Category: Cutleaf Toothwort

Another Spring Ephemeral

A spring ephemeral is a species of plant appearing for just a short period of time above ground to flower, produce seed and then go dormant. Enjoy these Cutleaf Toothworts (Cardamine concatenata), they are the spring ephemerals I’m speaking of tonight.

Sensitive plants these Toothworts. As you hike the next few weeks you’ll find them blooming trailside if the soil has never experienced heavy construction activities or has never been plowed. It is a plant that cannot survive such conditions. Sensitive.

Another thing these beauties will not tolerate, competition from the invasive Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata). We’ll only see Cutleaf Toothwort for a few weeks this spring. Let’s hope conditions are favorable for them to appear again next year. We’ve got to take care of our natural world.

Cutleaf Toothwort

A spring ephemeral, a perennial native to eastern North America. Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata).

The “toothwort” of its name is thanks to the appearance of its rhizome.

The Cutleaf Toothwort likes woods with mesic soils covered with lots of leaf litter. This certainly must be the description of the woods where I live. Many of these plants greet the spring each year up here, including a few spots where colonies have formed.

Buds protected by four pale green sepals open to reveal four barely pale pink petals. At the center of each flower is a style with a sphere topped stigma which are surrounded by stamens with green filaments of varying lengths topped by yellow anthers.

Many different pollinators visit these blooms. Fruit of the Toothwort is a slender pod about an inch long containing a single row of tiny seeds.

When the invasive, Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), starts growing in the area of a population of Cutleaf Toothwort its numbers soon decline. A good reason to fight those invasives.