There are still wildflowers worth growing that are hard to find in nurseries but easy to find in backyards. These throwbacks to our pre-colonial forests are often found in wooded lots, especially those that tend to be wet in spring. Yellow trout-lily (Erythronium americanum) has maroon-mottled leaves resembling a trout’s spotted skin. Some folks call it dog-tooth violet due to the fang-shaped bulb, or adders-tongue since its stamens extend out like a snake sampling the spring air. Modern botanists might name it “E. chiquita” since its yellow petals curve back like a peeled banana. Trout lilies are among the first native wildflowers to tell us winter is finally over.

On sunny April mornings, beneath the high canopy of still-leafless trees, masses of spring-beauty (Claytonia virginica) open their flowers like a spreading pink mist. Each tiny half-inch flower is dainty with its darker pink veins, but their true splendor is evident in wooded lawns with large spring-beauty colonies. Once trees leaf out, the flowers fade and the leaves draw back to the deep underground tuber until next year. Each year it seems another well-meaning homeowner wipes them out with herbicide, unaware that there will be no hint of them eleven months of the year.

My favorite shady groundcover is the common blue violet (Viola sororia). Their blue-purple flowers peek out from behind the heart-shaped leaves, waiting for a pause in April showers. Unlike the trout-lily and spring-beauty, their leaves persist through summer, making a beautiful green carpet beneath hostas and astilbes. Turf maintenance workers curse them as a stubborn weed that resists most herbicides, but these “violet sisters” are the official state flowers of Illinois, Rhode Island, and the Garden State, New Jersey.

(P.S. Please don’t take wildflowers from our natural areas - it’s against the law and a little rude. Instead, ask your neighbors if you can rescue their “weeds”.)