Flowers in a Wooded Bottom Land

     Much of a wooded valley in the forested hills of northern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania has been owned by the Pennsylvania Game Commission for many years for hunting, and has changed little in my lifetime.  It probably has changed little since the days of American Indians over 300 years ago.  This valley contains a typical bottom land woods where, over the years, I have seen ruffed grouse, white-tailed deer, box turtles, black rat snakes and many kinds of forest birds, with different species in different seasons.  And there I have heard the croaking of male wood frogs, the peeping of male spring peeper frogs, the trilling of male American toads, the drumming of male ruffed grouse and the courtships of male American woodcocks.  But on April 29, 2015, I tallied the plants and flowering plants, both native and alien, growing along a gravel road that runs closely parallel to a clear stream in that wooded valley.
     Many acres of succulent, three-foot-tall skunk cabbage leaves dominated the moist soil in the bottom land.  The flower hoods of this native plant emerged from the damp ground early in February and the foliage sprouted in March.  Skunk cabbage flower hoods create heat to melt their way through snow.  Crushed leaves of this species smell like skunk spray, hence the common name.
     The lush foliage of other kinds of plants, here and there, covered drier ground abundantly.  They include native May apples and wild leeks, and alien day lilies.  May apple leaves are folded when they poke through the ground in April.  But those leaves unfold like umbrellas as they develop.  I often imagine a fairy or gnome standing under each May apple leaf.
     Leeks are related to onions, but have broad leaves.  One can smell their onion fragrance by crushing a leaf.
     Some of the native woodland wildflowers blooming along that woodland road on April 29 include bloodroots, spring beauties, northern downy violets, yellow violets, wild gingers, trout lilies, and rue anemones.  Bloodroots, being an early species, only had a few blooming flowers left, although I saw many leaves of this plant just off the road.  I lifted a few of the heart-shaped leaves of the ginger to see the small, purple-brown flower of each plant.  The yellow blossoms of trout lilies were at their peak of blooming and quite attractive.  The two or three delicate, white flowers on each of the equally fragile rue anemone plants were also at the height of blooming. 
     Most of the flowering plants in this woodland were behind schedule in blooming because of the cold weather we had here during March and much of April.  But deciduous forest floors are warmer in April than any other month of the year.  That's because leaves on the trees didn't develop yet and the hot sunlight shines directly on the forest floor, warming it and allowing plant growth.  And plants on the woodland floor get more light, which also spurs their rapid growth before tree leaves shade the ground.
     A few alien plants originally from Europe, including colt's-foot, lesser celandine and dandelion, help cheer the April woods with their innumerable golden blossoms.  Colt's-foot and dandelion produce seeds on fuzzy parachutes that carry those seeds some distance before landing and sprouting.  These species of vegetation inhabit the drier parts of the woods, especially along road cuts and clearings where they get ample sunlight at least part of each day.
     Lesser celandine, however, thrives best in the damp soil of bottom land woods along creeks and streams, where this species forms large patches of itself, dominating some of the bottom lands.  And it does well in a combination of sunlight and shade each day.
     Spicebushes had tiny, yellow flowers on them the day I was in that wooded valley, while red maple trees had red-orange blossoms and shad bushes had white flowers.  Those flowers, together, brightened the understories and canopies of the woods, while the forest floor blooms cheered that level of the woods.  
     I noticed that day, too, that the long leaf buds of American beech trees were swelling and offering their own beauties to that of the bottom land forest that day.  Those buds were particularly pretty when the sunlight shone behind them.
     That relatively unchanged floodplain forest was lovely and interesting with flowers the day I was there.  And as those blooms fade, migrant bird species will arrive to raise young in the woods.  This valley, like most everywhere on Earth, always has something in nature to experience.