Botanical Field Guide Pete’s Woods at Arcadia Dunes: The C.S. Mott Nature Preserve
photo by Nate Richardson
The roughly 140-acre patch of Arcadia Dunes: The C.S. Mott Nature Preserve known as Pete’s Woods is absolutely bursting with botanical diversity and is among the most popular places in our region for wildflower viewing. It’s named for Pedro “Pete” Rodriguez, who with his wife Iva owned the forested ravines here from the 1920s until 1971, when Consumers Energy purchased the tract. GTRLC protected Pete’s Woods and the rest of Arcadia Dunes as part of the Coastal Campaign in 2003-05. The 1.5-mile trail loop here is especially popular in spring, when spring ephemerals – unique plants, many of them wildflowers, that take advantage of the window between snow melt and leaf out – are most visible. While you’ll note that the bulk of this guide is comprised of these spring plants, there are also some showy specimens that are best seen in summer and fall. What is a C Value? A plant’s C value is short for its Coefficient of Conservatism value. This value, on a 1-10 scale, is used to indicate a plant’s tolerance to disturbance and habitat requirements. A plant with a 0 can grow pretty much anywhere, even in highly disturbed areas, and a plant with a 10 is much rarer and has extremely specific habitat requirements. All of the individual C values of the plants found on a property are then used to calculate a property’s Floristic Quality Index (FQI) score. This score, based on detailed botanical inventories, is therefore a good way to quantify the rarity and quality of the plants found at a given site, and by extension the quality of the habitat. The statewide average score for all sites is 20, with anything greater than 35 being considered significant. Pete’s Woods has a score of 38.6.
PLEASE NOTE Although it might be tempting, please do not pick the flowers! Many of them are uncommon outside of the quality habitat found at Pete’s Woods.
Arcadia Dunes: The C.S. Mott Nature Preserve
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Arcadia Dunes: The C.S. Mott Nature Preserve
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Appendaged Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum) Best Season: Late Spring C Value: 5 The lower leaves of this plant are deeply cleft, while middle and upper leaves resemble maple leaves. A loose cluster of saucer-shaped, lavender-colored flowers grows above the leaves on hairy stems. Canada Waterleaf, which grows in different areas of Arcadia Dunes, has white flowers on smoother stems beneath the leaf canopy.
Fun Fact: The first basal leaves of each season are often mottled with irregular white spots, giving the appearance of being water stained – hence the name waterleaf.
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Botanical Field Guide | Pete’s Woods at Arcadia Dunes
photo by Nate Richardson
Bellwort (Uvularia grandiflora) Best Season: Spring C Value: 5 This beauty has yellow, bell-shaped flowers with a slight twist. Pete’s Woods has large patches of Bellworts, providing gorgeous swaths of yellow color when in bloom. Bloom is just past or near the Trillium bloom.
Fun Fact: Its foliage looks wilted when flowers are in bloom, but perks up after blooming is over. This is because plants of this species are not yet fully developed vegetatively by the time they bloom.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Bloodroot
(Sanguinaria canadensis)
Best Season: Early Spring C Value: 5 Look for white flowers growing singly, with 8 to 12 petals and yellow center stamens. Its sap is reddish and can be used as a dye. This plant is not that common because it depends on ants for dispersal. Blooms last only a few days and can be missed if you don’t visit frequently!
Fun Fact: On overcast days and at night, when pollinators are less active, the flowers remain closed to protect their pollen.
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Botanical Field Guide | Pete’s Woods at Arcadia Dunes
photo by Paula Dreeszen
Blue Cohosh
(Caulophyllum thalictroides)
Best Season: Spring C Value: 5 This plant produces a cluster of dull yellowgreen flowers which ripen in late summer into blue berrylike fruits. Leaves resemble those of meadow-rue: egg-shaped leaflets with 2-5 lobes.
Fun Fact: Although the fruits resemble blueberries, Cohosh berries are toxic to humans. The plant’s primary agents of seed dispersal are woodland birds, but the white-footed mouse and woodland deer mouse eat the fruit as well. White-tailed deer and other mammalian herbivores other than mice also avoid the toxic foliage.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Blue-stemmed Goldenrod
(Solidago caesia)
Best Season: Fall C Value: 5 The stems of this yellow-flowered classic are green when young and become bluish or purplish with age. Flowers grow along the stem at the leaf axils. Leaves are lance shaped and sharply toothed.
Fun Fact: Though this is just one of 23 goldenrod species native to Michigan, it is one of the few that occur in the understory of woods, making them easy to spot and differentiate.
