Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

As May approaches, the Hepatica has finally faded for another season. One of the things that I enjoy the most about hepatica is that it is not boring. Many other flowers – wild or cultivated – appear in essentially one form. Consider Spring beauty, Trillium, Marsh Marigold, or other spring wildflowers. They have the same coloration, same number of petals, and often grow in the same formations. Spring beauty, for instance, often grows a pair of flowers, situated slightly diagonally to each other.

Hepatica, on the other hand, demonstrate a lot of diversity. They may have 6, 8, 10, or more petals. They may be solid or multicolored, dark or light - deep blue, pale lavender, or even white.

Some time ago I likened hepatica to snow crystals – although they are similar, each one is slightly different and unique. Combine that with their arrival as one of the very first spring wildflowers, and the rather short period of time they are around each spring, and you can see what makes them so interesting to photograph.

Spring is a season when things change fast. If you watch closely, you can sometimes see the turning point – that particular day when winter’s inertia finally gives way to the compelling changes that come with spring. It’s the day when the grass turns green. It’s the day when the buds on the trees reach a critical mass, and as you look down your street you no longer see wooden skeletons, but the green, red, and yellow fringes of new growth and life.

While this transformation may seem to be abrupt and sudden, it is really is the result of long preparation. Spring is the season of rebirth, but rebirth is not a haphazard or random event. Rebirth comes when elements are mixed together, daring the universe with their potential, and awaiting the spark of warmth, the spark of light, the spark of Spring – that triggers the annual renewal of the earth.

When the skunk cabbage buds burn through the snow in late winter, they are laying plans for spring. When a tree buds out in February, it is making plans for spring. When the first green shoots push up through dried leaves on a cold March day – they are making plans for spring.

At the turning point, those plans are quickened and made real. It’s a not a grand event, not a planetary phenomenon, but rather each square foot of soil builds it’s potential, and then unleashes it when the turning point comes.

This year, here in the place where I am, things turned around 3:00 AM, Friday morning, April 24th. That’s when the first really warm air of the year arrived – I know that because it came in a grand display of thunder and lightening, that woke even me. Although the weather forecasters predicted that Thursday would be a warm day, it fell short and turned out to be a bit chillhy, a bit cloudy, and a bit like March. But once the storms rolled through on Friday moring, the night air warmed and the next day the earth turned green. All the plans that nature had laid suddenly came to fruition.

I visited some of my usual haunts in Cass County. The woodland wildflowers are truly at their peak. Hepatica is still standing, but has faded and is now rare. Anemone – wood, rue, and false – is everywhere. So too is Spring Beauty, Trout Lily, Dutchman’s Britches and Squirrel Corn. Isolated patches of Bloodroot still bloom, but in most cases this early spring flower is gone, leaving its leaves to grow to incredible size.

This is the sweetest time of year, when the trees are just beginning to bud out and have a faint glimmer of green to their branches; and when the forest floor is radiant green, sprinkled with the wildflowers. Looking ahead – Trillium is just staring to open and May Apple is just starting to unfurl it’s umbrella-like leaves.

Like I said, this is the turning point.

I learned a new word today, courtesy of an email announcement from the Pierce Creek Institute: “Spring Ephemeral.” OK, that’s two words, but they are a great combination. They really sum up what these woodland wildflowers are all about – fleeting ephemeral things.

After last week’s warm weather, a wintery system rolled through bringing several days of snow, sleet, and cold driving rains. This morning I had to scrape a bit of frost off the windshield, but now the sun is shining and warm temperatures are promised. During these cold snaps the plants just build up their strength and get ready to burst out with all the more enthusiasm when things warm up.

So, here are a couple of outtakes from last week – a hepatica and a bloodroot.

The sound of a Tom Turkey drumming can really take you by surprise. It is deep, really deep. At first it sounds like it is coming from within your own head, but then you realize this is an external sound. It starts out slow and then ratchets up to a faster pace, accelerating until it stops.

Wandering into the Ottawa Marsh last week, the sound of a drumming Tom was one of the first to meet my ears. This lucky Tom was close to the staging area, and so most everyone out for a spring turkey hunt had probably passed him by, heading deeper into the woods.

The drumming of the turkey got me thinking of the wonderful sounds of the forest, field, or marsh. As I wandered through the fields around the Ottawa Marsh, I tuned into the rich animal sounds all around me. Lying on the ground to take this shot of a Spring Beauty wildflower, I listened in to the calls of various frogs in the nearby marsh, the “huff huff!” of deer hanging out nearby, and the myriad overlapping calls of cardinals, robins, and song sparrows. Somewhere in the mix the “Woo-hala-woo-hala-woo-hala!” of sandhill cranes danced on my ears.

