Hidden Beauties: Secret Waterfall and Bluebead Lilies

Sometimes a short walk will lead you to a hidden beauty, known only to the lucky few who have a home away from home behind the iron gates. I am not one of those "lucky" few, but with an outdated guidebook I was able find their secret! What I'm not showing you is the house that is built nearby (obviously fairly new), but if you look closely in the first picture you can see the small tip of a deck built on top of a flat rock overlooking the falls. I pretended it didn't exist.

I plan to go back in the fall to explore more of the falls and follow the river. When I finally get a bike, I think this will be one of my destination goals.

Do faeries exist? I present Exhibit A, attesting to the fact that they are indeed, real. Turns out the Victorians where correct in their assumption that faeries sometimes live near waterfalls . . . or maybe it's just evidence that dragonflies peruse the area.



[caption id="attachment_292" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Bluebead Lily"][/caption]

Bluebead Lily is a native, perennial plant commonly found on Nova Scotia's shaded forest floor.  The berries are inedible and mildly toxic. The leaves are edible, but only when very young (a few inches tall).  I have never tried one so I can't say anything about the taste. However, since they are slow to spread and sensitive to grazing white-tailed deer, it is perhaps best to leave this plant alone. The plant reproduces by seed or rhizomes. "Flowering in May and June, it takes over a dozen years for a clone to establish and produce its first flower, 2 years of which are dedicated solely to germination. The rhizome starts to mold after approximatively 15 years, but a colony often covers several hundred m². Few specimens establish new colonies." (source) Needless to say, the plant is not easily transplanted, but you shouldn't be stealing wild plants anyway, it's not nice to mother nature and it's illegal.