The Georgia Botanical Society’s annual trek to The Pocket is on March 27 this year, and with the state of things last Saturday I was beginning to worry, so Cindy and I braved the cold and rain to make a status check in the boardwalk area on Saturday, March 13.  For those who read the last chapter 1st – I breathed a sigh of relief.

Early Bloodroot pushing through the leaves

While Virginia Bluebell foliage has been obvious for a while, Cindy noticed tiny flower buds forming on many of the plants now.  There are a lot of Celandine Poppy leaves showing up now as well, so I think it very likely that we’ll have a good show of those plants by the last weekend in March.  While the Hepatica seems to be past its prime, there are still buds showing on a number of plants, so they’ll be around for a couple more weeks.  The cutleaf toothwort has surprised me – there have been buds showing for a couple of weeks on this early bloomer, but as of yesterday I’ve only found a single plant with blossoms opening.  Wild geranium, phlox, and hyacinth foliage is showing up, so we might have some of them blooming by March 27.   The little bit of Dutchman’s Breeches foliage that I’ve found is quite small, but it grows and develops quickly, so it may also be blooming then.  A number of plants that looked like Trailing Trillium last week are now a few inches above the ground – Toadshade.  No blossoms yet on any of the trilliums.

Perhaps the most exciting find yesterday were the many Bloodroot sprouts showing up, almost all of them with their leaves still clasped around their pink flower buds.

I’m hoping someone can get at least one section of the back part of the boardwalk loop straightened out.  While there seems to be few wildflower plants showing up on the dirt from the landslide which took out part of the boardwalk, the path that is now being used  to get across the slide and back onto the boardwalk is going right through a rather rich area.  Getting one particular section leveled out would provide an access back to the boardwalk before the path through the wildflowers.