SPRING WILDFLOWERS, Shamper's Bluff

This is a very small sample of the many species of spring flowers – ephemerals and those with a longer span of bloom – that I have the opportunity to photograph every year around my home. I enjoy making images of these plants in their natural habitat or community setting every bit as much as close-ups and I don’t restrict myself to documentary images, but from time to time endeavour to evoke or convey my emotional response to them.

 

A tiny bluet, Houstonia caerula, one of our earliest field flowers, silhouetted against the setting sun

Bluets often carpet old pastures, unfertilized fields, and paths for weeks.

 

Bluets hanging to the side of a roadside ditch

 

Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis

 

Red Trillium or Wake Robin, Trillium erectum

 

Starflower, Trientalis borealis, thrives in hardwood and coniferous forests.

Purple violet, Viola cucullata, New Brunswick's floral emblem, loves damp spots in fields and open woods.

 

Yellow violet, Viola eriocarpa, is rare, but grows in profusion in open shade near my barn.

 

 

Wild strawberry blossoms on a frosty morning

 

These Lady's Slippers, Cypripedium acaule, are growing in their typical habitat. The flowers of the species range in hue from deep pink to pure white.

 

 

Blossoms of Buckbean, Menyanthes trifoliata, carpet the large woodland bog behind my house in May before the fronds of the tall Cinnamon Fern, Osmunda cinnamomea, have fully developed.

 

The wild Arum or Calla Lily, Calla palustris, lives happily in the same bog.

 

The wild Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Arisaema Stewardsonii, with the deep purple spadix grows in many places throughout my large rhododendron garden. This variety, the gift of a friend, does equally well.

 

Cornus canadensis, known as Bunchberry for its clusters of edible orange-red fruit, is a low-growing Dogwood that carpets the floor of open woods and shaded edges of fields. It requires the same acid soil as wild blueberries and rhododendrons. The blossom is very similar to the popular dogwood tree, Cornus floridea.

Bunchberry growing among hay-scented ferns and rhododendrons

Marsh marigolds, Caltha palustris, thrive in ditches, shallow streams, and edges of ponds where running water distributes their seeds.

Marsh marigold blooming in a rocky pool that fills with water after a rainfall.

A New Brunswick spring always brings fields and fields of Dandelions, Taraxacum officinale.