merrybells keep ringing

one of my discoveries after i spent a weekend cleaning up our woods was a scattered collection of these bellworts, aka “merrybells.” my neighbor tells me the woods used to be full of them, before the buckthorn took over. she also said that there were so many bracken ferns that a local nursery arrived every year to dig more up and sell them. the bad news is that the carpet of bracken ferns is gone. the good news is that mary jo hoffman loves ferns, and just discovered that she can carpet her woods with them.

sessile-leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia)