SPRING CRESS ( Bitter Cress) 



Cardamine bulbosa ( Schreb. ) BSP. 



April - May Where the springs run out of the sandy hillside — 



Swamps, shores where the watercress heds are green and lush in the 



clear, cold spring water, and the wild iris grows where 

 the stream widens into a marsh — there are airy white flowers held deli- 

 cately on thin stems. The spring cress is in hloom. 



Four-petaled like radish flowers, the blossoms are held on graceful 

 stalks above the neat, lobed leaves which all gi'ow from a bulbous base 

 in the moist, sandy, woods soil. 



The little silvery 1)1 ue butterflies, which come to sip moisture along 

 the spring's flow, come flitting by and pause on the white flowers of the 

 cress, sip a moment, and are off again. A Bewick's wren, twitching its long 

 tail here and there in a most reckless abandon, comes hopping past, mut- 

 tering to itself, and cocks an eye up at the flowers, thrusts out a long 

 curved beak and picks off a lady beetle. A box turtle pauses for a long 

 nap close to the bed of spring cress, then in leisure awakens and rea-ches 

 out a slow head to take a bite of cress leaves. 



Spring-time goes on all about the cress flowers. Sun and moon and 

 night and day, the coming of migrant birds and their departure to the 

 north, the crying of whip-poor-wills at twilight and the crying of killdeers 

 out on the mud of the marsh all day and all night. And when the white 

 petals of the sjjring cress finally fall to the ground and the seeds form 

 on the stalks, then indeed the s})riiig is ])ast and smnmer has come into 

 the woods. 



4!) 



