Forest floor

Spring is the time for spectacular display in under story plants. Britain has its magnificent blue bells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta), and our southern neighbours have Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica).

In Ontario (as well as in Québec and all the northern states that have a climate similar to ours) the best known display is provided by Trillium grandiflorum.

Unfortunately Trillium grandiflorum is a favorite food of the white tail deer. The plant can be rather rare if there are many deer around.

Below is a sample of the millions of trilliums growing in the woodlot of my friend Gwynne.

Trillium grandiflorum

Wild Gardening

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A few years back, visiting the Agawa Canyon in northern Ontario, I saw some very attractive flower beds where garden flowers and native plants were growing together beautifully. It was a particularly good example of what Gertrude Jekyll calls "wild gardening," and I wanted to do something similar.

Wild and cultivated plants at the Agawa Canyon

Botanising at the Beach

This afternoon we stopped for a few minutes at a beach on Lake Huron. There were families with dogs, kites and beach chairs, swimmers - everything that you would expect on a hot day by the water in August. However, in the sand dunes leading to the water there were also interesting plants that are not very obvious, although they are very attractive.

Singing Sands, Dorcas Bay on Lake Huron, Ontario

Road Side Flowers - late June

The garden is in an area designed as a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. Because this part of Ontario was always, and still is, sparsely populated, with hardly any industry and no intensive farming, the flora and fauna are particularly rich.

The following pictures were all taken on roadsides, on June 24.

Wood lily

One rare and a few not so rare

Sunday morning, I went, with my friend Elizabeth, to a conservation area, about 10 minutes from here, to see the annual display of a very rare daisy. Its common name is lakeside daisy (Tetraneuris herbacea) as it is found only in a few small colonies around the Great Lakes in Ontario, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. It grows on a very thin layer of soil, directly on the alvar (limestone plain). Here is what it looks like.

Lakeside Daisy

Forest Floor (2)

Three more pictures of the forest floor. Yesterday afternoon, driving in the rain along a wooded area in the neighborhood, we stopped and took pictures of Trillium grandiflorum covering the forest floor. As they age, these trilliums turn pink. However for now they are still all white. It is amazing they are still so abundant in places, as the white tail deer does find them tasty.

Forest Floor

This afternoon, we stopped the car and took a few pictures of the forest floor along the road where acre upon acre of dog-tooth violets (Erythronium americanum) were in bloom. Often, they produce a great many leaves, but no flower. This year seems to be a very good one for them.

I have heard that, in a garden, if you put a stone under the bulb, it blooms much better. I have never tried it, but it would seem likely as the Erythroniums in the pictures below are growing in a thin layer of soil over limestone.

Lady'-slipper Orchids

I mentioned in a previous post that the large yellow Lady'-slipper (Cypripedium pubescens) grows wild around the garden. Nurseries sell them as well as other species and many beautiful hybrids, but they are not easy to grow. On two occasions in the early Roche Fleurie years, when clumps of Lady'-slipper were about to be bulldozed, I tried transplanting them but with no success, even if the large yellow Lady'-slipper is listed as one of the easy Cypripediums to grow in gardens or in pots. So I thought I would read about them to see what their requirements are and compare these to my experience of seeing them grow profusely in the wild.

Some Wild Flowers in Bloom in the Bruce Peninsula

The Bruce Peninsula, where Roche Fleurie is located, is well-known for its flora and fauna.  Because there are few people and no industry, and because agriculture is very marginal the soil being thin and poor in most places, plants and animals that are rare in other areas of Ontario are relatively common here. Some of our wild flowers, like the Trillium grandiflorum below,  are to be found in many parts of eastern North America. But some others, scarce in most places, are abundant here.