Nemeton Erithan

I spent the May long week­end at my family’s cot­tage in North­ern Ontario. It was great to get out of the city, the weather was won­der­ful, and it was the per­fect oppor­tun­ity to poke around the wooded parts of the prop­erty while the under­growth was still man­age­able. What at first glance appears to be just a car­pet of indis­tin­guish­able leafy greens is actu­ally a highly diverse com­munity of plants. Some are food sources for the local wild­life (and treats for us if we can get there in time!), oth­ers have his­tor­ic­ally been used to treat a vari­ety of ail­ments, some just look pretty, and a few of them are poten­tially quite dan­ger­ous to us and are best left alone.

Herb Robert (Geranium rober­tianum), a wild geranium thought to have medi­cinal properties.

Thank­fully the bugs were not bad at all. Nor­mally it would be death by bug bites to go wan­der­ing into the woods at this time of year, but a dry winter and spring so far have meant the mos­quito and black fly pop­u­la­tions are low. I only got a couple mos­qui­toes try­ing to nibble at my hands, noth­ing I couldn’t deal with.

White Tril­lium (Tril­lium gran­di­florum), The pro­vin­cial flower of Ontario.

I’ll head back north later in the sum­mer when even more has grown. There’s plenty more to pho­to­graph, from mul­lein to yar­row, to milk­weed, and more. For more images of the inter­est­ing flora from the woods and shoreline of our place in cot­tage coun­try, please check out the gal­lery of images.