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Botanical Field Guide | Pete’s Woods at Arcadia Dunes
photo by Paula Dreeszen
Broad-leaved Toothwort (Cardamine diphylla) Best Season: Early Spring C Value: 5 Flowers, typical of the mustard family, have four petals. Look for the white flowers low to the ground in small clusters.
Fun Fact: This plant is a host for the larvae of the rare West Virginia White, a woodland butterfly. This butterfly is threatened by the related (but non-native and quite invasive) garlic mustard, which the butterflies deposit their eggs on after confusing it with toothwort. When the caterpillars emerge, they feed on the toxic garlic mustard and die. Between crowding out the toothwort and poisoning the caterpillars, garlic mustard has significantly reduced the numbers of West Virginia White butterflies. Luckily, garlic mustard is being controlled by annual pulling by GTRLC at Pete’s Woods. GTRLC.ORG
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Canada Mayflower
(Maianthemum canadense)
Best Season: Late Spring C Value: 4 Like other spring woodland plants, it spreads vegetatively (a form of asexual reproduction in which a new plant can grow as an offshoot from the parent plant) in colonies. Fertile plants have two (sometimes three) leaves. Four-parted white flowers grow in a spike-like cluster. It is sometimes also known as Wild Lily-of-the-Valley.
Fun Fact: Its pale red berries are a favorite treat for many forest creatures, including ruffed grouse, mice and chipmunks.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Carolina Spring Beauty (Claytonia caroliniana) Best Season: Early Spring C Value: 6 These pretty plants feature pink or white flowers veined with darker pink. They are low to the ground and have narrow, opposite leaves.
Fun Fact: This plant is known to close its flower when it rains so that its nectar doesn’t get diluted, and because pollinators are less active in the rain. It also produces pods that explode and fire seeds up to two feet away!
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Celandine Poppy
(Stylophorum diphyllum)
Best Season: Spring C Value: 10 Another yellow, four-petal flower, this one is sometimes distinguished by its deeper yellow color. Its leaves are also deeply lobed and divided. Bloom time is usually just after the peak Trillium bloom starts. It can be a show-stopper when seen in large swaths.
Fun Fact: This plant is a full-blown 10 on the 1-10 scale of specialized plants that are used to make up a property’s floristic quality index (FQI). An average of each plants’ individual scores combined with the overall number of species is used to determine an overall score for the property.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis) Best Season: Late Spring C Value: 5 This plant features showy, nodding red and yellow flowers (red sepals, yellow-limbed petals, five distinctive red spurs and a mass of bushy yellow stamens).
Fun Fact: As one of the few plants specifically adapted for hummingbird pollination, the flowers are tube shaped.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Dutchman’s Breeches
(Dicentra cucullaria)
Best Season: Spring C Value: 7 This common plant derives its name from its white and yellow flowers, which resemble an upside down pair of pants.
Fun Fact: Aside from looking like pants, these upside down flowers serve to shelter pollen from both wind and rain. They also prevent insect invaders from stealing nectar without repaying the flower in pollination.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Evergreen Woodfern (Drypoteris intermedia) Best Season: Spring - Fall C Value: 5 Evergreen, semi-arching, lacy fern with delicate green fronds that rise in upright circular clusters from a central rhizome. Fronds can be as long as 35 inches.
Fun Fact: The leafy fronds of this plant remain on the ground throughout the winter, with new shoots emerging each spring.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
False Solomon’s Seal
(Maianthemum racemosum)
Best Season: Spring C Value: 5 As its name would suggest, this plant has a superficial resemblance to Solomon’s Seal (an arching stem of alternate leaves). Unlike Solomon’s Seal, flowers of this plant form a cluster at the end of the arching stem, not along the stem.
Fun Fact: This plant has been found in every state except Hawaii.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Foam Flower (Tiarella cordifolia) Best Season: Spring C Value: 9 Long, slender stamens give the spikes of white flowers a frothy appearance, hence the plant’s common name. Its leaves are somewhat maple leaf or heart-like in shape.
Fun Fact: This species is restricted to the rich, organic soils of mesic northern forests, earning it a C9 on the floristic charts.
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photo by Dylan Morgan
Garlic Mustard
(Alliaria petiolata)
Best Season: Spring C Value: 0 A native of Europe and Asia, this plant was brought over for culinary purposes and became naturalized in North America. It is now a serious invasive pest of forest understories in some areas, in part because it crowds out native plants and then changes the soil chemistry to favor itself – a seemingly insidious little plant.
