Spring Beauty is the common (and quite appropriate) name for a tiny little
flower known scientifically as
Claytonia caroliniana, and/or Claytonia virginica. I have also seen it called Broad-leaf Spring Beauty: Claytonia (Montia) cordifolia and Lance-leaf Spring Beauty: Claytonia lanceolata but am not sure if these names correlate. It grows abundantly at the
Patuxent Wildlife Center in
Laurel, MD. The
leaves here are narrow and
lance like. Photos on the WWW distinctly show 2 distinct leaf types, one skinny, and one fat. Either way, the things the 2 varieties have in common are the
bloom time, the type of flower, their size and their nature as a
spring ephemeral.
Spring Beauty is the
hallmark of
spring in the Mid Atlantic
deciduous woods. Looking just at
native wildflowers, except for a very few (
Skunk Cabbage,
Dandelion,
Chickweed,
Dead Nettle,
Whitlow Grass,
Bittercress,
Gill-over-the-ground,
Hepatica and
Coltsfoot) nothing blooms earlier here in
Howard County,
MD than Spring Beauty.
1 None of these other plants come close to Spring Beauty as far as
pure loveliness goes, although they are all interesting in their own way.
All types of Spring Beauty produce a tiny bright white flower finely drawn with raspberry pink stripes. It has 5 petals and new blooms continue to open further up the stalk for a period of 8 to 10 weeks. The individual blooms are short lived and will refold tightly like a
bud when the air is cold. There are only 2 leaves formed on each
stalk and they are a dark green, sometimes with a bit of a maroon tone. Multiple stalks can occur in a cluster. The leaves are thick and leathery. The whole plant is 3 to 12 inches tall (lengthening as the blooming stalk continues to expand).
LORE:
I couldn’t say it better. “Spring beauties open like delicate white bowls atop 6-inch stems. They are the kind of flower a little girl would pick so that she could fantasize for hours about
angels or
fairies hand-painting each petal with fine purple lines, making each one more joyous than anything ever crafted by human hands.”
4
They are also called Fairy
Spuds or wild
potatoes. The
tuber or
corm is said to have the raw flavor of
radishes and the cooked flavor of a baked potato and roasted
chestnuts. The leaves can be eaten raw when young or cooked as a “
potherb” when older.
5
SOURCES:
1 http://www.geocities.com/howardbirds/hocoflow.html
2 http://www.williams.edu/go/oitmellon/mellon2000/Tasse/project/images/thesis_aya_thesis.pdf
3 http://www.ohio.com/bj/features/2001/April/21/docs/000508.htm
4 http://www.rollanet.org/~grette/nc010.html
5 http://www.clintoncountyiowa.com/conservation/spring2000/springbeauty.htm (includes an adapted
Ojibwa legend by
H. R. Schoolcraft concerning
Peboan, the
Spirit of Winter and
Seegwun, the
Spirit of Spring and the arising of the “
modest spring beauty”