In Portland, Oregon, where I grew up, Bleeding Hearts or Dicentra Spectabilis are one of the first signs of Spring. They have beautiful pink heart shaped lobes and delicate fern like leaves. Before they bloom the plant stock looks like a gnarly old piece of wood that would never be capable of producing something so beautiful. When they bloom, I always feel such a sense of surprise. Magic!

They are my favorite perrennial flower, I suppose because my mother tended them in our  backyard garden at the house on 23rd Street where I grew up. In the Pacific Northwest, if you go hiking at just the right place (usually lowland conifer forests, near the beach) and at just the right time (Spring) you can find them growing wild on the forest floor. They don't grow very well where I live now, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and I miss them. I found these growing along an urban path in Portland near the Willamette River last Spring.