Photo: Arne Ader
Translation: Liis
Rain and a little warmth – and we will find flowerers in the bare woods of northern Estonia too.
We find the bird-in-a-bush in deciduous forests and thickets. To start with the plant grows a stem and two leaves, then quickly starts flowering. Nutrients are taken from the roughly cherry-sized underground tubers grown last year, as is the habit of such early flowerers.
The bird-in-the-bush secretes nectar and so is pollinated by bumblebees. A very fast life arrangement – flowering, setting seeds, growing a new underground tuber, and in mid-summer there are not even traces of the above-ground parts of the bird-in-a-bush.