First Day of Spring: Wearing wool hats, thick socks and serious shoes, the botany class treks through winter's leftovers, crunching sycamore leaves as big as salad plates. This chilly Saturday is Opening Day of their botanizing season, and these fans are making their way through the woods of Harford County, the first stop on their annual search for spring.
The students, mostly in their 50s and 60s, are homemakers and psychiatrists, school teachers, attorneys, computer consultants -- amateurs and kindred spirits. They have come together to look for a small native wildflower that blooms in the middle of March. Most have seen it before, some hope to see it for the first time. It's quite a quest: The elusive harbinger-of-spring is not much bigger than a sprig of parsley -- and just about as easy to find.
As they proceed, the naturalists yield to trail bikers, runners, Swedish walkers and fitness types. In spring 1999, the woods for many have become another opportunity to burn calories and test new equipment. Which is why this small clump of plant lovers seems so heart-warming: ordinary people crouching over lichens, discovering and rediscovering, conferring, intent upon seeing the woods for what they really are. It's a scene that belongs to the beginning of this millennium as much as to the end. It seems as rare as the harbinger-of-spring.
These pilgrims are fortunate to travel with the woman who discovered the flower here at Susquehanna State Park 10 years ago. The 74-year-old naturalist Jean Worthley has also brought a color photograph of their quarry, a kind of botanical most-wanted poster.
A member of the carrot family, the harbinger-of-spring looks like a miniature Queen Anne's Lace, white with interior maroon anthers. It's dainty, delicate, quite lovely. Trouble is, it's small -- so small that you can only see it clearly through a magnifying glass.
It's a wonder Worthley ever found the flower in the first place, although she had seen one once along the C&O; Canal. But on March 16, 1989 -- a banner botanical day -- she discovered it by accident on a wooded hillside in the Harford County park.
After the initial thrill, the naturalist carefully memorized her surroundings so she could find her way back, then crossed her fingers. The following year, when she brought friends, the flower was still there. The next year she brought more people. Then others heard about it. Some members of the class have been here six or seven times.
This trip has a purpose, she reminds the group. New stands of these flowers start up, old ones die out. You can't rely on reading about what grew where because chances are they're gone. You must guard against "exotic invasives" like English ivy taking over -- and remain on the lookout for new colonies.
And new recruits. Started 28 years ago by botanist Elmer Worthley, Jean's late husband, this "class" is adept at planting the love for botany into new and fertile soil. On this field trip, newcomers learn that stinging nettles are delicious if you cook them three minutes in salted water, that the false mermaid weed looks nothing like the aquatic mermaid weed that is actually called water-milfoil, that the river birch gets more attractive as it ages, and that, despite its name, the early buttercup always blooms after the kidney leaf buttercup.
But the main draw is the harbinger-of-spring. And as they wind their way up the hillside behind Worthley, they will learn that it is still here, but invisible to those who don't know how to look for it.
After two class members brush away the leaves from a particularly lovely, and tiny, stand of flowers, Worthley summons the students into a circle. Some stand, holding journals and wildflower guides. Others crouch so they can see the flowers more clearly. Worthley is in the center, on her knees, before the harbinger-of-spring.
It is time to read about this wonder, an annual review delivered in the devotional tongue of botany.
Eregenia Bulbosa. A glabrous perennial herb from a rounded tuber. Flower white, in small compound umbels ... Fruit nearly orbicular.
Floral jabberwocky to the uninitiated, they still listen respectfully. They are here, after all, to learn whatever they can about the world's heirlooms: how to identify them, how to commit them to memory, how to preserve them and pass them on to others.
Next comes the exercise of memorizing the plants' current location. Worthley asks others to share their observations about this brown and leafless place. Slowly, the class rises to the task:
Most of the trees around here are tulip trees, says one person.
There's a spice bush.
That's a paw-paw.
This is a Carolina hornbeam tree, which is also called muscle wood. Years ago, people used to make the hubs of their wagon wheels from this wood because it's so tough.
And so it goes. This place is a long and sacred text. And these people, busy copying as much of it as they can, are merely passing through. A month from now, when the world is awash with color and fair-weather distractions, no one will think about an early blooming flower the size of a sprig of parsley.
It is time for Jean Worthley to extract a promise for the sake of this homely spot where spring always blossoms first.
How many of you now think you could show this place to somebody else? I want to be sure that when I'm gone other people will still know how to find these flowers!
She chuckles loudly while people pledge, with missionary fervor, to return. She's teasing them, of course. But it's exactly what this ritual is all about, what it's always been about for at least a thousand years.
Pub Date: 3/27/99