Hi Reader

Spring is here! Forty degree swings are becoming the norm but for those of us in the upper Midwest & upper Appalachia, warmer temperatures are finally embellishing muddy trails with some color and wildlife. Spring wildflowers are starting to bloom...I found spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) and Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) already blooming in southeast Ohio this week. It's a great time to get out!

Snapshot

Outdoors: Spring wildflowers are starting to emerge!
​Science: Early spring bloomers, species ID guides and apps
​Photography: Backlight for transparent subjects with pop!

Outdoors

Spring wildflowers are starting to pop here in upper Appalachia! Ohio DNR just published their Week 1 Spring Wildflower Report. If you're further south this might be old news but chances are good you're still in the spring wildflower season. A quick google search should yield some recommendations for timing and places to go to see spring wildflowers. You're likely to find other interesting blooms and buds too!

Our native spring wildflowers are nearly all woodland dwellers. Look for parks with large tracts of mature forests. Even in nature preserves with strict on-trail restrictions, you can often get a good close look at a variety of species as they frequently emerge right along the trail. Key in on parks that have boardwalks too as they'll be sure to span standing water right now. You're likely to find the amphibians that rely on water-filled pools to breed this time of year....frogs and salamanders...and their eggs.

Science

Native spring wildflowers bloom from early spring through leaf-out and include some very unique species worth getting to know. They take advantage of good solar exposure on the forest floor before the tree canopy blocks out the majority of the sun's light. Many of them are ephemeral, emerging, blooming, going to seed, then dying back completely until next spring. Others bloom but retain their foliage through the growing season. Earliest bloomers include the following:

• ​spring beauty (Claytonia virginica)​
• ​bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)​
• ​white trout-lily (Erythronium albidum)​
• ​harbinger-of-spring (Erigenia bulbosa)​
• ​sharp-lobed hepatica (Hepatica nobilis)​
• ​Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica)​

If you're looking for a guide to aid with species identification, Ohio DNR has one of the best spring wildflower guides I've found. It's full of beautiful photography and tons of information about spring wildflowers. Side note, if you enjoy my content and don't already follow Jim McCormac, look him up. He's an amazing naturalist and photographer based here in Ohio and helped with many of Ohio DNR's very well done field guides.

The National Park Service has a nice webpage for spring wildflowers in the Great Smokey Mountains for those of you further south. If you're just starting out with field guides, get one with just spring wildflowers to narrow things down for you. If you are more seasoned your wildflower field guide will cover these species too.

There are also some really good phone apps to help you identify what you're finding on your excursions. One of my favorites for most purposes is iNaturalist. Download the app, add a photo (green '+' button), then tap on "What did you see?" and it'll give you suggestions on what you might've found. The same team has developed Seek which is also aimed at younger ages and based on the iNaturalist database. They're not perfect and you'll have to do additional research for tougher requests, as expected.

Photography

Many spring subjects are semi-transparent (flower petals, young leaves, fresh mushrooms) and do very well backlit. Backlit means the sun is behind the subject (facing it's back). While not the easiest to compose and expose, backlit photos offer a unique perspective and can take your subject, and photos, to the next level in the right circumstances.

You can backlight your subject with any kind of light but I often use the sun if its handy. In the image above, the afternoon sun is directly behind the young leaf shoots. I made sure to focus on the larger leaves and adjusted the brightness meter to get them looking good.

Your background might blow out (go very bright) but don't worry about that and focus on getting the subject's brightness right. You can adjust the highlights down later if you want. Try to get that sun well hidden behind the subject and your background will stay under control as it did in the image above.

If you can manage a darker background your subject will really pop. If the sun is low in the sky and peeking through a dark forest you can often make this work. You can use a flashlight or other artificial light too. Try it out!

That's it for this week. Happy exploring!

Chad Kettlewell
Photographer & Ecologist
​chadkphotography.com​

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