Wake Robin

Last weekend I went to the Lake Jackson Archaeological Park twice.

The first time I went hiking by myself.

The next day, I made David come with me. I wanted him to see the trilliums in bloom.  Trilliums are the first woodland flowers to bloom here, and that's why they are also called "wake robins" -- because after they appear, all of the spring birds seem to wake up and start singing.

We hiked into the woods, looking for the rare relict trillium.

As we got further into the woods, we saw more and more relict trilliums.  They have a dark red flower and gorgeous leaves speckled green, white, and purple.

The ground was carpeted with them.

The archaeological park has a steephead: a stream flowing down into a ravine that creates an unusually cool microenvironment.  As we got closer to the steephead, we could tell that the air was getting cooler.  The moss on the tree roots got thicker.


At the steephead, we saw hillsides covered with ferns.

And trilliums growing among the ferns.

We spent a lot of time searching the stream for a rare type of salamander that is supposed to live there.  But the salamanders were too elusive.

So we settled for more pictures of trilliums.

I thought about the naturalist John Burroughs, who wrote a book called Wake-Robin in 1871.

He said, "The dandelion tells me when to look for the swallow, the dogtooth violet when to expect the wood-thrush, and when I have found the wake-robin in bloom I know the season is fairly inaugurated.  With me this flower is associated, not merely with the awakening of Robin, for he has been awake for some weeks, but with the universal awakening and rehabilitation of nature."