YELLOW CARPETS IN FARMLAND
Four kinds of flowering plants, including lesser celandines, common dandelions, buttercups and field mustards, carpet many fields, meadows and country roadsides with their yellow-petaled blossoms in southeastern Pennsylvania in spring. Though adaptable, alien plants from Eurasia, their lovely, decorative and abundant golden blooms, that contrast well with grass and their own green leaves, cheer many people in those human-made habitats during April and May. Lesser celandines bloom during April in sun-filled, grassy openings in wooded bottomlands thinly-bordering streams in cropland. Celandines are flat plants with glossy, deep-green leaves and shiny, golden flowers that dominate, and brighten, the floors of riparian woods. Some patches of celandine blooms are also pocked with the purple blooms of blue violets, creating a lovely contrast of colors, free to see. Most everyone knows dandelions as the scourge of many lawns, which is unfortunate because of this plant