Snow Trillium, a Lost Toy,

And much, much more...

I’m not very good at identifying plants, and I won’t pretend I am. But thanks to Diane Porter’s recent post in her wonderful newsletter My Gaia, I think the plant in the photo above is snow trillium. They now carpet the landscape at Cedar Bluffs, especially below the lookout I so often take photos from.

They are small and hard to see in the above photo, but it you look closely, they are the little white dots.

The snow trillium is an herbaceous, long-lived, woodland, perennial wildflower with a limited distribution in the Midwestern states of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio with outlier occurrences in South Dakota, Nebraska, Michigan, Kentucky, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Snow trillium is truly a harbinger of spring with occasional late winter appearances in March while snow is still on the ground. Snow trillium is never common and can be very rare often with local occurrences in many parts of its range. Within some of these local occurrences very large, dense populations do occur.

All I can say is they are common and in dense numbers. I’m not sure how long the blooms will last, but if you want to see them, I’m happy to show anyone interested. Just email me at rdwleonard@gmail.com. As always, if anyone wants to walk with me at Cedar Bluffs, I would be happy to walk with you!

Maybe my identification is wrong, and feel free to correct me.

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So many birds! I am so happy to see and hear them again. If I remember correctly I saw my first Turkey Vulture on March 3. That’s my first sign of spring. I heard Cardinals all winter, but now they are abundant, as are Robins. Turkeys are calling, and the other day I heard a wonderful series of call and responses from a Barred Owl and a Turkey. The Barred Owl would call, and the Turkey would respond after half a beat. Interspecies communication? Why not? Killdeer are everywhere, as are the Redwing Blackbirds. My old friends the Eastern Phoebes are back! And I love hearing the Meadowlarks.

Here is a little story, sort of sad, but I will share it anyway. I wasn’t very good in school until college, and I was diagnosed with ADHD years later. I always wanted to be outside even when I was a very little boy. I remember when I was in elementary school, whenever I heard a Meadowlark through the window of the classroom, I would start to cry. It was so sorrowful to me that I couldn’t be outside. I didn’t have the words to share with my teachers, so they didn’t understand.

Now I know that it is natural for us to want to be in nature, and that there wasn’t anything wrong with me despite what I was told.

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Follow me on Instagram at cedarcreeknaturenotes. I post regularly and like to add fun music. I posted the above photo with the classic music “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues.

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I believe the above is an ancient plant called equisetum.

Equisetum is the scientific name for horsetail, a fern relative that has been used in traditional medicine since ancient Roman and Greek times. The name comes from the Latin words equus, meaning "horse," and seta, meaning "bristle". Horsetail has 13 types, including field horsetail, rough horsetail, and great horsetail.

Iowa has 15 species of equisetum, including field horsetail (Equisetum arvense) and scouring rush (Equisetum hyemale), which are the most common species. Horsetails are perennial herbs with upright, jointed stems. The common horsetail has two types of stems: sterile, non-reproductive, and photosynthetic, and reproductive and non-photosynthetic.

Please correct my identification if wrong. Thanks.

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Maybe every other day I hear this sound coming from these trees. I couldn’t see anything.

If I remember correctly, Al Batt, with Al’s Substack, told me when I posted this sound before that this was a Raccoon scolding someone, probably me. Is that so?

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Here is a video of Violet the Dog down by the Des Moines River. She wears a vest because I fear she looks too much like a deer or a coyote and I don’t want her shot. Violet the Dog is good company.

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Above is a centipede we found at home. We are in the Cedar Creek watershed, so it counts! Amazing!

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Above are some other things I saw this week.

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One morning the grass was frosty. Isn’t this so, so beautiful?

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I found this toy deer on the path, and put it up on a post near the entrance with the hope the child who lost it came back! Whether we admit it or not, we are all still children at heart, and know what it felt like when we lost a toy. If I can somehow help a child find their lost toy, I will be happy. It was gone a couple of days later, and I hope if it didn’t find the child who lost it, I hope it found another child. And I hope we all find the child in us. It’s there. You don’t have to look very hard.

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If you enjoy Cedar Creek Nature Notes, I encourage you to subscribe to my friend Larry Stone’s “Listening to the Land.” It’s fantastic. Larry has forgotten more than I will ever know about our outdoor world.

For another glimpse of the wonders of the Iowa outdoors, Diane Porter’s My Gaia is another Substack I enjoy. It’s full of observations on nature and is ripe with wisdom.

And don’t miss Al Batt’s Substack at Al’s Substack. Al Batt of Hartland, Minnesota is a writer, speaker, storyteller, and humorist. Al writes humor and nature columns for many newspapers and does regular radio shows about nature. He writes several popular cartoon strips that are syndicated nationally and is the author of the book, "A Life Gone to the Birds." He is a columnist for "Bird Watcher’s Digest" and “Watching Backyard Birds,” and writes for several magazines and books.

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I’m a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please sample the talents of my fellow collaborative members. If you can afford to be a paid subscriber, that would be great. If not, the vast majority of content is free. And here is a link to the Iowa Podcasters’ Collaborative, should you be interested. Check out my Substack Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture if you aren’t already a subscriber. My Iowa Revolution podcast with award-winning broadcaster Spencer Dirks can be found here.

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