Fragments From Floyd

They have some of the same magical properties as mushrooms that appear on a lawn suddenly. The round, green tops of mayapple dot the meadow one morning, and within an hour, the twisted umbrellas begin to unfurl, carpeting the gray waste of winter with green parasols as far as the eye can see. But in this cool spring, it has taken a long while for the peltate leaves to lift up on a stalk, or stalks. Those plants that bear two leaves give rise to flower and fruit in the axils. Their leaves, held parallel to the earth and a foot above it, form a carpet of lilypads on solid-earth dry-ground under forest.

Missing the short period of flowering in years past, I've not captured a picture of this variously-named familiar resident of our meadow. Yesterday, between storms, we took our usual loop to the back of the pasture along the creek, and since the nothing we found two days before, there were mayapple flowers in abundance. But to get the shot I envisioned, I would have to lie full-prone on the soggy ground and get my viewfinder at ankle-level. I was torn--between getting the image and staying out of the leaf mold. I leaf molded, and here's the proof.

I've rendered this image as closely to the way I saw it (and sensed it in other ways) as I am able. Especially I wanted a sense of the unusual flower of Mayapple. Its petals are thick, waxy and off-white--and as translucent to the weak light of an overcast day as the leaves appear when you are face on the ground, looking up through them from the wet ground. The waxy flower could be made of icey slush or from thin wafers of soap soaked clear, a barely solid cup of rain-sap hiding under a frog umbrella.