What to See This Week

The Woodland Garden is in full bloom and one of the most stunning wildflowers can be seen dotting the primarily green, ramp-covered landscape. This is large-flowered trillium, Ohio’s official state wildflower! It grows in rich woodland habitats and grows in all 88 Ohio counties. Look a little later in the season and you will find the white flowers turn pink with age.

A bizarre wildflower in the Woodland Garden that may be easily overlooked is wild ginger. It is so hard to spot due to the dark maroon flowers that grow against the forest floor. Your best bet to find them is to look for the heart-shaped leaves.

Violets don’t only come in purple! Pictured here is the downy yellow violet. Ohio is home to a total of nearly 30 species of violet, but the downy yellow violet is the only yellow species recorded at The Arboretum. Unlike the common blue violet, the downy yellow violet generally sticks to the forested areas and doesn’t spread out to open, grassy areas.

While looking at the blooming blue cohosh, I noticed an insect feeding on the nectar. This is a type of parasitic wasp. Although parasitic wasp larvae feed on other insects (usually laid directly inside caterpillars or other larvae), adult wasps tend to feed on nectar. Blue cohosh flowers may blend in due to their green color, they produce bright blue fruits in the fall.

Pawpaws are in bloom. If pollinated, these trees will develop large pawpaw fruits in the fall. Pawpaws require different genetics for pollination. This is because the male and female parts of the flowers develop at different times so self-pollination is not possible. The stigma, the female part of the flower, is receptive before the pollen ripens but once the pollen is ready, the stigma is no longer receptive. They are naturally pollinated by insects like flies and beetles, but some pawpaw growers take matters into their own hands by using collected pollen and a paintbrush to hand pollinate the flowers. Pawpaws can be found in forested areas as an understory tree or in the Flowering Shrubs Collection.

Poison ivy has leafed out and is especially recognizable in the spring due to its shiny, reddish leaves. Poison ivy contains urushiol, a substance that can cause a skin reaction in some people. Urushiol is present in all parts of the plant so even without leaves, contact with the poison ivy vine can cause a rash any time of the year. Keep in mind that poison ivy is the only urushiol-containing plant you will run into at The Arboretum. Poison sumac requires a specific habitat to grow and is not recorded at The Arboretum, and poison oak does not grow in Ohio at all!

Most of the time while walking through Dutch Fork Wetlands, you will notice frogs hopping into the water as you approach. Pictured here is a northern leopard frog, a frog that often spends time in wet prairies and meadows for foraging, but like other frogs must return to water to breed. They look similar to pickerel frogs but leopard frogs have more irregular, rounded spots as opposed to the pickerel frog’s double row of more square-shaped spots.

An extremely common frog to come across at the wetlands or ponds around The Arboretum is the northern green frog. Green frogs also have a lookalike: bullfrogs. You can tell the two apart by looking at the dorsolateral ridges. Green frogs have ridges that run from just behind the eyes down their back. In bullfrogs, their ridge doesn’t run down their back but instead curves around their tympanum (eardrum). Even if you don’t see them, you can tell them apart just by listening; green frogs sound like a loose banjo string pluck while bullfrogs make a much deeper, resonating sound.