Seven Blooming Flowers Maine’s MidCoast Shows Off Each Spring

Easily one of the most magical times to steal away to Maine’s MidCoast is the earliest onset of spring.

And we’re not using that adjective lightly or hyperbolically: If you’ve ever gone hunting out the first signs of the vernal reawakening amid the lingering winter scape on this gorgeous stretch of the rockbound seashore, you know it feels very much as if magic’s afoot.

No small share of that magic comes supplied by wildflowers, which are abundant and diverse in our neck of the woods here at The Craignair Inn by the Sea. Come experience the start of spring in Maine, and take some pleasant strolls amid all the emerging blooms, on a getaway at our Spruce Head bed and breakfast!

Some of the Superstar Spring Flowers in Maine

While our part of Maine hosts a wide variety of different specific ecosystems—from maritime spruce-fir communities to tidal marshes and old fields—it and much of the rest of the state broadly falls into what ecologists often call the “transition forest”: the timbered realm that provides a segue between the temperate mixed deciduous forests to the south and the boreal forests of the north.

One of the defining seasonal charms of the transition forest, particularly its hardwood stands, is the springtime emergence of the wildflowers Maine is so celebrated for. Many of them, including the fast-paced blooms known as spring ephemerals, put on their flowery show before the trees have fully leafed out. This allows them to take advantage of the ample sunlight before the canopy casts the forest floor in deep shade.

Some of our spring blooms strut onto the stage very early indeed. Consider the skunk cabbage (ABOVE RIGHT), which despite the rank odor for which it’s named is a beloved late-winter/early-spring harbinger of warmer days ahead. Generating its own heat, the skunk cabbage—fond of swamps and soggy hollows —raises a hooded spathe that shields a striking yellow flower when air temperature may still be below freezing.

As springtime gets more fully underway, you can also seek out the marvelous blue patches formed by tiny bluets (LEFT), the snowy petals and flanking whorled leaves of the aptly named starflower (RIGHT), and the stalked, breeze-wafted white blooms of the wood anemone, sometimes called the “windflower.”

Follow your nose, meanwhile, to uncover amid forest duff and its own leathery leaves the fabulously fragrant flowers of the trailing arbutus.

And it’s always a treat to chance upon a whole bed of trout lilies in open woodland. Named for the resemblance of their leaf mottling to the pattern of a trout, these spring ephemerals produce glorious, down-curved yellow flowers that flare up the forest floor.

Come April and May, you don’t have to look hard for the showy purple and pink blooms of the non-native but widespread bigleaf lupine (LEFT): an invasive wildflower, to be clear, but also locally cherished for its beauty.

Wildflower Walks on a Craignair Inn Getaway

Our historic, upscale B&B just a hop, skip, and a jump from Rockland, ME provides exceptional springtime hospitality right along the MidCoast’s shore—and a truly enviable launchpad for wildflower appreciation and other outdoor activities. You’ve got many great area destinations for enjoying the vernal blossoming, not least Clark Island Preserve just steps away across the causeway!

Come see (and smell!) for yourself why Maine in spring is such a fabulous time-and-place combination…