summer's here

One of my favorite wildflowers is in bloom all through the woods right now. This is Spotted Wintergreen, Chimaphila maculata, an exotic little plant with two-tone leaves (dark green with a large white strip down the middle). The flower emerges from a red stem that sprouts from the spray of leaves on the forest floor. It first takes the form of a white button and then opens out into a waxy, nodding circle of five rounded petals with a ring of anthers that stick out from a green base. It has a pleasant odor but you have to get down on your hands and knees to sniff it. It's a kind of obeisance to a plant with an air of aristocratic unreality that distinguishes it from more plebian floral forms.

Many of those plebian flowers, mostly aliens, are also in bloom. A small blue button flower long caused me ID problems as it was not shown in the old Petersen flower guide (a book I still use a lot as I know my way around in it). I have subsequently identified it as a plant known as Sheep's Bit, Jasione montana. It is a bit of a wildflower that obviously was associated with Old World sheep meadows and, if you say its name quickly, you will come up with what I fancy was it's original ungentrified name.

All the local Catbirds have decided to resume singing at the same time and the Robins are also singing again. All this adds -- for brief periods of time at least -- a pleasant musical quality to the atmosphere which has been dominated recently by the indomitable singing of the two wrens, House and Carolina. Rabbits are recovering from their recent decline; I saw three of them frisking and gamboling (isn't that what rabbits do?) yesterday while picking mushrooms. And, in the creek, impressive conglomerations of shiners or white bait (small bait fish more properly known as Silversides) can be seen whirling about in schools consisting of dozens or even hundreds of fish in the shallows of the creek at low tide. They call attention to themselves by cutting the surface of the water in synchrony but for what reason is not always apparent.

And, as I am writing this, the first cicada of the year is sounding off. Yes, summer's here!

Eric Salzman