Nature Finds a Way: The Miracle of Spring Ephemeral Wildflowers in Northern Forests
In a few short weeks the winter snow will be gone from the forest floor. After a few sunny days, the soil will warm beneath the leaf litter, especially on south facing slopes of deciduous forests. Quickly, before the trees leaf out, spring ephemeral wildflowers will push through to the sun and bloom. Once the canopy of leaves is deployed, spring ephemerals set their seeds, their leaves die back, and the flowers disappear from the forest floor. These wildflowers then spend the other 10 or so months of the year hidden underground.
But, oh, do they put on a beautiful show in early spring! With names like Hepatica, Spring Beauty, Dutchman’s Britches or Squirrel Corn, Red Trillium, Trout Lilly, Bloodroot, and Sessile-leaved Bellwort, ephemeral wildflowers carpet the ground in late April and early May on the forested slopes of New Hampshire and Vermont.
Northern New England’s forests, fields, bogs, and even alpine summits abound with spectacular wildflowers, each having adapted to their unique habitat. Some like partial shade; others prefer the rocky alpine zone.
Spring ephemerals crave the sun after their long dormancy. Their high rate of photosynthesis spurs them to rapidly produce shoots, leaves, flowers, and seeds. Writer Micki Colbeck describes this as their epigeous growth period.
These wildflowers also need the protective leaf litter of the deciduous forest floor to shelter their perennial organs—corms, tubers, or rhizomes—during their hypogeous growth period. In the fall and winter, the plant’s storage organ sends down roots and sends up shoots into the leaf litter, taking in nutrients and water in the dead of winter under the snow. Those shoots give these wildflowers a head start when conditions are just right in the spring.
We are fortunate indeed to have spring ephemerals in our northern forests. These wildflowers are found only in North America, Japan, and Russia. They flourish in the calcium-rich soils of New England’s woodlands.
We are doubly lucky to see these wildflower gems in New Hampshire and Vermont. The landscape of northern forests was significantly changed as forests were cut for timber, plowed for agriculture, and grazed by sheep. Writer Ned Swanberg recalls that by the time the Merino sheep farming craze of the early 1800s died down, roughly three-fourths of New Hampshire and Vermont forests had been cleared for grazing and agriculture. By the mid-to-late 1800s, much of this cleared land slowly began to revert back to pine and hardwood forest. The spring ephemeral wildflowers are still working on their return to impacted areas.
It takes a long, long time for spring ephemerals to re-colonize woodlands—a seedling can take more than six years to grow into a mature flowering plant. Seeds are not dispersed by the usual means: birds, animals, or the wind. The seeds of most spring ephemeral wildflowers are spread by ants in a process called myrmecochory. Swanberg explains:
“To spread successfully in the forest, the plants create tiny eliasomes— oily packets containing their seeds—as enticements for ants. The ants collect these to nourish their larvae and subsequently deposit the seeds in their colony compost piles.”
The seeds are carried such a short distance, perhaps only up to two meters from the parent plant. With such a short distance of dispersal, any disturbance of the forest is a threat to spring ephemerals. Once they are gone, they rarely return.
On the one-fourth of New Hampshire and Vermont woodlands not cleared, grazed, farmed, or developed from the 19th century to the present, spring ephemeral wildflowers put on a show. Most hiking trails in New Hampshire and Vermont pass through deciduous woodlands at the lower elevations. Look for the great nodding heads of Red Trilliums, and take a moment to search the forest floor for Spring Beauties, Bloodroots, Hepatica, and more. But don’t wait too long. Blink, and they’re gone for another year!
For further reading, I strongly recommend the following resources:
- Wildflowers of the White Mountains: A Field Guide to New Hampshire’s Wildflowers, from Valley to Summit. John Hession & Valerie Michaud, Huntington Graphics, 2003.
- Doubly Ephemeral Wildflowers, Ned Swanberg, Northern Woodlands Magazine, May 19, 2008
- Spring Ephemerals…here but a moment, Micki Colbeck, Valley News, May 11, 2019
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