When I came to the two large trees, full of butterflies, bees and flies; I heard the buzzing whir of the bees and, more sweetly, the soft “thuddy-thud-thud” of Mourning Cloaks as they hovered over the trees exuding sap.

Down there in the marsh, I didn’t hear any traffic noises – the highway is far enough away, and you’re low enough below the roads, so automotive noise doesn’t reach you.

I did hear the steady pop-pop-pop of shotguns discharging. It reminded me the sounds of fireworks in small county displays. You sit out on a hill surrounded by cornfields or vineyards, and the fireworks start out slowly – one dull thud after another – until they reach a crescendo of steady thuds.

And then they fade away…

After a long, cold, Michigan winter, three consecutive days of sunshine and warm temperatures is almost too much. After visiting some of the wildflower patches in Cass and Berrien Counties earlier in the week, I decided to see what was happening up in the Allegan Forest.

As I’ve mentioned, the Allegan State Game Area (as it is also called) is not the richest place for wildflowers. The forest here was clear cut over a century ago, after which the land was farmed. Many areas were subsequently re-forested, and some of these have been clear cut since and are now in yet another cycle of re-growth. While prairie wildflowers – both native and non – abound in many of the open fields, the woodland wildflowers can be hard to come by.

My plan was to visit the Ottawa Marsh. This unit of the Allegan Forest serves as both a bird sanctuary and waterfowl hunting area. It is not entirely marsh, but is rather a patchwork of marshy wetlands and open fields. In past years I’ve found scattered patches of wildflowers around the marsh. This is one of the few places where I’ve found white trout lily – which is not a rare plant but, locally, is much less common than the yellow variety.

It was still pretty early in the season to find many wildflowers in the marsh. I forget that counties just 60 or 70 miles to the south can be as much as two or three weeks ahead of the slightly cooler locations to the north. I wandered around the fields and fringes of the far eastern end of the marsh… Aside from a few patches of Spring Beauty, the occasional Wild Blue Phlox, and one or two blooming Trout Lilies (the yellow variety), encounters with wildflowers were rare.

The most interesting thing of the day was encountering two large trees, both of which were exuding sweet spring sap from cracks in their bark. I don’t know what kind of trees they were. They were not the familiar suspects – maples, oak, poplar. The bark was light tan colored, lumpy, cracked, and slightly shaggy. I consulted my filed guides but they are all keyed to identifying trees by their leave – which won’t appear for several days at least.

I also don’t know if the leaking sap was a natural event, or if these trees were somehow distressed. Whatever it may be, the sap had attracted throngs of insects, including several Mourning Cloak and Eastern Comma butterflies. These butterflies overwinter in adult form, and so are among the first butterflies to appear on warm spring days. They no doubt really appreciated the free meal of tree sap.

The weather has turned again – and the next several days will be cold, damp, with a rain snow mix predicted. But if those butterflies survived the whole of winter under a flap of tree bark, or in some other nook or cranny, they’ll no doubt sit out the next few cool days, ready to enjoy spring when it finally emerges again.

Yesterday I visited a few choice locations in Cass County, Michigan, looking for spring wildflowers. Our long cold snap seems to be coming to an end, and Michigan might actually see temperatures in the 70’s for the first time in 2009. Combine that with some recent rains, and it seemed that the wildflowers would be breaking out for sure.

The forest floor is now covered with large patches of wild leeks the earliest wildflowers are still out – Harbinger of Spring, Skunk Cabbage Flowers, and Hepatica are still abundant. Most of the skunk cabbage has moved beyond the flowering stage, and is now sending out its green napkin sized leaves.

Bloodroot is also out, and is probably near its peak in many places. Here and there I found withering blooms or plants that had already lost their blooms, but most were still fresh.

The next wave of wildflowers is starting to make its appearance. Marsh Marigolds are starting to open up a bit more. Rue anemone and false rue anemone were just starting to bloom in the places I visited, but along the way I saw solid patches of them by the side of the road. Spring beauty is also just starting to appear. I found a few Dutchman’s Britches, just starting to bloom, one of which is shown below. Trillium leaves are now up, and a few budding flowers have started to crack open. May Apple foliage is also pressing out of the ground, though it is just starting to unfurl.

There are few places more compelling than a green woods on a sunny day. The sunlight dances through the leaves. It is filtered and rarified, and splashes on the ground most wondrously. Some splashes of light are big enough to stand in, others are so small a fly can barely warm itself in the healing rays. But in the woods at Noon all the myriad rays of the sun come together like a symphony, playing visual music on the forest floor.

Noon is a good time of day. Shadows are short, light is long – though the day is half passed it feels early and it seems as if anything can be accomplished before the light fades.

But then, noon is the bane of photographers. The light is too harsh. No good work can be done at noon – go home, work in the darkroom, watch HBO, call your agent – do anything but try to photograph at noon.

