Ramp season, year two of this newsletter. Same ethic, new spot, and a spring ephemeral I want you to learn to walk past.

What I'm reading

• Ramps: leaf-only, one more time — I will say it every April until I die. Cut one leaf, leave the bulb, move on. A patch you harvest gently is a patch for life.
• Trout lily: pretty, common, and please leave it — the yellow nodding flowers and mottled leaves carpeting the same slopes as ramps. Technically edible, ecologically precious, slow to spread. This is the plant I teach people to admire and not touch.
• Spring beauty corms — the other ephemeral underfoot. Tiny wild potatoes. Edible, but same logic: abundance varies, tread light.

Field note

New spot this year, found by reading the bottomland on a map all winter — a ramp slope I had entirely to myself, trout lily blooming all through it. Took a handful of leaves, photographed the trout lily, left it rooted. Knowing what not to pick is the more advanced skill.

— Jenna