ERIN NEGLEY | Staff Writer
Every year, as winter melts into spring, Lancaster County’s wild spaces wake up.
There is beauty and delight to see the season’s first wildflowers.
They’re even more essential to insects. Keith Williams brings up queen bumblebees to show timing is everything. The bees are the only survivors in their colonies. They emerge from a winter’s rest hungry for pollen and nectar, just in time as the pant-shaped flowers of Dutchman’s breeches bloom.
A few unseasonably warm days can knock this relationship out of sync, leaving insects hungry and plants not pollinated.
“This is fascinating to me,” says Williams, Lancaster Conservancy vice president of engagement and education. “A 33-million-year-old history is so intertwined, and yet we just get a couple of days off kilter and it can disassociate that.”
It’s a balance as delicate as some of the spring ephemeral flowers now blooming throughout Lancaster County. Aside from climate threats, add development, invasive plants like garlic mustard and accidental stompings from well-meaning weeding crews and flower photographers.
These resilient plants still manage to bloom from the Susquehanna River to Welsh Mountain. It’s their time to shine.
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World-renowned
Spring ephemerals get their name from their short-lived time in the spotlight. They emerge before the tree leaves block much of the sun and only last a few weeks.
While the blooms are fleeting, the plants take a while to reach maturity. Trout lilies, for example, produce their first flowers after seven years of growing.
Spring wildflowers bloom in many places but Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve stands out, especially for its trilliums.
“Shenks Ferry’s got the incredible collection of a bunch of different species and a crazy abundance,” Williams says. “It’s really a world-renowned wildflower preserve because of that.”
The spot has the right soil, the right geology and a microclimate making it just right for a diversity of wildflowers and lots of them, he says. Some credit Native Americans for planting flowers there as well.
Almost a century ago, a group pledged to protect the site’s flowers and keep gardeners from stealing them. The group is now Muhlenberg Botanical Society. Since then, the land has passed from PPL to Exelon and, now, Lancaster Conservancy.
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Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve flowers [photos]
Squirrel corn's blooming at Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve in Conestoga.
What’s blooming
The flowers at Shenks Ferry start blooming in mid-March and continue through early May. Usually, the site reaches peak bloom in the second week of April. While bluebells emerged early this year, Williams says, cold temperatures brought blooming back on track.
Last week on a drizzly day at Shenks Ferry, some of the earliest bloomers, spring beauties and cut-leaf toothwort, were up but closed. Dutchman’s breeches (shaped like teeny white pants on a clothesline) were in their peak.
Bluebells, phlox, corydalis and squirrel corn were starting to shine. Trilliums and mayapples were on their way with a few in bloom.
Yet to bloom were columbine, trout lily, golden ragwort and jack-in-the-pulpit.
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Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve invasive plants [photos]
Lancaster Conservancy’s taking a more aggressive approach to removing invasive plants at places like Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve thanks to more volunteers trained to ID plants such as garlic mustard.
Least-wanted plants
Not all of the plants at the preserve are highly prized. The conservancy is taking a more aggressive approach to removing invasive plants thanks to more volunteers trained to ID plants.
A few weeks ago, a crew removed 100 gallons of garlic mustard, an aggressive grower that can crowd out native plants. They also removed lots of lesser celandine and last fall, bigger plants such as honeysuckle shrub and multiflora rose. This spring, the managed areas had more spring ephemerals with more sunlight, water and nutrients reaching the forest floor.
“The threat of the invasives is that they become a monoculture and reduce the diversity,” Williams says. “Standing here, without even going up that slope, I can see at least a half a dozen species of wildflowers. … And that doesn’t even include some of the native grasses that grow, some of the ferns, the mosses. All of that would be one species if we let the multiflora rose and bush honeysuckle take over.”
Removal is important but it’s slow work to pull the right plant and not step on a few worth keeping.
Lesser celandine is another plant spreading through parks and preserves. On the March 28 walk, Williams spotted the plant’s bright yellow flowers next to the trail. The celandine was surrounded by squirrel corn, Dutchman’s breeches, spring beauties and phlox.
“The clock is ticking on that,” he says, marking the spot with pink tape. “I’m going to come back and dig it out.”
A trail for all
Pink flags mark plants volunteers need to remove. Pink-flagged wooden posts also mark the future of the trail. Years ago, the path was a narrow-gauge railroad line. Plants narrowed the trail even more. Now Lancaster Conservancy is widening the path, making it universally accessible.
“It’s important that all of the members of our community get the opportunity to come out in nature because of what it does for us,” Williams says. “I come out into the woods and I get so many benefits of that, spiritual, emotional, physical, my well-being is connected to my ability to get out in nature. I just think it’s not OK if certain members of our community can’t do that.”
The group has another universally accessible trail at Mill Creek Falls Nature Preserve in York County, one under construction at Clark Nature Preserve and fundraising for a similar trail at Climbers Run Nature Center.
At Shenks Ferry, a botanist has already pointed out the rare plants to move as the trail grows. The widening starts this summer and should be finished by the fall, long before the flowers return.
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