Fun Fact: Garlic mustard grows along Swamp Road and in the more historically disturbed north end and and northwest corners of Pete’s Woods. GTRLC staff has been pulling garlic mustard at Pete’s Woods since 2005, one of several places we target this harmful invasive.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Hairy Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum pubescens) Best Season: Spring C Value: 5 This strangely named plant is so named because a scar on the rhizome of the plant resembles the seal of King Solomon. Flowers are green and bell-shaped, hanging from the leaf axils below an arching stem.
Fun Fact: An old poem states: “Solomon’s seal for it to be real must have flowers along its keel.” This is to distinguish it from False Solomon’s Seal, where flowers are at the end of the stem.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Jack-in-the-Pulpit
(Arisaema triphyllum)
Best Season: Spring C Value: 5 This unmistakable favorite has flowers that consist of a pencil-like spadix (“Jack”), enclosed and overhung by a green-and-purple striped spathe (the “pulpit”). The spathe disappears when clusters of green berries form on the spadix in summer. By fall the berries turn bright red.
Fun Fact: Young Jacks and young trillium both produce just a single three-part leaf with no flower. To tell them apart: Jacks have a vein that runs parallel to the margins of the leaflets that trillium leaves do not have.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Large-flowered Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) Best Season: Spring C Value: 5 A northern Michigan classic! The white flower (which turns pink as it fades) is large, solitary and composed of three petals.
Fun Fact: This plant’s seeds are dispersed by ants. The seeds have oily appendages called elaiosomes, which contain lipids and proteins highly sought by ants. The ants carry the seeds underground and feed on the elaiosomes, then cast the seeds aside, which germinate into new plants.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Plantain Leaved Sedge
(Carex plantaginea)
Best Season: Early Spring C Value: 8 This perennial sedge consists of rosettes of broad evergreen basal leaves. The leaves are creased in an M-shaped cross-section when young with a prominent midrib and two conspicuous lateral veins. Early spring flowers are foot-high spikes topped with delicate reddish-purple blooms that appear to float above the foliage.
Fun Fact: This is one of the showiest woodland sedges. It is a host plant to several woodland butterflies and its seeds are an excellent food source for a variety of woodland birds.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Rattlesnake Fern (Botrypus virginianus) Best Season: Spring C Value: 5 The fertile frond of this plant is a branched cluster that arises from the base of the leaf, with the central stalk appearing as a continuation of the main stem. Six or more erect to ascending branches at the tip, with hundreds of pale yellowish-green, bead-like capsules that contain the spores. Spores turn brown when mature. Leaves wither away by fall.
Fun Fact: The common name is derived from the frond resembling a rattlesnake tail.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Red-Berried Elder
(Sambucus racemosa)
Best Season: Spring-Fall C Value: 3 This a medium tall shrub found in forest borders and open disturbed areas in forests. As its name suggests it has bright red fruit (compared with the purple-black color of Common Elder).
Fun Fact: Red-berried Elder provides food, cover, perching, and nesting sites for many species of birds and food and cover for various other wildlife. But it is considered not edible (and possibly poisonous) for humans.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Sharp-Lobed Hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba) Best Season: Early Spring C Value: 8 The flowers on this plant range from violet to white, and can even be pinkish. The leaves have three lobes, with each rounded lobe sporting a pointed tip.
Fun Fact: This is one of the earliest to bloom of all the spring flowers. It can also fertilize itself, which is a good thing because few pollinators are active during the cool, wet early spring season.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Squirrel Corn
(Dicentra canadensis)
Best Season: Early Spring C Value: 7 Definitely similar to Dutchman’s Breeches, except spurs at top of this flower are short and rounded and slightly pink. Like Dutchman’s Breeches, it is pollinated by bumblebees.
Fun Fact: Named for the yellow underground corms, or storage structures, on its roots. These are shaped a bit like corn kernels and are absent on Dutchman’s Breeches.
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photo by Nate Richardson
Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) Best Season: Spring-Fall C Value: 5 This common deciduous tree is 60 to 100 feet tall and has that classic maple leaf shape we’ve come to know and love. It is one of a few maple species (along with red and silver maples) native to Michigan.
