Larry A. Smail's Blog

Purple Trillium

My friend Kip Feroce has beautiful lands around his property. Big timber, moss-covered logs, Mayapples in abundance may be

Leeks

found along the very steep  slopes. However, many of Pennsylvania’s native wildflowers were absent upon my time traveling about those lands. I have many species on my property planted to allow to spread and transplant to lands barren of them. More later.

I found not seeing many common species of wildflowers an issue with me. I mentioned this issue to Kip and he readily agreed to for me to reintroduce some native species of wildflowers. I hope to see them flourish and spread as needed to beautify the forest even more.

This morning, beside the plantings, found me needing to stop by another friend, Frank Maus. To further make all of these plans work best, it was decided to hunt turkeys until mid-morning. I made all of these ventures fall into place within half a day. Perfect!

I managed to stimulate a gobbler. The big bird was in posted property and over two hundred yards off. I didn’t have a positive thought, but the gobbler very quickly moved to about 80 yards of me. WOW! I had hunting related issues. The terrain between the gobbler and me besides being posted yielded a deeply cut gas well road that runs parallel to the property I was hunting on. Even worse between this gas well road and me was dense Multiflora Rose…and I mean lots of this terrible plant. I had only one card to play and to try to call the bird over that embankment and through the roses thickets.

Trout Lily

White Trillium

As I expected, the gobbler walked and gobbled that road back and forth. The terrain would have allowed an unethical and illegal shot, but that is not how I roll. I played around with this gobbler for about two hours moving five or six times in attempts to lure him to me. Well, off to Frank’s nearby home.

Frank and I shared turkey stories for, at least, half an hour before I left to transplant the wildflowers.

I planted approximately forty individual wildflowers on Kip’s property. I had just finished when I heard his truck coming up the lane. Now we need some rain to set those roots and bulbs. I imagine many years ago this may have been pasture land with years of cattle traversing the lands thus killing out many species of wildflowers.

The species I planted were: White Trillium; Purple Trillium; Jack-In-The-Pulpit; Dutchman’s Breeches; Trout Lily; Bloodroot; Virginia Bluebells and Wild Leek. Hope they survive and spread rapidly.

Virginia Bluebells

Leaf of Bloodroot