Moroccan food and violets

Today we went on our first rare plant foray of the calendar year - for the native dog violets, locally abundant only in a few pristine wooded areas. Unfortunately heavy, intermittent thunderstorms started right as we were setting up our survey, so we weren't able to safely monitor this weekend, but we did find a great Moroccan restaurant within reach, afterwards, and had hot minty tea and a wonderful tagine in its traditional ceramic cookpot. The company was great and we spent time discussing art, kids and upcoming monitoring plans, so it was time well spent.

The early-season marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) were in their full golden glory and spring beauty, trout lilies and other early spring woodland ephemerals are well along. The trilliums are not yet up. Although our monitoring team has learned to easily ID dog violet, a stemmy, trailing violet with long-spurred light purple flowers, even out of bloom, it's just more fun to see them in their full glory, so I think we'll wait another week. I hope the weather is better next Saturday! : )

Here's Trillium grandiflorum. I can't wait until I see them in the woods this spring! : )

Well, the trillium series is finished - for now. Just in time for the next exhibit at Whole Foods River Forest's cafe and gallery. (Whew!)

  Illinois is home to nine species of trilliums: Trillium grandiflorum (the large white trillium everyone thinks of when you say trillium), Trillium sessile, Trillium cernuum, Trillium nivale (the dainty snow trillium), Trillium recurvatum (probably the most common species in our woodlands), Trillium erectum, Trillium flexipes, Trillium viride and Trillium cuneatum. I grouped the series - or tried to anyway - most logically by color. The painting above is of the two green trilliums, T. cuneatum (left) and T. viride (right).

Waiting for spring...

Groundhog's day has come and gone, and six more weeks of winter is yet to come, love it or not. I keep thinking about all the sweet orchids and other rarities enjoying their winter sleep, and wondering how they'll fare this coming year. In Illinois, the numbers on the white prairie fringed orchids had tanked in previous years but it seems that there is a very slight upswing because of the wet springs we've had the past two years, and attention to management in some areas. Drought is very hard on them, and unfortunately all the good management in the world can't make up for loss of rainfall....

I've been sidetracked from painting by other projects - church stuff, this orchid article, advocacy for the Mike Quigley congressional campaign, but now it's time to get back to the boards and get a few more finished - I have an upcoming exhibit at Marion Street Cheese Market. What to paint, what to paint??? (And no, I'm not painting cheese! I'm still painting orchids! : ))

good news, bad news

My hunch that the stemless pink ladys' slipper being possibly extirpated has been borne out by last spring's visits by the state botanists, who found only thick colonies of buckthorn and multiflora rose where the plants had been last seen. Management is so crucial to our natural areas' health! We need more dedicated volunteer corps all over the state to adopt these natural areas and keep the invasives at bay so that future generations may continue to enjoy and treasure these beauties as we do.

The good news is that with management and volunteer commitment, a few new populations of native orchids are being discovered, or rediscovered, each year. The federally listed prairie white fringed orchid was identified at a new site in northern Illinois last year, after years of population declines. I am hoping to be able to locate and talk with botanists who are studying native orchids in hope of learning what are the most serious threats and the best management strategies for combatting them (and by that, I'm ruling out the ones we already know: loss of habitat to real estate development or agriculture, changes in hydrology, trampling, poaching, and global warming for boreal species).