Spring Beauties and Bloodroots

     Spring beauties and bloodroots are native, woodland wildflowers in southeastern Pennsylvania and in woods across much of the eastern United States.  And these perennial plants have much in common.  They are small, simple plants that hug the ground to avoid cold wind, yet can still absorb heat from the sun and the sun-warmed dead-leaf carpets on forest floors.  They grow and bloom early in April when they get much sunlight on forest floors because the trees haven't developed foliage yet.  The pretty flowers of spring beauties and bloodroots are pollinated by bee flies and other kinds of early insects.  And both species were used by Native Americans that lived in this area, but now all native, woodland wildflowers are protected by law. 
     Spring beauties produce a few small, pink flowers at a time and continue to grow pretty, new blooms into early May.  Each plant is six to ten inches tall and has a pair of grass-like leaves.  Each blossom is one-half to three-quarters of an inch across and has five, pale-pink petals, each one veined deep-pink and five stamens with pink anthers.  Many of those lovely flowers together form beautiful, pink carpets of beauty.
     The adaptable spring beauties have also colonized some bottomland meadows that were carved from woods to graze livestock.  Parts of those cow pastures are pink with the multitudes of spring beauty blooms, which are another food for our souls in spring.  And small capsules filled with tiny seeds grow where the blooms were.
     American Indians dug up, boiled and ate spring beauty bulbs as we do small potatoes.  Sometimes called "fairy spuds" spring beauty bulbs resemble little potatoes.
     Small, but beautiful, patches of bloodroots are common here and there on forest floors.  Each bloodroot plant has one deeply-scalloped leaf that loosely surrounds the plant's single flower stem like a collar around a skinny neck.  That stalk bears one lovely, white bloom that resembles a small tulip until it opens fully, when it looks like a daisy.
     Each bloodroot plant grows up to ten inches high and its one blossom is one-and-a-half inches across and has eight to ten petals.  The lovely flowers open in sunlight when insects are most active to pollinate them, but are closed overnight.  A single, green seed pod, which is pointed at both ends, forms upright where the bloom was. 
     The adaptable bloodroot also flourishes along roadsides in woodlands.  Probably bulldozers pushed ground in woods to the side to create roads in those woodlands.  Bloodroot roots got pushed along with the soil and piled on the sides of the road.  There the hardy roots sprouted and sent leaves and blossoms skyward every spring since.  
     Bloodroot is called that because the sap in its root is orange or red.  Indians in the northeastern part of North America used that sap to dye pottery, basketry and themselves. 
     Early this April, or succeeding ones, look for the lovely spring beauty and bloodroot flowers in woods in southeastern Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.  They brighten many human souls weary of winter.