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Wood sorrel, dog violet and celandine were already in flower beneath the twisted branches of mature oak and birch, thickly draped in mosses, ferns and epiphytic plants.

Instead, we see a plague of English ivy, winter creeper, vinca, honeysuckle vine, lesser celandine and multiflora rose.

The ode is one of three the poet wrote to his favorite flower — commonly known as the lesser celandine or fig buttercup and recognizable for its glossy, egg-yolk-yellow blooms — which is also a persistent weed.

Dana Dierkes, the park’s chief of interpretation, education and outreach, tells me that concerted efforts to clear the park’s northern flood plain of lesser celandine have succeeded in returning native flora there.

I see lesser celandine choking the wildflowers, and winged euonymus and Japanese honeysuckle crowding out native spicebush.