Confusing Spring Ephemerals

There's a page in my bird book called "Confusing Fall Warblers." It has pictures of all the warblers (small migrating songbirds) that look similar in their fall plumage.  As in: they are all small, olive drab, and way up in the tops of the trees.

This flower-geek post is going to be about something similar: spring wildflowers that confuse me every year:  Bloodroot, Hepatica, Spring Beauties, and False Rue Anemone.

They're all spring ephemerals--they appear in the spring, and then die completely back by summer. And they all have small, simple white flowers.  And I always mix them up!  This bugs me.

As a word person, I like to know the right word for everything.  I think I've finally got these flowers figured out.

I wasn't sure I'd see ANY wildflowers when I went over to Palisades-Kepler State Park this week.  Our winter was so long and cold that I didn't know if the flowers would be up.

But look what was there to greet me at the start of the trail!  Pants!

As in Dutchman's Breeches!  They are probably my favorite spring wildflower, mostly because of the name.  Once you know the name, there's no way you can see these comical flowers--that look like starched white bloomers hanging crotch-up from a stem--and not laugh.

But these don't confuse me.

Here are the confusing ones, and I'll explain how I figured out how to tell them apart.

This is Bloodroot.  Its white flowers are usually a bit bigger than the others', and they stand on taller stems. The stamens are conspicuous and yellow. The tell-tale sign that they're bloodroot is the deeply-lobed leaf that's usually curled around the stem.

Apparently, they also have orangy roots, but I'm not going to pull any up to see.

Next comes Hepatica, above.  This one's tricky because the best way to identify it is by the three-lobed, mottled leaves.  Sometimes the leaves are underneath the leaf litter in the woods. Hepatica are sometimes called Liverwort (what a great word--but not very pretty!) because, like our livers, the leaves have 3 lobes.

Hepatica can sometimes be pale purple as well, which makes it look like

Spring Beauties!  You can be sure that you're seeing spring beauties--not Hepatica--if the plant has long, thin grass-like leaves.  But Hepatica always likes shade, and Spring Beauties sometimes bloom in the sun.  Kind of like

This little flower, which was just coming into bloom when I was walking.  It's a False Rue Anemone, and it has delicate little leaves that come off of the stem.  Sometimes it can be quite large later in the spring.

I saw some other less-confusing flowers on this trip, too, like this Wake-robin with a bud about to flower.

And some Wild Oats, also about to flower.

Hope you also get out to see the spring wildflowers--and that you don't get confused!

Hunter-gatherer in the Hy-Vee

Some women love shoe shopping.

I love grocery shopping.

Good thing, too, because it's one of the chores that I do for the family.

Not sure why I enjoy it so much.  Something about walking into a well-lit, well-stocked grocery store makes me feel energized and capable.

These days I usually shop on Thursday mornings.

Maybe that's one reason why I like grocery shopping: my unusual working schedule (half time teaching at Coe and assorted freelance writing assignments) allows me to shop when I'm not stressed and the store is not crowded.

Thursday morning grocery shoppers are primarily senior citizens, moms (and, more frequently these days, dads) with little children, and me.

At the store entrance, I grab a cart, put on my reading glasses, and pull out my list.

The produce section is one of my favorites. I roll my cart past pyramids of oranges, bunches of bananas, tables of apples. 

After picking up some "Jazz" apples, I see a display labeled "Jungle fruits."  Intrigued, I walk over. There are baskets of starfruits, mangoes, and prickly rambutan, along with a few pineapples. I grab a starfruit--something to tempt Eli the picky eater.

I stop to feast my eyes on the wall of greens just beyond the fruit.

After a long, cold winter, I welcome the opportunity to see leaves.  Like the starfruit, these greens came a long way to this Iowa grocery store--I'm guessing they traveled by truck and plane to get here. Some days, I feel guilty that my food has a pretty large carbon footprint. Other days I'm just happy that it's summer somewhere and that I can benefit.

As I roll by, I look forward to summer days when I can bike down to the farmer's market to buy produce.

Once past the produce, I push my car through each aisle, scanning the shelves for items on the list--where do they keep the garbanzos, anyway?--and placing them into the cart.

At the far end of the store are the meat counters. Chicken thighs are on sale, so I grab a package.  They'll go in the crock pot later this week.

Longingly, I walk by the fish counter.  The display is beautiful.

I love fish.  But this fish has come a long way--Iowa is about as far from an ocean as you can get.  I'm often a tiny bit disappointed when I've bought it.  Besides, my family isn't crazy for fish.

This aisle is more Iowan, I think.

Some of the aisles at Hy-Vee, our local grocery chain, puzzle me.  Like this one:  an entire aisle dedicated to pop.

The bigger Hy-Vees also have enormous displays of every kind of yogurt, especially Greek.  Where's the Noosa?

There are other puzzling items.  Even if I don't buy, I enjoy seeing them!

I wheel my cart up to the checkout; there's no way I can go into the "12 items or less" line. That's OK.  I love pushing my full cart up to check out.

When I'm shopping on Thursday mornings, I often roll past old couples shopping together, their cart holding just a few items: a couple cans of soup, some Danishes, a can of decaf coffee, a bunch of bananas.  Some day, that'll be me and Bruce, shopping for just us.  We shopped together before--before kids, that is--and maybe we'll do it again.  I wonder how it'll feel after the years of shopping for a family, thinking about nourishing growing boys, looking at new items and thinking "I bet Eli will like this" or "Robbie loves spaghetti--I'll make sure to make it this week."

As I put my items up on the conveyer belt, I feel glad that I'm here, at the grocery store, and glad that grocery shopping needs to be done more often than shoe shopping.