4.05.12 Spring beauty announces its presence with its sweet aroma and then I start hunting among the leaf litter in the rich soil of sunny spots. The seeds of these ephemerals have an eliasome, a fatty appendage, that attracts ants. The ant carries the seed off to its home, eats the eliasome and discards the seed, thus planting it and keeping it safe from other would-be predators.
The brown wands of the Ostrich fern are the fertile blade of the plant. They wait for spring winds to disperse their spores. Collectors of fiddleheads find them useful for spotting where the new fronds are coming up in spring.