Slideshow Spring Ephemerals
Small is beautiful as spring ephemerals carpet a campus hillside.
Ephemerals — spring flowers that prosper and blossom before trees shade them for the summer — are at their peak on Muir Woods, between Bascom Hall and Lake Mendota. Trout lily and toothwort are most common, but bloodroot, wild ginger, solomon’s seal and others can also be seen.
Trout lily carpets upper sections of the woods, almost within sight of the dorm room occupied by legendary conservationist John Muir during the 1860s. The trout lily, named for its semblance to the brown or brook trout, has nodding flowers with yellow stamens. The prominent a pistil earned an awesome common name: “adder’s tongue.” Each plant has two leaves and one flower. David Tenenbaum, University Communications, UW-Madison
Toothwort, in the genus Dentaria, is more common closer to Lake Mendota. David Tenenbaum, University Communications, UW-Madison
Trout lilies demonstrate strength in numbers on the hillside, which has benefited from ecological restoration to suppress exotic trees and shrubs that dominate so many untended woodlands in the Midwest. David Tenenbaum, University Communications, UW-Madison