By Lloyd Richert
Originally published in Thorn Creek News, May-June 1982, No. 32
April 18, 1982 … Birds were seen and heard in the woods today: robins, of course, and cardinals, and woodpeckers. Wood chips at the base of some tree trunks showed where the latter were insect hunting. John and Betty Weber reported they had seen a myrtle warbler, an olive-backed thrush and a rufous-sided towhee.
Rabbits, squirrels and a white-tailed deer were seen too. Today for the first time in years, I saw a dead animal, an opossum, lying off the trail among the shrubs.
And there were insects: a few gnats flying in our faces, and a red admiral butterfly and a mourning cloak butterfly flitting along the path. These are among the first spring butterflies, since they overwinter as adults and so can appear whenever the weather turns warm, and do not have to emerge from cocoons, or hatch from eggs as later moths and butterflies do.
The early wildflowers are out already. Hepatica, bloodroot, spring beauty and some anemones are now starting to flower.
Toothwort and trout lily are budding. Still others– wild geranium, corn lily (Clintonia), Valerian, and wild onion are in leaf or at least beginning to expand their leaves. The tiny May apples are just emerging, their rolled up leaves looking like tiny furled umbrellas. Vinca, or myrtle, is brightening up their leaves. These, being evergreen, were noticeable all winter long along the east leg of the Loop Trail.
Bright green patches of moss can be seen throughout the woods now on fallen tree trunks and wherever the soil is damp. Their swelling spore cases, atop their tiny stalks, will soon ripen and send out their spores to propagate their kind with the help of wind or animals brushing against them.
Most of the shrubs are beginning to leaf out: the hawthorns, wild roses, sumac, poison ivy, and honeysuckle. Buds on the maples, elms, and willow are opening ahead of the hickories and oaks. Most of our sumacs are the smooth sumacs, but in the immediate Nature Center area there are several hairy sumacs covered with a velvety nap like that on a deer’s antlers. These are staghorn sumacs. Have you noticed them? Several days ago I was surprised to see wedged under the foot bridge over the Woodland Trail, a large dead tree trunk about fifteen feet long and two feet thick. Today it had been swept downstream a few feet where it lies wedged against another log which has lain across the creek for years.
Would you be interested in knowing how to describe the stages of growth of a plant from its appearance to its withering and drying up?
Our early woodland flowers, for example, expend their whole visible life cycle within a few weeks time. Scott King gives us these seven steps: emergence, leaf expansion, budding, flowering, fruit setting, ripening, and dying back…
Our early woodland wildflowers, unlike the swallows of Capistrano in California, do not always emerge on the same date each year. For example my field notes for April 17, 1979, tell me that the early woodland flowers on that date were just about at the same stage of development as I noticed today in the woods. Last year, in the spring of 1981, these same plants had reached this same stage on April 3, a full two weeks earlier. That was a mild winter, and an earlier spring, as I remember. What will next spring be like? I can hardly wait to see!
Editor’s note: This was reprinted from the May-June 1982, No. 32, edition of Thorn Creek Preservation Association Newsletter. Thorn Creek Preservation Association became our Friends of Thorn Creek Woods. The late Lloyd Richert was a long time Friends member. He served on the Friends Board, and as you see above, was an avid woods walker, wonderful observer of nature and a lovely nature writer.