Virginia Bluebells are most commonly blue, but—like many blue flowers—they can occasionally pop up in white or pink as well, or in a beautiful bicolor like the plant above. These plants are part of a patch that covers acres of woods along the Trillium Trail in Fox Chapel.
For a description of the species, see the Mertensia virginica reference page.
Distinctive flowers that really do look like old-fashioned pairs of breeches hung upside-down to dry. This patch in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, has been getting bigger every year, so this year we got quite a few pictures.
For a description of the species, see the Dicentra cucullaria reference page.
The relentless march of this invader continues: these plants were growing in parts of Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, where they had not been seen two or three years ago. A lush carpet of Lesser Celandine may be an environmental nuisance, but it is a beautiful sight.
For a description of the species, see the Ficaria verna reference page.
One of the earliest spring flowers, sometimes blooming in the middle of the winter if there’s an extended warm spell, the Purple Archangel or Purple Dead-Nettle is everywhere. It is happy in open city lawns, and just as happy along a woodland trail in Bird Park, where we photographed these plants. The most decorative aspect of the plant is the contrast between the pale flowers and the dark leaves at the top of the stem; but the colors of the leaves are variable, and many plants show no significant purplishness at the top.
For a description of the species, see the Lamium purpureum reference page.
Wikipedia’s article on Pyrus calleryana will explain to you why you should not call the wild trees “Bradford Pear,” and you may choose to be pedantically correct if you like. “Bradford” was a popular cultivar of Callery Pear widely planted in the United States as an ornamental tree; the trees that have spring up on their own in our forests over the past thirty years or so have mixed cultivars in their ancestry. However, “Bradford Pear” has become the common name of the species, whatever the botanists say, and we must use it to be understood. “Melius est reprehendant nos grammatici quam non intelligant populi,” as St. Augustine said: better the grammarians should chide us than the people not understand us.
It was not common to see these trees in the wild thirty years ago, but now they light up the woods all over Pittsburgh and its suburbs in the early spring. They have become such a common escape that Pennsylvania recently banned the sale of Pyrus calleryana on the grounds that it is a noxious weed. But the trees are beautiful, and they are nowhere near as noxious as the Japanese monster knotweeds, so we should not feel guilty about enjoying them when they are one of the first trees to bloom in the spring. This tree was growing in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon.
