Shabbona County Park is a [publicly accessible] postage stamp spring woodland in a sea of corn and soy.
Tiptoeing through the robust carpet of spring ephemerals. Cutleaf toothworts, woodland phlox, rue anemone, wild leeks, spring beauties, Dutchman’s breeches, trout lilies, mayapples, trilliums.
Dutchman’s breeches (
Dicentra cucullaria) flowers with a pinkish tinge my camera failed to capture well. An ant says gimme dat nectar.
The soft, lovely foliage of those britches.
Bubblegum pink bulblets of Dutchman’s breeches. Squirrel corn’s (
Dicentra canadensis) are orange. I replanted this fellow, but this place is carpeted with these guys.
A colony of white trout lily (
Erythronium albidum. Can you make out their white, nodding flowers?
There is garlic mustard at this park, especially on the edges of the area dense with ephemerals, but within the spring wildflower patches, garlic mustard doesn’t seem to be able to get well-established past the seedling stage, seen here. This was my first visit to this park, so we’ll see if that holds true over this year at the least.