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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Advertisement Email Story to a Friend May 5, 2006 Scarlet fritillaries combine bright red blooms with a delicate stem and narrow leaves. Here, a single plant stands among clusters of shooting stars in the Jacksonville Woodlands. (Steve Dieffenbacher) Scarlet fritillaries carry the soul of spring This harbinger of seasonal change is particularly adapted to Southern Oregon "April is the cruelest month / breeding lilacs out of the dead land," wrote T.S. Eliot in "The Wasteland," his dark poem about the despair of the post-World War I generation. And this year in Southern Oregon, April seemed much like this as weather oscillated between winter's final rainy blasts and all-too-brief intervals of sunshine. But now it is May, and nature, as if holding itself back far too long out of cold necessity, has burst forth in all its glory. Finally I can see red for the first time after winter's browns and grays as my favorite regional wildflower — the scarlet fritillary — has erupted into bloom. All local wildflowers took their time coming forth this year because of the cool weather, and the fritillaries were no exception. I have seen them as early as late February in particularly mild years, but this year they didn't appear in my usual outdoor haunts until well into April. Now, color suddenly seems everywhere — flowers displaying bright reds, violets, pinks, purples, oranges and yellows in the foothills, meadows and forest openings. I love them all — these wild houndstongues and larkspurs, cat's ears and columbines, Indian paintbrushes and California poppies — as they succeed each other every year to usher in the heat of summer. But the scarlet fritillary is closest to my heart because it was the first wildflower that caught my eye when I moved here 15 years ago. I went on a spring hike with two of my children on the Tunnel Ridge Trail above the Little Applegate River at about this time of year that first spring. As we walked upward from the river through white oaks, I saw flashes of red peppered with yellow. Advertisement Entranced, I stopped for a closer look, and there they were — delicate, flaring trumpetlike petals of deep crimson atop slim light-green stems with grasslike leaves. My children were as taken with them as I was, and every year we would look for the first appearance of this bloom as a signal that the family hiking season had begun. Yet these flowers from the lily family are only of average size, with a diameter of about an inch. Their thin stems stand just 1 to 3 feet above the ground. They don't cover whole hillsides like California poppies have been known to do, but usually rise singly or stand grouped in twos and threes near trees. Their effect is vivid, yet understated as red flowers go. A crimson columbine, with its lacy flashes of firehouse red and sunfire yellow, will shout at you no matter what grows around it, but is so elusive as to seem like a floral form of royalty. Fritillaries blend into the landscape, but even when they're surrounded by clusters of shooting stars, houndstongue or balsamroot, you can't miss them if you look carefully. And if that doesn't captivate you, their name certainly will. Say "scarlet fritillary" to yourself, and you embrace the rhythms of vernal breezes and rain showers along with the vibrations of their ruby color. The region abounds with places to see them — the Table Rocks, the Applegate area, the upper reaches of Ashland's Lithia Park and the Jacksonville Woodlands. The Woodlands are particularly worth visiting because besides scarlet fritillaries, they boast a population of rare Gentner's fritillaries, a species that has been on the federal endangered species list since 1999. Discovered by the Gentner family in 1944, the flowers generally have a longer bell and more maroon tint than the scarlet fritillary. In his dour "Wasteland," Eliot was so immersed in his image of a cruel April that he focused on "roots that clutch," as if nature was blocking its own renewal. But even after a long, rainy, cold winter like the one we've had, Eliot's clutching roots always grow into the passionate effusion of May wildflowers. Somehow, no matter how somber our winters here, my spirits lift when I see that first fritillary — because in its harmonious blend of delicacy and assertion lies the soul of spring — the season of infinite possibility. Steve Dieffenbacher is a Mail Tribune page designer/copy editor. Reach him at 776-4498 or [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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