Field Notes—

When Spring Wildflowers Recall Faces And Places

By Dottie Evans

It usually happens in early spring when I am out on a ramble, walking through sun-dappled woods and not thinking about very much except how glad I am to be there.

Suddenly, I’m stopped in my tracks by the sight of a particular wildflower poking out of the leaf litter. Images and memories arise.

Bloodroot, for example, brings back the memory of a 7-year-old boy spooning absolute heaps of sugar into his mug of tea. Ladyslipper recalls the kindly, wrinkled face of my Aunt Trudie who died decades ago. A dogtooth violet, also known as trout lily, reminds me of longtime Newtown trailblazer Al Goodrich.

It’s a stream-of-consciousness kind of experience.

Remembering Al, I think of another Newtown resident named Betty Fosdick whom I never knew personally, but who gave a good deal of land to the Newtown Forest Association behind Head O’ Meadow School. For many years, she and Al Goodrich were Boggs Hill Road neighbors. They always enjoyed watching the dogtooth violets come up in the woods behind their homes. When Betty finally left to live in a nursing home in Bloomfield, Al wanted to bring her something from Newtown around the time of her wedding anniversary. He would dig up a dogtooth violet and bring it to her, always around April 21.

These fragile, fairylike little flowers seem to trigger such associations.  No matter how many years ago it was that you saw your first bloodroot, trout lily, coltsfoot, spring beauty, toothwort, Jack-in-the-pulpit, ladyslipper, trillium, Dutchman’s breeches, or bloodroot, you tend to remember the people and places associated with those encounters.

Spring wildflowers are called ephemeral because they don’t last very long. Now you see them. Next week you won’t. They only bloom for a week or two in late April or May while the sun penetrates through bare branches and before the leaves come fully out. If left alone, they’ll come up year after year. The memories sometime come up with them.

Take bloodroot. Despite its gory-sounding name, the large, white flower is quite pretty when seen against a single, mitten-shaped leaf. The first time I saw bloodroot, we were living in eastern Connecticut and our children were small.  My son and I often visited a friend and her son who lived nearby in a house surrounded by tall oak trees and no lawn (she refused to mow). Every spring when the bloodroot bloomed, we were invited over to admire the profusion of snowy white blossoms that burst into bloom among last year’s leaves (she didn’t like raking, either).

While I loved that sight, I loved even more the time her son surprised us all by taking matters into his own hands. He always wanted to come over, partially because of the freedom he enjoyed when away from his own home. Though my friend was a wonderful mother, she was terribly strict about what her son could and could not eat. Her pantry contained no sweetened cereals or soft drinks, and he was not allowed to put sugar on anything.

One day, he joined us for a snack in the kitchen. I filled his mug with tea and offered milk expecting him to refuse the sugar. Instead, he reached for the bowl with both hands and ladled out heaping spoonful after heaping spoonful and happily drank it all up. Call it disobedience or call it independence, his joy in finally doing exactly what he wanted was unforgettable.

My ladyslipper memories revolve around Aunt Trudie, who was a beloved family character. She cultivated a wild garden of ladyslippers behind her Wellesley, Mass., home and also in the back of her wooded property on Cape Cod, never allowing her husband to mow where they bloomed. Every Christmas, though I had never personally seen this flower growing in the wild, I tried to find her a present — like a potholder or playing cards — with pictures of ladyslippers on it.

Long after Aunt Trudie was gone, I was walking in the woods during May and came across a strange and beautiful, tall-blooming flower with a pink, saclike bloom. I knew this had to be ladyslipper and immediately saw Aunt Trudie’s smiling face and heard her loud, raucous laugh. I remembered her affectionate hugs, her love of football, and the sight of her watching the Army-Navy game on TV while playing bridge in front of the fireplace. I remembered how she smoked like a chimney and how Uncle Brian was always trying to get her to quit cigarettes. She lived well into her 80s and though she finally died of emphysema, she kept her sense of humor until the end.

The long-buried memories keep popping up. They are ephemeral, but everlasting.

[Editor’s Note: This will be the last Field Notes column written by Bee Reporter Dottie Evans, who will retire at the end of May to spend time with family, do a little traveling, and enjoy walking in the woods.]