Draba verna

"He who hopes for spring with upturned eye
never sees so small a thing as Draba.
He who despairs of spring with downcast eye
steps on it, unknowing.
He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud
finds it, in abundance."

— Aldo Leopold

For much of the world, the arrival of spring is a showy occasion.
Like the young girls in brightly-colored, petticoated dresses, we expect the celebration of the season to wake us from winter with a visible alarm. While the temperatures dance back and forth across the freezing line and imperceptible changes slowly unfurl, we struggle to nail spring to the calendar, define it by the things we can see.

Crocus

Glory-of-the-Snow

We mark it boldly, watching for blooms from tulips and daffodils, as if with loud proclamation we might tether it a bit more securely.

But nature’s spring is far more subtle.
Her change is quiet--hidden beneath the tangle of faded stems on a barren field, softly peeking past layers of leaves on the treed hillside of a southern slope.
By the time we realize it’s here, a good portion of spring is already gone.

American Columbo
first leaves of spring

Last weekend I walked with Jim McCormac and the Midwest Native Plant Society in search of those earliest and seldom seen, quietly productive, first-bloomers of spring--the understated, perhaps under-appreciated little mustards. In Adams County, rich in botanical diversity because of its unique combination of geography and geology, we would find them. And, as is often the case, the least spectacular place (especially if you’re driving past at 55 mph) held the greatest botanical find.

Earthstar puffball

Stepping carefully from our vehicles, we fanned out into a small, local cemetery, stooping low, eyes combing the ground in search of our conquest, the tiny Little Whitlow-grass, Draba brachycarpa.
This neat little mustard stands barely an inch high and can easily be lost in the taller trimmed grass surrounding the grave sites. Happy to settle in to the continually disturbed sandy soil in this one of just a few known deposits along the Ohio River, dozens of these small, rare mustard plants jockey for space, while prickly pear cactus and earthstars delight in the southernmost Ohio sand.
The hardest part is finding the first one.

Draba brachycarpa,
photo courtesy Tricia West

“Is this it?”
A small plant is gently isolated, swept clean of broken stems and weathered leaves covering it, basal leaves examined, stem and flower head scrutinized.
“YES!”
And the group drops to their knees, each chin on the ground, as only a mustard can be appreciated.

Draba brachycarpa, in bloom
photo courtesy Tricia West

in fruit

Soon, the hidden treasure is spotted all around, some still in their delicate white flower, most already in fruit—stubby, purple pods (brachycarpa=short pod) that can barely be seen unless you’re nose-to-nose with the little Draba.
At first glance, it might seem we're still waiting for spring.
Look closely, stoop low.
If you're a little mustard, spring has already happened.

Draba brachycarpa, Little Whitlow-grass
in fruit

The genus Draba accounts for 365 species in the mustard family (Cruciferae or Brassicaceae) worldwide, characterized by a 4-part flower whose petals stand at right angles to each other, resembling a cross. Another important diagnostic feature of those in the mustard family is the fruit, a silique, an often long, (except when it’s short!) pod-like form, filled with seeds which easily tumble forth when dry.

Draba verna, Early Whitlow-grass is growing in large patches on my lawn.
Each of the 4 petals is deeply divided, giving the appearance of 8.