The Secret Lives of Wildflowers was originally published in the BFEC Newsletter, Vol. 16/No. 2, Spring 2012.
Spring has sprung at the BFEC and Ohio's woodland jewels are blossoming throughout the preserve. Bright pinks, vibrant purples, garish yellows and blazing reds fill the woods and meadows with life and color.
Wildflowers may appear to lead beautiful yet mundane lives, swaying gently in a woodland breeze or softly filling our sinuses with lovely floral scents (or sneezes). Although we may appreciate a wildflower for its shape, scent or color, we don't often consider the roles these traits play in the secret lives of wildflowers.
Many exotic plants have very obvious symbiotic relationships with insects. For example, the star orchid of Madagascar has nectaries (nectar "tubes") over ten inches long, which can only be accessed by the ten-inch long proboscis of the Darwin's hawk moth. However, you don't have to travel to the jungles of Madagascar to find this secret symbiosis between plants and animals; it can be observed in your own back yard.
Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis, pictured) is a beautiful woodland plant, a member of the poppy family, with a white flower with eight to twelve petals and a single, deeply lobed leaf that looks like a ghost or the Batman symbol. It is named "bloodroot" because the root of this flower "bleeds" a reddish sap when broken.
Bloodroot has no nectar, but the large white petals attract a few insects for pollination. The fruit of bloodroot has a small tube attached to it, an elaisome, that contains a sugary, oily substance irresistible to ants. Ants harvest the seeds, gorge themselves on the sweet elaisome and discard the leftover seed within their tunnels, where it will germinate in subterranean safety. This wildflower's secret life is known as myrmecochory or "ant farming."
Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), is another fascinating wildflower. It has two large, umbrella or "palm tree" like leaves and a single large flower (1.5-2 inches wide) with six to nine waxy white petals. This plant is often used as an indicator for morel hunters — when Mayapples have fully erupted, morel mushrooms are often beginning to erupt also. The roots and unripe, lemon-shaped fruit of mayapples are poisonous.
Like bloodroot, mayapples have special relationship with an animal. Eastern box turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina), which can often be seen crossing the roads after a warm spring rain, are relatively common in Ohio and can live to a great age (some estimates are as high as 100 years).
Box turtles are the only known vertebrate to feed readily on the fruit of the mayapple, although humans can eat the fruit at the peak of ripeness. Although fallen fruit can germinate into a new plant, research indicates that seeds that have journeyed through the digestive tract of an eastern box turtle have as much as a 90 percent higher success rate than otherwise dispersed seeds.
In damp, lowlands habitats, one can find large leaves that look similar to tobacco or cabbage growing at this time of year. Earlier in the year, one might have found a leathery, crimson speckled leaf, called a spathe, possibly poking up through the snow. Within this modified leaf, one would find a warty protuberance, the flower of skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus).
As its name suggests, skunk cabbage emits a fetid, skunky smell to attract flies and other insects for pollination. Skunk cabbage blooms in late winter to early spring, and is able to generate enough heat, through chemical processes within the plant, to melt the surrounding snow. Later in the spring, the roots of this plant contract deeper into the ground, pulling the flower down to the bosom of the leaves and ground where it can later germinate.
Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) grows along damp hillsides, and can be identified by three-part leaves and a spathe, or pulpit (similar to skunk cabbage). Within the spathe is the jack or spadix, the flower. Jack-in-the-pulpit produces both male and female flowers and attracts many types of flies, wasps, ants and others using heat, ultraviolet patterns and smell for pollination. Younger, smaller plants produce more male (Jack) flowers, while older, larger plants produce more female (Jill) flowers. These plants produce small, red, berry-like fruit that is dispersed by a variety of wildlife.
While hiking the trails at the BFEC, stop and consider the beauty of a wildflower, not just for the appearance or sweet smell, but also for its amazing, often hidden relationships. Charles Darwin wrote, "There is a grandeur in this view of life." Hopefully we can all look a little closer at our natural world to see this amazing hidden universe.