It was about two years ago that Pap Knauss invited me along to his “Spirit Trail.”

Pap became the unofficial builder/caretaker of a winding, beautiful trail through Tuscarora State Park. He and I walked for a few hours over some of Pennsylvania’s most beautiful terrain.

This Schuylkill County treasure, and much of the Times News area, host some beautiful spring flowers.

As you know, flower species bloom at different times of the year.

Your home flower beds just recently were brightened by daffodils and hyacinths, probably planted many years ago. Their bulbs store up the sun’s energy, remain dormant over the winter and bloom only in the spring.

In the heat of summer, roadsides are often ablaze with dense growths of orange day lilies.

In autumn, the field edges are graced with white snakeroot and a variety of asters.

Today, I’ll highlight some of the spring bloomers.

Our forested hillsides are showing off patches of white as the shadbush (service berry tree or Juneberry) bloom first.

On April 19, while driving south on Route 248 I noticed the Mahoning Mountain along the Lehigh River was dotted with those white flowering trees. The American dogwoods will bloom after many of our forest trees are already leafed out.

If you are a fisherman/woman, your walk to the streams will probably take you past the invasive Japanese barberry shrubs just starting to bloom and seeming to be everywhere. Unfortunately, these thorny bushes, like so many other invasives, are threatening these same spring flowers which I will cover today.

But let’s look much lower and find the spring flowers blooming at our feet.

The trout lilies may be nearly finished by now, but a Lizard Creek angler may still find a few of these 6-inch flowers pushing through the leaf litter.

Maybe in your hunting camp or Pocono campsite lawns you can look for 4- or 5-square-foot patches of tiny, baby blue flowers called bluets (affectionately called forget-me-nots).

On your hillside walk, think small and look for the fringed polygala (rose/purple) adding color to the brown leaf colored floor. Enjoy them now before the ferns overshadow them. The entire plant, flower included, is only about 6 inches, but a beautiful 6 inches.

On Pap’s Spirit Trail, and elsewhere, if lucky, you could see the gorgeous red trillium. Delicate, 1- to 2-feet-tall wild geraniums can be found where it is a bit damp. These five petaled flowers are a nice rose/pink color.

Splashes of yellow could be the yellow, dwarf cinquefoil with its three-quarter-inch flowers or creeping buttercups (growing close to the ground as its name implies). They, too, like more damp soil.

A garden escapee adding color along almost every path or secondary road, are the dame’s rocket. These 2-foot pink (but often purple or white) flowers will be blooming about May 5.

There are myriad other spring flowers, so while you’re looking to add to your bird list on one of your walks, look low for some of these flowers that, unlike birds, don’t fly away just as you get them in focus.

Note: Birds are “a movin.” Today (April 22) in a quick 90-minute walk along “Catbird Alley,” I saw 52 bird species, including eight new ones for the year. Look for ospreys arriving, broad-winged hawks gliding overhead and the first flocks of northward migrating blue jays just above the treetops.

The woods are alive, from the forest floor flowers to the migrating birds among the forest trees and shrubs, so get out there …

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: True/False — House finches, sometimes the dominant birds at your feeders, are native to the Pacific Coast.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: There have been 435 different birds species seen in our state.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com