A Walk in the Early May Woods

I took a walk down to the woods to see how the season is unfolding. The trees are mostly not out in leaf yet, so the forest canopy is still open and bright. A few of the trees, such as aspens (Populus spp) are a bit ahead of the others.

This forest has so far offered a limited display of wildflowers. I did see a few red trilliums (Trillium sp).

There were quite a few clumps of wild violets (Viola sp).

But the most eyecatching growth was ferns. Everywhere throughout the damp forest floor, the fiddleheads of a number of fern species were springing up from the ground. Fuzzy stemmed, red stemmed, and more, I’m not familiar enough with ferns to put names to the new plants. Learning more about fern species will be a summer project.