Fun Fact: Yes, all of those plants that look like tiny maples carpeting the forest floor are in fact just that – sugar maple seedlings, products of the mature trees in the forest. Only a fraction will survive to adulthood.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Trout Lily
(Erythronium americanum)
Best Season: Early Spring C Value: 5 You’ve likely seen this one out and about, even if you didn’t know what it was called. Its lance shaped leaves are mottled in appearance, reminiscent of a trout’s patterns. Its solitary, yellow nodding flowers close at night and open fully in bright sun when pollinators are active.
Fun Fact: Colonies of this particular plant, which grows vegetatively instead of from seed, can be more than 200 years old.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Violets (Viola spp.) Best Season: Spring C Value: Varies There are 25 species of violet in Michigan, with several in Pete’s Woods. Three common violets found there include Canada Violet (a white flower), Downy Yellow Violet (a yellow flower, shown above), and Long-spur Violet (a light blue flower). They can only be identified when in bloom as their leaf shape is very similar.
Fun Fact: As with some other plants on this guide, most violets turn toward the ground when it rains to prevent their nectar from becoming diluted.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
White Baneberry
(Actaea pachypoda)
Best Season: Spring-Fall C Value: 7 This plant is sometimes called “Doll Eyes” because of its shiny white berries with black spots. It’s hard to incorrectly identify it when you see these berries on red stalks, which develop through the summer and persist to fall frost.
Fun Fact: The term “bane” refers to a source of harm or death, because these plants are known to be poisonous. The berries are the most poisonous part of the plant, but all parts are toxic.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Wild Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricate) Best Season: Spring C Value: 5 Look for a cluster of blue flowers with five petals each. Opposite, lance-shaped leaves appear on an erect stalk. This plant prefers rich deciduous forest like that found at Pete’s Woods.
Fun Fact: Sticky areas on the stem prevent ants from getting to this plant’s valuable nectar.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Wild Leek
(Allium tricoccum)
Best Season: Early Spring C Value: 5 Also known to foragers as a ramp, this plant features two long, glossy, oval leaves that appear in early spring and wither away before the smooth, flowering stalk matures. Small white flowers occur in a hemispherical, terminal cluster of creamy-white flowers.
Fun Fact: Leeks are in the same genus as onions and garlic and can be used to flavor food dishes. However, we prohibit the harvesting of leek bulbs at Pete’s Woods. A study in Quebec showed that harvest rates of only 5-15% may lead to population decline, and forests that have been over-harvested lose their leeks.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) Best Season: Fall C Value: 5 This plant does not have showy spring flowers, but they light up the forest floor in fall when the leaves turn a gorgeous gold. It often grows in colonies from extensive root networks.
Fun Fact: Berries are eaten by some woodland songbirds, including the White-Throated Sparrow and Wood Thrush, and by some mammals, including the Red Fox, Eastern Skunk and Eastern Chipmunk.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Wood Nettle
(Laportea canadensis)
Best Season: Spring-Fall C Value: 4 Like its cousin, the non-native stinging nettle, the wood nettle is also capable of inflicting stings with its bristly hairs. It is common along sections of the trail at Pete’s Woods in mid-summer after peak spring wildflowers. Because of this (and ticks!), it’s a good idea to wear long pants when hiking the trail in summer.
Fun Fact: Despite being known for unpleasant stinging, this plant also serves as the larval host of the beautiful Red Admiral butterfly.
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photo by Paula Dreeszen
Zigzag Glodenrod (Solidago flexicaulis) Best Season: Fall C Value: 6 One of 23 goldenrod species native to Michigan, this is one of the few that occur in the forest understory. It’s alternate leaves are egg-shaped and sharply toothed. Yellow flowers grow in short clusters in the leaf axils and on top of the plant. The stem can zig-zag between the alternately attached leaves, hence the common name, but can also be nearly straight.
Fun Fact: Despite a common misconception, goldenrods do not cause hay fever (seasonal allergies).
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ABOUT THE CONSERVANCY Since 1991, the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy has permanently protected outstanding places in our region — the natural, scenic and farm lands that define our northwest Michigan experience. Working in Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska and Manistee counties, we use a targeted selection of land protection tools that guarantee the permanent safeguarding of significant land and other natural resources. Our work reflects the needs of local communities and is made possible by the participation of willing landowners. As of April 2020, GTRLC has protected nearly 44,000 acres of irreplaceable northwest Michigan land and more than 130 miles of shoreline along our rivers, lakes and streams. Together we can do more. For more information vist: www.gtrlc.org
photo by Nate Richardson
A SPECIAL THANKS Volunteer Paula Dreeszen provided her expertise (and many photos) for this wonderful guide. We appreciate all she does for GTRLC.