Mayapples

The mayapples were blooming at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm last week. The stand I photographed is down near the beach area of the Davis Branch. It was one of those instances where it was good to have my cell phone along so that I could take pictures while I waited for the middle schoolers to show up for their stream assessment work. From above – the flowers are not visible at all. Walking down the slope and then looking back help make the flowers more visible. The leaves are an umbrella over the flowers!

I took some closeups of the flowers by walking back up the hill and bending over to get the camera under the leaves and close to the flowers.

They are one of the larger wildflowers but one must know to look under the leaves! They bloom in May and the ‘apple’ forms during the summer. They are not edible.