♪ - Oh my gosh.

- Yeah, they're everywhere.

- Wow.

- It's like a carpet.

- [Hilary] Really is.

- [Presenter] A carpet of bright yellow wildflowers called trout lilies, that are one of the first signs of spring when they emerge in North Carolina.

- [Hilary] And then after a short amount of time, maybe a couple of days to a week or two, they're gonna go through their whole life cycle.

Then they'll go back underground and lay dormant for another year.

- Feels like a blink of an eye, and their whole year is done.

- It really does.

That's why it's so important to get out here, you know, when they're coming up, because you might miss it.

[upbeat music] - I'm out on a brand new trail today looking for trout lilies with Hillary Harrison of the Eno River Association.

Tell me a little bit about where we are today.

- Yeah, so today we're at Panther Branch Natural Area.

It's a piece of land that's owned by the Eno River Association, and it is in Efland, North Carolina.

It's a 56 acre property, and most of the property was pretty untouched for a number of years.

So there's two main trails on the property now.

Each are about a mile long, and they traverse some of the most notable portions of the property.

- [Presenter] It's called Panther Branch, so where does that name come from?

- [Hilary] Panther Branch is a creek, and it's a tributary that runs into the Eno River.

So, on the property, you can walk along Panther Branch, as well as along the Eno River.

- Panther Branch Natural Area is host to a variety of habitats, all of which can be experienced via the trail network there.

Thinking about all the water that runs through this area and now this land around it, this is kind of like a buffer for those bodies of water, right?

- Right, exactly.

As development starts to increase throughout this area, we're going to see an increase in pollution, storm water runoff, and all of those extra sediments and things like that that might come from the land surrounding these waterways.

So for both Panther Branch and for the Eno River, it's really important to have this kind of undeveloped and undisturbed land to be able to filter out the water that comes in from the surrounding areas.

- And this undisturbed land also creates an ideal habitat for unique species like the trout lily to thrive.

Large colonies of trout lily may be over 100 years old.

The key to their success are the trees.

So, because this is a hardwood forest, there's not many leaves right now.

- Right, yeah.

It is quite open.

This is much more sunny than you would see it if we were here in, say, two months, in May, and so this actually really has an effect on the kinds of things that we see out here this time of the year.

So, those spring ephemerals, those beautiful wildflowers are going to pop up because they're taking advantage of the fact that the sun is shining on them and the leaves on the trees haven't come in yet.

- Ooh, awesome, I think we've entered trout lily land.

- Yeah, I think you're right.

Here we are.

- Look at all them.

[upbeat music] - [Presenter] Okay, so this is one of our classic spring ephemerals in this area.

- Yes, the leaves are going to have this nice speckling on them, which is reminiscent of a trout.

That's where that name comes from.

There's two trout lilies that you might see in our area.

This one is the more common one.

So this is specifically a dimpled trout lily.

Erythronium umbilicatum.

Umbilicatum kind of sounds like umbilical, like a belly button.

Once this trout lily gets pollinated and goes to seed, it's gonna have a seed right here at the end where the flower was, and it'll flop over.

And if you look at the seed, it's got a nice little dimpling on it that looks kind of like a belly button.

Also along the Eno in some very, very uncommon areas, it's not very common, we might see the americanum version, which is going to be a little bit different looking flower, it's a little bit more curly.

But when it goes to seed, it's not going to have that belly button look to the seed pod.

- So we don't see these flowers up all year, right?

- Right, yeah, yeah.

So these are called spring ephemerals.

So, ephemeral pretty much means, you know, just they're for a short time.

They've adapted to take advantage of the sunlight that's coming through because we don't have any leaves on the trees.

So we see them in the early spring and late winter.

Got their leaves here to photosynthesize, so they're kind of just trying to get as much energy as they can before they lay dormant again for a whole year.

- Sounds kind of nice to hibernate for most of the year.

Just come up when it's beautiful in the spring and then take a nap.

- I wish I could do that sometimes.

- Yeah, it sounds good.

It's really exciting for us as humans to see these first flowers of the spring, but pollinators are also kind of excited about this, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So, the flowers are trying to out-compete with other things that might be flowering later on in the year, but the pollinators are taking advantage of it too, because there's not really much out here as far as pollen and nectar goes, so they're taking advantage of the fact that these ephemerals are up right now.

It's a really good early food source for the pollinators.

- [Presenter] Trout lilies aren't the only spring ephemerals you'll see in North Carolina.

Rue-anemone, spring beauties, Dutchman's breeches, bloodroot, and Hepatica are some of the other plants that grow, flower, and complete their lifecycle before the tree canopy is filled with leaves.

[gentle upbeat music] Why is it important that we have trails and have access to places like this?

- Anecdotally, and I'm sure I know, really, that there's research out there to tell us that it is important for people to be able to get outside and recreate and be in open space like this.

So it's so important for not only our physical health, but our mental health.

It's great to be able to get fresh air, kind of step away from technology, social media, and all of the things that are pressing on us all the time.

I mean, we found just in the pandemic in 2020, the visitation to parks and open spaces nearly doubled.

So if that tells you anything, people really wanted to get a chance to get outside, and we want to be able to provide more of that space for folks.

If you think about it, there's been people stewarding this land, like, we are stewarding it right now, but it's been stewarded for many, many years.

It was stewarded by indigenous peoples at first, and then throughout the years, different types of folks have come in and utilized it in different ways.

But now we're really trying to make sure that we're inviting folks to really kind of get into the land and connect with it.