Serious photographers creep through the twilight hours when the light is weak – we call it “sweet” - it has character and complexity. Like rodents at silflay we roll in dewy grass – not really wet, but certainly not dry. Somewhere in between in all regards, we find magic in ambivalence and vagary…

Well, I like Noon. Demanding, uncompromising, brutal Noon. Contrast is outrageous – the distinction between dark and light is never clearer than at Noon. Come Noon, the world is a clean and well lit place.

And so, a couple of years ago - which would be 2007 - I devoted a lot of time and effort to shooting in the Allegan Forest is the hard light of midday. I wanted to explore the relationship between light and dark, I wanted see the forest as it stood at Noon.

Since my interest was only in the play of light and shadow, I decided to do this work with black and white film . I didn’t want color to, um… color my perspective. Having several hundred rolls of B&W film moldering in my freezer made that decision easy. And so, full of hope, I wandered in the no-man’s land that has swallowed many a photographer – the world at Noon.

I shot and scanned over 1,000 frames that summer, all in the name of this project. I spent hours down in the basement by the concrete laundry sink, developing rolls of 35mm film. I learned a bit about different films and developers – Efke, Plus-X, Delta 100, Rodinal, HC110, D76, D19, Microdol-X. It took months, well into the dark days of November, before all the rolls were scanned and could be evaluated…

By then, I had lost interest. It really was an idiotic idea and I should have spent my time doing something useful - like shooting dragonflies or bees. Disinterested, I was drawn to distractions and the work from that summer was left behind.

Here in the digital lab I have almost 2.5 terabytes of images sitting in an array of hard drives - photos from the last 5 years or so. I guess that eighty percent of them have never really been looked at. The “Light and Shadow” project, as I call it, is probably the biggest chunk of unfinished work in the tub, and so I think I’ll start to look it over.

Wow – what a long winded intro to this humble photo –

Just a gate, a trail, and a bit of sun splashing on foliage. Sun on leaves to the left curls around, sun to the right glimmers on the path that circumvents a feeble barrier. Three trees plop dead center in the frame with sun lit foliage beaming in the background.

Yah – I couldn’t take a decent photo to save my life.

This was shot on Efke R100, #25 red filter, developed in Rodinal 1:50. The base of that film clears to be as clean as a window pane, and with the Rodinal it produces a tonality that, close up, looks like charcoal sketched on paper.

I never really know when I’ve learned something. I plan to work with these photos to see what lessons might be there. At the end of the day, I don’t think I accomplished anything tangible with this project. None of the photos will be marketable, none will be in calendars or books, none will even spark interest here.

But when I shot those photos I was where I was meant to be. I felt it at the time. I relish it in memory. Who could ask for more from a handful of days?

Here in Michigan, Harbinger of Spring - Erigenia bulbosa – is one of the first spring wildflowers to appear. While Skunk Cabbage is usually credited with being the very first spring flower, the red leafy flower is not particularly, um…, floral in appearance. But Harbinger of Spring is close behind and its “salt and pepper” flowers presage the wonderful spring wildflowers that will come in the weeks that follow its arrival.

For all that, I’m not sure that I ever bothered to photograph this diminutive flower. This year and in years past I’ve run straight past the lowly Harbinger of Spring and into the arms of hepatica. From there it’s on to the spring beauty, anemone,trout lilies, trillium, and more. For me, Harbinger of Spring is as ephemeral as expectations always are – like a cloud of breath on a cold spring morning that fades away as quickly as it appears, and is forgotten as the day warms.

So this year I laid down in the early spring mud and took a few photos of Harbinger of Spring. The best is shown here. The cluster of flowers is scarcely an inch across, and depth of field is always a challenge at high magnifications like this. The plant rises just a couple inches from the ground, and the background of the photo is made up of the pale brown leaves that cover the forest floor.

On this flower, one petal remained suspended by some sort of invisible thread. I expected to see the thread in the high resolution images, but it remained as invisible to the camera as it was to mine own eye. I should probably photoshop that suspended petal out of the image – it is, after all, a distraction from the main subject of the photo, the flower itself.

But then all expectations are distractions from what is, and so I rather like that sole petal, hanging out there, the essence of Harbinger of Spring.

Woodland wildflowers have carved out a tenuous environmental niche for themselves. They spend most of their time dormant, or nearly dormant, under the forest floor. For a few short and cool weeks in early spring, before the forest canopy leafs out, they soak up the rays of the sun and gather most of the energy that they’ll use for the remainder of the year.

Someone once told me that trout Lilies send up a few leafs every spring for several years, and only then have stored away enough energy to send forth a flower. Nonetheless, an undisturbed forest can be literally carpeted with spring wildflowers during those few short weeks – a testament to the success that these plants can enjoy.

