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On Earth Day: Flowers of Naked Woods
Early spring wildflowers are getting it on before the leaves emerge in northern forests.
FOR A MONTH I followed the spring northward from Florida to Vermont, walking trails among woodland wildflowers and contemplating notions of beauty.
Along the way, I filled pages of my field notebook with ideas about the evolution of beauty and our aesthetic in nature. Give me a week or two (or a lifetime) and I might have an essay for you about all this.
Until then, on Earth Day 2023, here are a few of those wildflowers, many of which I photographed yesterday (21 April) in calcium-rich woods beside Lake Champlain here in my home state of Vermont.
Basically, these plants complete the business of reproduction before the tree canopy leafs-out. So they are bursts of color, form and function in naked woods. You’ll get a sense of that scale in a few of the images below. Onward.

Postscript
Yes, I know, I’m late with the final Practical Nature Photography lecture in our seminar for paying subscribers. My excuses are pictured above in this post. I’ll have Lecture 5 (mop-up) for you next week. Thanks, everyone, for your patience.
On Earth Day: Flowers of Naked Woods
Love this and the idea that they are putting on a show first in a way- there’s something there - I hiked this morning- I’m in Spokane, Washington but I hiked in northern Idaho - we also have trillium here. Today I only saw the very first few- pretty special. I saw a few other beauties. I’m going to get a field guide for my area. I want to know more names of wildflowers, birds and trees.
Beautiful! I gotta dig why some of those are called Hepatica or Sanguinaria though :P