Field Wood-rush

This spring we have no choice, we have to limit botanics to a very restricted area. If you have a lawn in front of your house, fair chance you can find Field Wood-rush (Luzula campestris) here, especially if you are on poor soil.





It is a tiny plant you don't notice if you don't look well. Even if there are often many of them together. Even in full bloom its flowers are brownish, in small flower heads. The dark tepals do not make you think immediately 'spring'.





But look from nearby. The wide open flowers look like little stars with radiant stamina. Yes, a spring beauty!





Wood-rushes are easily recognizable at their leaves. They look like those of grasses or sedges, but they have typical long fluffy hairs on their edges.

Common Grape Hyacinth

Plants with bulbs have something extra to begin flowering fast and early. In a few days the flowering stalks of Common Grape Hyacinth (Muscari neglectum) came above ground and went up.





Its leaves, spreading horizontally, are thin and nearly cylindrical and present long before the plant flowers.





Common Grape Hyacinth looks very much like its cultivated garden counterpart, it is just a bit smaller and its round bell-shaped flowers are oval, not round.

The 'entrance' of those flowers has six, two times three, points of a paler blue, curved outwards.





Fruits appear in summer, they have each three lobes, and every lobe has two sides with between them a black seed. As most monocotyl plants, Common Grape Hyacinth can count to three and do some simple multiplication.




But it is coincidence there are six flowering stalks in this image. Apparently there are just six bulbs big enough to produce a flower.

Brilliant Cinquefoil

White heartshaped petals fallen between last year's fallen leaves. The flowers of Brilliant Cinquefoil (Potentilla montana) do not keep long, a little gust of wind is enough to let them fall.





In April you can find its flowers and silvery leaves on roadsides and woodland edges on sandy soil. It prefers sunny spots on acidic soil. But sometimes it flowers already in March.





Its flowering is more striking than that of Barren Srawberry.