FLOWERS AT EVERY LEVEL

     Four kinds of plants commonly and obviously bloom in wooded floodplains along creeks here in southeastern Pennsylvania during April, including lesser celandines, garlic mustards, spicebushes and ash-leafed maple trees.  These plants cover riparian woods niches from the dead-leaf-carpeted floor to the tree canopies. 
     Lesser celandines are aliens from Europe.  They are abundant and invasive on riparian woods floors, forming large, prostrate carpets of glossy, deep-green leaves, dotted profusely with golden flowers that brighten those damp woodland floors, especially on sunny days.  Some extensive stretches of floodplains along creeks are yellow with innumerable, beautiful celandine blossoms.
     Here and there the deep-purple blooms of native blue violets and feral grape hyacinths poke through the golden and green coverings of lesser celandines.  The purple and yellow together offer a beautiful color combination on those rich, moist riparian woodland floors.
     Garlic mustard is another alien from Europe.  This species is so-named because its crushed leaves and stems have the scent of garlic.  Quite invasive, this plant dominates many damp woodland floors, including riparian woods.  But this plant grows up to three feet tall, has yellow-green foliage, and small, white flowers clustered at the tips of its stems in April.  This plant spreads quickly from its small, dark seeds that are blown around on the wind. 
     Many people pull this plant out of the soil to eradicate it, but I think it is a losing battle.  This vigorous species probably squeezes out some native plants on woodland floors, but to me garlic mustard also represents adaptable, indominatable life in spite of what we humans want.  
     Spicebushes are a native shrub layer species that has many positive traits.  Each bush has many tiny, greenish-yellow blooms that color whole woodland understories in April.  Spicebushes have red berries in September, most of which are eaten by American robins, cedar waxwings and other kinds of berry-eating birds during that beautiful month and into striking October.
     Spicebushes have a delightfully spicy scent in their leaves, berries, bark and twigs when those parts are slightly injured.  Some people enjoy walking in the woods and scraping spicebush bark or crushing leaves to experience that sweet fragrance.
      Native ash-leafed maple trees, along with silver maple and sycamore trees, dominate the canopies of riparian floodplains along creeks.  Ash-leafed maples' green, young twigs and numerous "silky-tassled" and drooping flowers dangling from twigs during April help identify this kind of riparian woodland tree. 
     Ash-leafs are weak trees that break down easily in strong wind.  Therefore, the larger trees of this kind are riddled with hollows where woodpeckers chipped out nurseries or wind ripped limbs off the trees, exposing the wood to agents of decay.  Raccoons, barred owls, wood ducks, tufted titmice and other types of wildlife live and raise young in those cavities, adding more interest to riparian woods along creeks.
     Local riparian woods on floodplains have lovely flowers at every level in April.  Those blooms help beautify the woods bordering both sides of waterways every year at that time.  Get out and experience a floodplain woods near you, or any other natural, nearby habitat for physical and mental health.