I remember the first Spring I began to see wild flowers. We lived a short walk from a maple-beech woods with a profusion of blooms beginning even as the snow was just softening and continuing until the trees leafed out to shade the forest floor.
Spring Beauty, so soft and delicate, is well named.
The transience of the flowers was surprising, each day finding new, unknown green shoots bursting from the leaf litter and more coming into bloom while at the same time others were lost in the sudden greenness and more faded to seed. Each day was a clear measure of the headlong rush into spring after a long winter!
If I could see only one Spring flower, I'd make it Hepatica. But then why would I do something so silly as to only see one?
I’ve so enjoyed watching my old friends Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica), Hepatica (Hepatica nobilis acuta) and Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) come forth these past two days here in North Carolina. Today even the air was warm and hundreds of their blossoms began to cover the floor of the woods. Many clearly had “gone by” since yesterday, so short-lived in their glory. We leave tomorrow so the Spring parade will have to continue without me until I catch up with it again in Vermont in about six weeks.
Three lovely Trout Lilies all in a row!
Still Learning To See 
You’re so right! These beauties come briefly and then are gone–and I always told my students they needed to PAY ATTENTION. Humans can get so lost in their own fast pace that they miss the changes in nature. “Learning to see” is a lifelong challenge in a world too far removed from the gentle rhythms of nature.