There it is, by that log. I have to bend low for a good look. The flower’s color is far more impressive than its size. It’s a rich magenta, almost a purple-pink. Absolutely beautiful.

This flower, barely 3 inches tall and growing beside a moldering log on a riverbank, is called the fringed polygala. It resembles an orchid but belongs to the milkwort family. The polygala always blooms in the second half of May and lasts into June, making it something of a link between spring flowers and summer flowers.

Wildflowers are almost like migrant birds in that, if we pay attention, it’s possible to predict both where individual species can be found and virtually the order in which they will appear. For a while. The earliest flowers are fairly easy to notice and record. But when spring reaches it height, the explosion of plants and leaves and blossoms is too fast, too voluminous, for even the most dedicated observer to keep pace. That, too, is like dealing with arriving birds.

Several flower varieties are worth looking for each spring, some because of their early blooming, some because of their beauty, some because of their dependability — same spot, same week — and some because of their unreliability. There are flowers that bloom in profusion one year, then fail to appear the next or jump a good distance away.

This year, again, the first flower I found in bloom was coltsfoot. Second was bloodroot, followed by hepatica, dandelion and marsh marigold. I’m not claiming that is the precise order in which these plants flowered, just the order in which I saw them. Undoubtedly, that order was influenced by where I went; other people would have a different list of early flowers.

There was an even earlier plant, the skunk cabbage — some were growing before Christmas — but I have trouble considering skunk cabbage a flower. It’s an intriguing plant, certainly, being able to generate enough heat to push through frozen muck, but I prefer wildflowers with a little more color, more appeal. Like the fringed polygala, or even the coltsfoot.

Coltsfoot is a coarse little thing with a yellow blossom that looks something like a dandelion. I always find the first coltsfoots clinging to the same south-facing rock ledge over which water drips as soon as snow begins melting. This year, I saw the first one in bloom on April 6. Some years they appear in March.

Bloodroots — white blossoms on reddish stalks wrapped in big leaves — are not very common but one patch along a woods road has been very reliable, appearing year after year. They can bloom by mid-April but are more likely to appear a little later. This year I saw blossoms on April 22. A week or so later, they were gone.

The day after seeing bloodroots, I went looking for hepatica, another rather rare woods flower, and found three blossoms on a little ridge where they have been growing for decades. Hepaticas vary in appearance from spring to spring; this year’s were a deep, lovely purple-blue and extremely small. Some Aprils, they are larger but also lighter in color, almost white.

After that, many flowers were added quickly, including the ubiquitous dandelion — yes, I consider it a flower — and the vibrant marsh marigolds and the carpets of trout lilies. All three of these flowers are yellow, perhaps the dominant color of early-spring blossoms, especially when added to domestic blooms such as daffodils and forsythias.

There are numerous white wildflowers, too: trailing arbutus, which I always seek too early; wood anemone (windflower), white violet and the little bluet, which despite the name is usually more white than blue. Wild strawberry blossoms are also white, and they definitely qualify as flowers. Two other white flowers, spring beauty and Dutchman’s breeches, once were vital elements of spring for me, but to see them now I have to cross over into Connecticut. If they grow in Rhode Island, I haven’t found them.

Violets are virtually synonymous with May, not just white violets but yellow violets and blue violets and purple violets and even violet violets. Most are common but I sometimes have to search for the bird’s-foot violet, my favorite member of the family. Same story with trilliums. Nodding trilliums, with pale yellow blossoms, grow in dense stands but the gorgeous painted trilliums are not plentiful at all in Rhode Island. Still, they usually appear in the same places each year. If I were rating our wildflowers, this trillium, with its three white petals and vivid crimson center, would be close to the top. Most people who come across a painted trillium will return the next spring. Seeing it once is not enough.

Columbines similarly stay put. One patch I revisit each year grows atop an ancient boulder where just enough soil was trapped long ago for the plants to take root. Those red-and-yellow flowers standing on the boulder create a remarkable sight indeed.

The little fringed polygala is pretty remarkable, too. Its blossom, with an odd, airplane-like shape — the “fringe” is the propeller — is spectacular. Polygalas are said to grow in big numbers in some places, but I seldom see many together, and there are years when they are hard to find. That, of course, makes seeing them again such a treat.

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