March 30 Herbwalk

The weather was awful for an herbwalk, but Evelyn was in town all the way from Tennessee, and she was still game. I actually like hiking in the misty cool rain, but you know, this is not typical of most folks. The bench pictured below was our destination for the day. There are a lot of different woodland plants to see, even so early in spring. I don't have the other pictures downloaded yet, these are from Evelyn's camera - thank you Evelyn for sending them and I hope you don't mind that I've posted them to my blog!We saw a few things poking their heads up after a long winter's rest. Among them were adam-n-eve orchid leaves. I have a picture of one we dug up to look at the root and the baby root (or the 'Eve' root) coming off of it. I'll upload it later when I get it off the camera. Mayapples were just beginning to open their umbrella-like leaves. Chickweed is in good form and ready for harvest. The ginseng is still fast asleep, as is the goldenseal. Bloodroot would have been flowering full-blast, but the recent rains tattered their dainty petals completely off except for a few here and there. Dutchman's britches have leaves out. We stopped to take our lunch break under the big rock. Here's Evelyn in late March. Later I'll post the plants in late March, too :)

Here's me, looking more tattered than the bloodroot blossoms, haha! I'm dressed for cool drizzly rain, but the rain suit was a little warmer than I wished at some points. Walking up steep hills gets the blood moving, that's for sure!

I'll post more later.