What would an Ohio spring be without wildflowers?

For many of us spring’s wildflowers — those colorful woodland blooms, showy or subtle, large and small, growing singularly or in vast patches that cover a hundred yards of riverbank or forest hillside — are as eagerly anticipated as warmer weather, singing birds, and a new fishing season.

Yellow and blue, pink, purple, lavender, white, maroon. Spring’s dominant theme may be burgeoning green in a thousand shades… but the season gathers shards from a paintbox rainbow for some of its loveliest highlights.

You’ll often hear our early wildflowers of April and May referred to as “spring ephemerals.” That’s because most of them do, indeed, last for only a very short time. They put up a green shoot or stem, grow leaves, bloom, go to seed… then die back, disappearing underground into their roots, rhizomes, and bulbs for another year.

Many spring ephemerals will complete their above-ground cycle in no more than a week or two — at least in a given area. Some will have bloomed and disappeared before leaves on the trees have developed more than half their final size; a few, even, will come and go while leaves are still in their bud stage.

They do this so hurriedly because the delicate little plants have to complete their above-ground cycle while they can — thriving in the fullest doses of energizing spring sunlight their specific location offers. They thus make the best of a fleeting, temporary situation by jumping the gun on soon-to-come competition from neighboring plants.

Spring’s ephemerals have to take advantage of this very brief window of opportunity — finishing their annual recycling before the surrounding woodland’s developing leaf canopy shades them out.

Light equals life. For them… for us.

This spring’s wildflower season is fully underway.

My new dog and I have been taking regular long walks — exploring riverbank trails, woodland pathways, and game passages that crisscross long-forgotten fields and meadows. Throughout these various rambles, the ephemeral season has simply exploded, colorizing the landscape.

In many of the woods we’ve frequented, pastel-hued hepaticas have arrived, done their thing, and are already starting to fade away.

Winsome white bloodroot began spattering the hillside en masse near our cottage on the first of the month. Brethren in up the road followed suit a day or two later.

I recently saw a huge patch of yellow trout lily — one of my favorites.

Lilliputian pantaloons of Dutchmen’s breeches are widely hung out on their washlines, white and glowing in the dim, loam-rich woodlands.

Spring beauties — delicate little white blossoms with fine pink stripes — are a true spring ephemeral, one almost everyone recognizes.

So too are bluets, sometimes called Quaker ladies, or innocents — dazzling azure, like dainty shards from an April sky.

Several trilliums are in bloom or coming into bloom. Last week I found a huge patch of large white trilliums — the first I’ve seen this year — on a hillside where I’d gone to look for morels. Unsuccessfully, alas — probably too early… though given the mushroom’s penchant for quirkiness, it pays to look anyway.

Of course, the snow trilliums have already mostly bloomed. On the other hand, I’ve yet to spot a red trillium.

Nothing is more beautiful to me than a streamside glade dense with nodding Virginia bluebells. I often encounter them colorfully ringing in the spring as I’m wading for stream smallmouth. They should be appearing in a week or so and, as always, I look forward to seeing them along certain stretches of my favorite bronzeback creeks and rivers.

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to include violets on this brief list.

Common in backyards and old fields, along roadway shoulders, ditch banks, boldly blooming atop piles of waste dirt and along seldom trodden back-alley edges. Violets are wildflowers so recurrently familiar we regularly overlook them.

Low growers, unobtrusive, they’re often mere flashes of dark purple caught in a passing glance from the corner of the eye. Their singular beauty goes unregistered.

Poet Thomas Moore commented about this unfortunate oversight: “Hath the violet less brightness for growing near earth?”

When was the last time you looked — really looked! — at a violet?

I recently did just that — got down and gave a veritable corsage of ubiquitous natives a long, eye-to-eye scrutinizing.

Violets are simply lovely — breathtaking! A wildflower guaranteed to delight the eye and fill the heart with quiet joy.

I simply can’t imagine spring without wildflowers. And though I’ve noted only a handful, dozens are now blooming — or will be very soon.

But you must enjoy them while you can… these charming seasonal ephemerals are fleeting gifts and wait for no one.

Reach Jim McGuire at: [email protected].