We interrupt this feature on garden plants to bring a special article on how wonderful our native flora can be…

Spent a glorious weekend in the more northern reaches of the state a few days ago. Some friends and I visited the Bangor City Forest/Orono Bogwalk on a beautiful Friday afternoon. Miles and miles of trails through the woods and a short boardwalk through a peat bog, that I had no idea was even there. Went to college for four years, a wonderful four years, majored in Horticulture, and was never told about this gem of a woodswalk not 15 minutes from campus.

We decided to start with the bogwalk, which is a nearly mile-long boardwalk, going through several different types of woodland and then to the Orono Peat Bog. The bog itself is over 600 acres square, and is home to hundreds of different plant and animal species, including some of Maine’s rarest birds. Here we found dozens of different ferns, blooming Blue Bead Lilies (Clintonia borealis), pitcher plants, blooming Rhodora (our native, deciduous azalea, beautiful magenta-purple flowers), and Bog Laurel and Rosemary. The Bog Rosemary was white-flowered, unlike the more common cultivated pink-flowered varieties found in garden centers…

Our travels then turned to the woodland paths, some more well-defined and wider than others. Everywhere there were tiny flowers blooming. The Painted Trilliums (Trillium undulatum) were just fading, their full blooming glory happening a week or so ago. A field of Bluets awaited us around a bend, Bunchberries (Cornus canadensis) lined the sides of the paths, thousands of tiny purple wildflowers called Gaywings, or Fringed Polygala (Polygala paucifolia), were tucked into almost every hollow and glade, and lady slippers, or moccasin flowers, simply everywhere. Both pink and white were in abundance; I’d never seen so many in one place before.

Though the parking lot was full both when we arrived and departed, we encountered very few other people on our walk in the woods. I suppose with over 600 acres (not all foot-traffic accessible, of course), there’s plenty of room for everybody.

I learned quite a bit in the three hours we wandered the woods; it made me realize just how much I still don’t know about the plants that are native in this beautiful state. There will be more trips to Bangor this summer, and several other places closer to home so I can observe and learn more about our wonderful natives. Shade gardening is all about subtle beauty, too. The trilliums and gaywings were flashy, but even in large groups, they weren’t overwhelming…

To learn more about the Bangor City Forest/Orono Bogwalk.