There are a lot of little yellow flowers out there! They’re all different! This is low-growing, kind of like a wild strawberry plant. It has 5 leaves — that’s what cinquefoil means– and 5 petals on the blossom. The Rose family.
Dwarf Cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex)
These seem like domestic wanderers, but evidently they count as wild. I finally found a group of them whose blooms were open. Look how the petals curl back. Fragrant! Lily family.
Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis)
The first wildflowers I’ve seen this spring are Skunk Cabbage! The purple hood (spathe) is the flower, which appears before the leaves, and inside it is the reproductive part (spadix). The odor attracts flies, which pollinate the flowers.
We also heard wood frogs—they sound like ducks quacking. (We heard the first spring peepers of the season earlier this week, March 12.)
Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus Foetidus). Ridge Hill Reservation, Needham MA.
Audio of peepers and wood frogs: http://www.mister-toad.com/frogcalls.html