Diagnostic help?

A little early in the season (March 5 or so), the wildflower group I'm in performed a survey on a tract of land in Blount county. There were a few plants we didn't recognize, so I had the idea to put them here to see if anyone else had any ideas. Sorry for the bad lighting in all of them. I couldn't take long at each stop, because our trip leader was a fast mover.

They're all wild plants, in hardwood areas near a largish creek.


These dried stalks were sometimes very tall, to six feet or so. They were always near edge, usually close to the water but sometimes just at the edge of a path. The stalks below this point were bare (I think).


A close-up of the seed pods. I couldn't find any seeds left in any of them.


Someone had thought this was Shooting Stars coming up. It isn't, but I don't know what it is. It was under deciduous cover.


Another dried plant mystery. This one was much smaller if I remember correctly... maybe a foot or two tall. Under deciduous cover.

There was another mystery plant that I forgot to photograph. At first I thought it was deciduous ginger. But there were more than 2 leaves coming up together, and the texture wasn't quite the same. I kept thinking it was ginger of some sort -- there was lots of evergreen ginger on this site -- but I couldn't find anything that matched it exactly. It was in edge areas.

Clicking each picture should make them larger. Let me know if you have any idea what these things are. We should be going back to this site but I'm not sure when.