#cutleaf toothwort

[vandaliatraveler]

Welcome to Spring Ephemeral Florapalooza, 2026 edition. It's sexy, hot, and safe for all ages. Opening act is courtesy of the Mon River Trail. Many more to follow.

From top: Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica); sessile trillium (Trillium sessile), also commonly known as toadshade; Dutchman's breeches (Dicentra cucullaria); the young, palmately-lobed leaves of yellow buckeye (Aesculus flava), one of the great trees of Central Appalachia's riparian and cove forests; cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata); twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla), nearly ready to bloom among a bouquet of yellow fumewort (Corydalis flavula); great white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum); purple trillium (Trillium erectum), a fashionable stinker also known as red trillium and wake robin; and Carolina spring beauty (Claytonia caroliniana).

[dvoeverie-stitches]

Walking in the Swamp at Dusk

[microcosmicobservations]

Spring ephemerals from this week: Dutchman's breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata), Hepatica acutiloba, and wood anemone (Anemonoides quinquefolia)

(April 2025)

[spideracres]

Spider Acres Native Plants: Cutleaf Toothwort. (Crow's Toes) You can't miss the leaves on this plant even before it flowers. It is usually done flowering and gone to seed by the time the trees have leafed out in May. It is a good food source for the White-footed mouse as well as the caterpillar of the Mustard White and the West Virginia White butterfly. The flower provides nectar for honeybees and bumblebees.

[geopsych]

Cutleaf toothwort.

[robemmy]

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Here’s a hepatica where the leaves haven’t emerged yet, but you can see their fuzzy stems working their way up. Also pictured at the top, cutleaf toothwort and Japanese honeysuckle. And something else I’m not sure about.

[vandaliatraveler]

It's an earth song,

And I've been waiting long for an earth song.

It's a spring song,

And I've been waiting long for a spring song.

Strong as the shoots of a new plant

Strong as the bursting of new buds

Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother's womb.

It's an earth song,

A body song,

A spring song,

I have been waiting long for this spring song.

An Earth Song, Langston Hughes

Photos from the Mon River Trail, where the Earth sang her spring song oh so beautifully this morning.