FOR MY FIRST FOUR decades, I lived within 100 miles of the Atlantic Ocean. Over those decades, I became familiar with a great deal of the flora in the region. The oaks, hickories, maples, beeches, hornbeams, birches, hemlocks and basswoods of the mixed forests were like old friends. I’d know them anywhere.
I knew that moosewood (Acer pensylvanicum) tends to grow where sassafras (Sassafras albidum) thrives, and that the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) takes over forests where sturdier hardwoods have been logged out again and again.
I knew where the yellow trout lilies () bloomed, but now) repel bugs, hence its common name of bugbane.