Look For It Now: Plantain
Stung by a bee and want to get the stinger out? Why, you need only wander into your yard and pick some leaves off a plantain plant. Chop them up (or chew them up… but don’t swallow them!), and apply directly to the sting site. Plantain will do the work of extracting the stinger. It…
Look For It Now: Maiden Pink
Eye-catching in color, the delicate Maiden Pink (Dianthus deltoides) can be found growing in fields and by roadways. It blooms from May to July, and grows from about 1/2-foot to 16-inches high. Don’t be fooled by Deptford Pink, which also blooms in Vermont. Maiden Pink can be distinguished from Deptford by its broader petals with…
Tracking ‘First Flowers’
By Rick LaDueProgram Manager, VINS-Manchester In early April, the Manchester branch of the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) began a citizen science exploration of the spring wildflowers at the Equinox Preserve. The Preserve covers hundreds of acres on the slopes of Mount Equinox in Manchester. Each Tuesday and Friday, a VINS naturalist — along…
Look For It Now: Forget-me-nots
Like birds, flowers make their way into literature in all its forms. In one of my favorite poems, Longfellow’s “Evangeline,” the stars in the “meadows of heaven” were said to be “the forget-me-nots of the angels.” “True” forget-me-nots (Myosotis scorpioides) — found growing wild in Vermont — have a small blue flower with a yellow…
Look For It Now: Yellow Lady’s Slipper Orchid
Yellow Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium pubescens) is blooming in Vermont. Look for this wild orchid in bogs, shady swamp areas and wet woodlands. The plant may stand 12- to 30-inches tall, and flowers with a yellow, slipper-like blossom in May and June. Each flower is held above the foliage on the stalk, with a single leafy…
Look For It Now: Foam Flower
Foam flower (tiarella cordifolia) is blossoming in Vermont. Look for this woodland plant’s delicate white flowers on a tall, leafless stalk. Foam flowers’ leaves, which look a bit like maple leaves, grow in clumps on the ground. This flower is a member of the saxifrage family, and is sometimes referred to as “false miterwort” due…
Look For It Now: Trillium
Look For It Now is a new weekly series on the VINS Nature blog. Each post will feature something in nature (be it a bird, a flower, a bug, a tree, etc.) that you can find (blooming, blossoming, breeding, nesting, etc.) right now in nature. We hope our Look For It Now series will inspire…
