I found a patch of blooming round-lobed hepatica the other day in the still-rather-brown-all-over Saugatuck Dunes. To give you a sense of how tiny these spring ephemerals are, that's a part of a red oak leaf behind the blossoms. Hepatica are usually the first bits of purple I find in the woods around here each April, opening a full month before the violets. A couple of weeks ago, I found one hepatica bud open on a warm day, but the buds have been closed up tight in the cool weather since. They're easy to identify because of their large, three-lobed leaves (hidden here). These flowers are one of a myriad of reasons why we fight the spread of garlic mustard—and stay in the middle of the trail, where they don't grow.