Author
Jack Sanders
Jack Sanders is managing editor of a small group of Connecticut newspapers. He has studied wildflowers for some twenty years and has published several articles on the subject. The pieces here are from a book, tentatively titled Wildflower Lore.
CONTRIBUTIONS
Nonfiction
Sep 01 1988
Ghosts of Summer's Woods
There’s something eerie about seeing a cluster of Indian pipes, heads downturned, on a warm summer day. Ghostly and greenless, they remind one more of mushrooms than of the herbs they are. Their white flesh is unexpected and freakish, especially when you realize that they are wildflowers and not some oddly formed fungus.
Nonfiction
Sep 01 1988
A Roadside Cough Medicine
In New England the first beacons of spring rise from the ground at just about the equinox, and among those in the forefront are the yellow and orange heads of the coltsfoot. Big, bright bunches of them offer assurance that the drabness of winter is ending, and that color is returning to the land.
Nonfiction
Sep 01 1988
The Slipper and Its Chamber
Be they yellow, pink, white, or combinations thereof, the lady’s slippers are among those special wildflowers whose locations are whispered only to trusted people. It’s not just that they may be rare, but also that they look rare.
Indeed, wildflower enthusiasts are usually careful to catalogue, mentally at least, the locations of these largest of our orchids. One May, when I was looking for some yellows and pinks to photograph, I asked a couple of knowledgeable friends who immediately remembered where they had seen yellow lady’s slippers twenty years earlier. We went to the spot in deep moist woods and, sure enough, they were still there.