It’s logical to assume that if the land is disturbed, these wildflowers will be eradicated form the area, or at least severely compromised. Places like the Dowagiac Woods, which is one of the very few areas in Michigan to have never been logged, are rich in these spring wildflowers. On the other hand, the vast wooded areas of the Allegan Forest, which were originally clear-cut to provide wood to rebuild Chicago after the great fire, and then were devoted to farming in many areas, have few spring flowers.

Nonetheless, there are a few places in Allegan where hepatica not only bloom, but are really quite abundant. One is off 125th Ave. near the river, where there is a steep, south facing bluff which sprouts lots of Blue Hepatica in the spring.

It’s a nice site and there’s a blocked off roadway cut into the side of the hill, which makes for easy access. You can wander along the roadway and slowly descend from the top of the bluff to the banks of the Kalamazoo River. Hepatica is abundant above, below, and even on the roadway. But as soon as the river takes a bend to the north, and the side of the bluff faces west, hepatica is hard to find.

Maybe the favorable micro-climate on the south side of the hill promotes the growth of these flowers. But in this one spot, at least, the hepatica abound.

I visited the pond in the Allegan Forest last Saturday – a clear, cool, and breezy day with a warm April sun shining. By Sunday morning, though, a chill wind was blowing. Come Sunday evening, a wet snow began to fall and snowflakes the size of silver dollars splatted down from the heavens.

So go the Michigan springs…

By Monday morning, the world was white – several inches of wet snow covered the ground and tree branches were coated with white.

A few days earlier, my neighbor, Bruce, stopped by to ask if I could take some photos of the Kalamazoo River Trail. This new trail links several linear parks in Southwest Michigan. Bruce was hoping that I could get a few shots of the tail with snow on it.

I had appointments Monday morning, and hit the trail around noon. I walked a few miles to the west of town. It was cool, with temperatures in the mid 30’s, and the wet snow was falling off the trees.

Shortly after I crossed under the 131 freeway, I was amazed to hear a chorus of spring peepers singing on this snowy, cold day. I wandered down to two small ponds. The scrubby brush that sprouted out of them was covered with snow, and yet the voices of hundreds of frogs managed to rise above the din of the nearby freeway. Maybe it’s the wet spring, maybe it’s just the year of the frog, but this spring I’ve been running into more frogs than ever before.

The last few days have been cold – evening temps well under freezing, and patches of snow still on the ground. I haven’t been out looking for wildflowers - I suspect that they’ve been beaten back a bit. But they’ll be popping out soon enough, and the weather is expected to get warmer in the next few days.

Here’s another hepatica shot from last week. I hope to have some more new shots soon.

Of all the flowers I found in the woods last week, I was happiest to see the bloodroot. It’s one of scarcest of the spring wildflowers, and has a strikingly pure white blossom. But my fondness for the bloodroot goes beyond its scarcity or beauty, and instead harkens back to an experience many decades ago.

It was then, when I was only 9 or 10 years old, that my grade school class went on a field trip into the spring woods. The teacher identified many wildflowers, but became excited when she stumbled onto one of the season’s last blooming bloodroots.

The teacher explained the origin of the plant’s name – the red sap found in the root – but then also explained that she could not show us because the plant was endangered, and could not be picked. We stood the looking at this diminutive, ground hugging flower, as if we were beholding a rare gem.

I think of that moment every time I see a bloodroot in bloom, and every time a say a prayer of thanks that places remain where these wonderful flowers still bloom.

I often write about a particular seasonal marsh located in the Allegan Forest. In the summer months the marsh is home many dragonflies, frogs, and other small creatures. In addition, it’s not uncommon to find a few deer along its edge, or running through it, on a summer day.

For me, it’s also one of those places I just enjoy visiting. Going there is like hanging out with an old friend – never mind that I first found the place just five years ago. So imagine my surprise when I stopped by today, just to say hello, and found that the seasonal marsh was now… a pond!

It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago I would walk across the marsh, the tall grass reaching chest high. I used to talk about the “heart of the marsh” – a small area just a few hundred square feet in size that would remain wet year round, while the rest receded and dried up during the summer months.

I guess the last few years have been pretty wet, and things must have reached a tipping point. Last fall the water level was high, but grasses still waved several feet in the air above the surface of the water. By winter a solid sheet of ice covered the marsh. Now that it has thawed, the marsh is a pond of open water.

But just as a point of reference, here’s the same marsh/pond as of last November:

I wonder when fish will appear.

Certain dragonflies – like the Spatterdock Darner – thrive in fishless ponds. If the water levels stay this high I guess it’s only a matter of time until bluegills and minnows appear.

In the meantime, frogs were abundant, judging from their croaking. This field is always full of blue jays, and they gave me a raucous welcome (or scolding) as I wandered around. There was even a good sized eastern box Blanding’s Turtle, sunning itself by the edge of this new pond.