Wildflowers of Citie of Henricus Historical Park

Common Violet above.

Citie of Henricus Historical Park is a reconstructed colonial settlement on the banks of the James River in Chester VA. While it does not compare to the Williamsburg and Jamestown reconstructions in the area, it has its own charm, and is pretty impressive for a county effort. It preserves and celebrates the 2nd successful English settlement in North America, founded in 1611. A resident staff of reinactors play various roles, maintain colonial farming and gardening demonstrations, a carpenter shop, tobacco barns, etc. Henricus has an interesting history, both in Colonial and Revolutionary times, and one that somehow has not made it into any history book I read in school. More info is available here.

As fascinating as the history is, the real draw for me is accessible public land, with extensive marshes in a backwater of the James with lots of birdlife, and a stretch of riverside forest in the Dutch Gap Conservation Area with some rough trails. I visit it in spare moments when I am in Virginia at our corporate offices. I was especially eager this year to photograph the Redbud trees, and to see what spring wildflowers were out.

So what we have today is a random sampling of wildflower close-ups. All were taken with the Canon SX20IS and all but number three (Star Chickweed) and the Common Violet at the end were taken at the wide end of the zoom and macro. The Chickweed was off the trail and only accessible with the 560mm macro of the SX20, and I intentionally backed off, got down to ground level, and framed the Violet with the long macro to isolate it in an out-of-focus background.

Virginia Spring Beauty.

Star Chickweed

Henbit

Ground Ivy

Common Violet