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Hepaticas on Tuesday near Otepää

 

 

The early flowerers are already found all over Estonia. In southeastern Estonia they stand side by side with snowdrifts. Roads in the forests are still icy.

 

The first flowering plants are just like that, with one or two flower stalks, and we have to search for them. But from where does a plant take the strength and power for flowering in early spring? The Hepatica has a tilted rhizome with thick roots hidden in the ground and there it stores the reserves needed for flowering. The leaves are still from last year and the edges are already reddish when the plant flowers. Hepaticas start growing new leaves only after the end of flowering.

 

The flower stalks of Hepaticas grow up from near the ground, from the axils of the leaves. The number of petals often varies just as the colour, from white to blue, and when the flowers age the familiar blue also fades to paler shades. Pink Hepaticas and those with filled flowers can be found in nature too, not only in a garden flower bed. The petals and sepals of Hepaticas have not developed into distinctly separate entities, thus the blue “petals” are actually tepals – but beautiful in spring, close up and from afar.