wildflowers

Stone Hill wildflowers—live plants cultivated on Stone Hill and elsewhere in Berkshire County
Photo by Henry W. Art

TRANSCRIPT:
Wildflowers are biological calendars, marking the passage of the seasons. Each community of wildflowers has its moment in the sun—starting in April when the charismatic spring forest wildflowers such as trout-lily, spring beauty, and Dutchman’s breeches bloom. This fleeting moment occurs as the woodland soil warms rapidly, but before the trees leaf-out, creating deep shade. As the forest floor becomes shady, these plants recede into dormancy and disappear below ground. In early summer, wetland soils warm, the days lengthen, and flowering commences in the swamps and marshes as Canada lily and sedges come into bloom. The asters and goldenrod of open meadows reach their peak of flowering in the late summer and early autumn, and in mid-fall there is a second, but more modest, flowering in the forests when the woodland asters and goldenrod bloom.

The landscapes of Stone Hill, like landscapes everywhere, have been changed by human activity. Stone Hill is a place where forests had dominated for thousands of years. Then, the colonial settlement of Williamstown in the mid-1700s led to the clearing of most of its woodlands by the early nineteenth century, turning Stone Hill into an agricultural landscape with islands of woodlots that provided timber and firewood. Some of the pastures and meadows of Stone Hill persist with their distinctive grassland wildflowers largely because of the grazing of livestock and mowing by farmers and institutions. If these interventions were to cease, the open spaces would rapidly revert to shrublands and woodlands, although it would take many centuries for the forests to resemble their original states.