Oh wow.

There's a couple of beautiful blood roots.

That's probably a photo opportunity right there.

Spring is the time for wildflowers, and going on a guided nature hike is a great way to learn more about what's growing and blooming around you.

Today we're hiking with local plant expert and ecologist Milo Pine near Penny's Bend along the Eno River in Durham, North Carolina.

The most dangerous part of the hike is crossing the bridge and not getting run over.

We're starting out on the mountains to sea trail, but then diverging off trail in search of an elusive spring ephemeral.

I'll give you a hint.

It looks like a pair of pants.

This is kind of where the good stuff starts.

Oh, look at all this over here.

Yeah, there's a lot of trout lily and tooth wart.

This is a cutleaf tooth wart.

This is the common...

The most serious edges.

Yeah, yeah.

But first, why are we looking here?

This area along the Eno River has some unique qualities, including the dirt and rock that we're hiking on.

The river comes from west to east and basically hits a wall.

It hits a wall of diabase rock.

Diabase is a type of rock that forms when molten lava is pushed into or intrudes into cracks and fissures below the earth's surface.

A horizontal layer of diabase rock was formed in this area around 225 million years ago.

Most of the other rock around this layer is sedimentary and is a lot softer.

The older rock, the triassic sediment, wore down and exposed the diabase.

That diabase rock weathering away also creates different kinds of soil.

Soils from the diabase are more basic, less acidic.

So that creates an environment where plants can thrive that you don't see everywhere in the Piedmont.

So we're used to all the red clay of the Piedmont and all the very acidic rocks and sandstones and granite and whatnot.

The rock on Penny's Bend is weathering out into soil that comes downstream and then forms these floodplain areas where the rich wildflowers are.

And we're specifically going off trail to get to a unique spot called Willie Duke's Bluff.

So this is where a guy named Willie Duke, who was the brother of the famous Washington Duke, the tobacco magnate.

But Willie Duke was a preacher and he would come here and preach.

And they said he would go up on the bluff and just preach to the creatures of the forest and practice his elocution and preaching skills up on the bluff.

So it's called Willie Duke's Bluff.

Along the way, we spotted a lot of spring ephemeral wildflowers.

Name that for the brief time they're above ground in the spring.

We saw spring beauties, bloodroot, a unique variety of trout lilies, heartleaf, which according to some is not a true spring ephemeral because some part of its plant is above ground year round.

And finally, the prize we've been searching for.

There we are.

Oh, there's more.

Oh, there's one more.

Oh, yeah.

And over there, over there, we've got Dutchman's britches.

We found the Dutchman's britches population and they're starting to come into bloom.

So this is great.

And this is more of a plant of the mountains.

If you look at the range map, it's barely it's only in one weird spot in South Carolina.

And it's here because of the unusual soils and the unusual habitat where this is a really rich slope and nutrients come in from the river when it floods and they come down from the diabase rocks by gravity.

So it's right at the foot of the slope here, which is just the richest spot on the site.

As a bonus, we also came across a patch of false rue anemone.

There's only like a couple of places around here where it grows down on the Flat River and then it's up here on the Eno.

As we hiked, we came across a flower Milo was not excited to see.

Oh, yeah, that's actually the fig buttercup.

That's the bad one.

This is an exotic plant.

It's a very bad exotic and it loves to spread in floodplains from its little bulblets.

And people are going around right now and doing massive, like eradication campaigns on it.

And if we're able to, we spray it, because when you dig it, you run the risk of leaving a piece in the soil that then will get redistributed.

So we're going to try to carefully excavate and get all of the propagules.

All right, get the bag, get the bag.

Let's tag it and bag it here.

This plant is only above ground for a short time each spring.

And if you spot it, the best thing to do is record the sighting on the Plant ID app iNaturalist, which we did, so that the experienced team working to track and eradicate it can take action.

Fortunately, we saw more native spring blooms than invasives, and someone spotted some Jack in the Pulpits nearby.

Really?

Wow.

Well, let's get a look at that.

That's gorgeous.

Such a good find.

The timing of spring wildflower blooms is variable each year, depending on when things warm up.

To make sure you don't miss it, look for guided spring hikes with experts near you.

This has been quite the expedition.

[upbeat banjo music]