Ephemerals Emerge!

OK, first, I would like to state that the weather is officially weird.  We came home from the Green Schools conference in Pittsburgh (note: 2 degrees latitude, and therefore about 2 weeks ahead, phenologically, of home) on Saturday.  That afternoon was cold, and the weather switched about every five minutes, from snowing -- almost white-out conditions -- to sunny and back again and back again.  The only consistent thing was extreme wind, which presumably was moving the rest of it along.  

Sunday dawned cold -- 26 degrees -- and topped out at 71 degrees.  This swing of 45 degrees is the 13th highest single-day warm-up in Chicago history.  (It was also... you guessed it... windy.)  And overnight, the cold came back.  Today's projected high is only 36!  Notably, it's breezy but not crazy windy, at least!

We were able to wander around my parents' yard  (about 10-15 miles south) during this brief mild period yesterday and saw... spring beauties:

and hepatica!!!

Seriously, isn't that a nice, healthy, beautiful bunch of hepatica?  Wow!

Spring has Sprung

These maple flowers color the suburbs bright, spring green. They... And of course, the buckthorns, a battle I'm already losing... make the world look suddenly, wonderfully alive. The yard is filled with bright reds, oranges and yellows as the daffodils and the early tulips overlap. There is a constant hum of lawnmowers as homeowners begin this endless summer chore...

I'm missing the most beautiful time in the forest as ephemerals bloom (an injury has me off my feet as much as possible) but here are a few of the new flowers in my yard:

Bloodroot 

Dutchman's breeches

Wild ginger

Spring Has Sprung

Illinois is the Prairie State, but if you're lucky enough to have access to a wooded area, this is the perfect week to explore it.  Spring ephemerals are in their prime, and, as their name implies, their beauty is short-lived....

Hepatica

Hepatica is in full bloom right now.  I love this wildflower especially, not just because it's an early treat, but because they come in so many colors -- white and pink and purple and blue -- sometimes all right next to each other.  Bloodroot is also in full bloom in the woodlands, its large white flowers standing out against the brown of last year's leaves and green of emerging leaves.   It's leaves -- themselves an interesting shape -- are still curled around the stems; the stems show the red liquid inside that gives the plants their name. 

Bloodroot

Just starting to bloom are trout lilies -- their splotchy, trout-skin leaves are all over -- spring beauties, and anenomes.  

May apples and trilliums have not yet flowered, but their unique foliage is popping up.  

If you only have access to prairies, there are some early flowers there, too.  Pasqueflower is in full bloom right now, with its purple flowers and fuzzy stems.  This is always one to which I look forward; Leopold's quotations makes it seem significant to me.  I know I quote him each year at this time, but I'll still remind you of this passage from ASCA: "For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."

Prairie Smoke is also starting to bloom!

Also... the first tick of the season was seen a week and a half ago, but they're out in full force now.  I pulled several off kids today.

Spring Beauty

trout lily

Pasqueflower

Anenome

Our Mammoth Trip

Our trip to Kentucky was all about flowers.  I mean, sure, there was the cave, which, being the longest in the world and home to unique species, is the natural wonder for which the National Park was created... but we all know I'm a plant person.  

The trees gave a spectacular show.  Even before we got to Kentucky it started.  In northern Indiana, the oak trees had dangling flowers that completed the green haze of spring.  Redbuds lined the highway, their brilliant purple coloring our whole drive.  As we got further south and the roadsides became more wooded and less farmed, the redbud understory intermingled with dogwoods, with their showy bracts and distinctive horizontal branching pattern... there's something about the southland in the springtime, and this?  Is it. 

My dogwood sketch.  I wrote, "Dogwoods decorate the forest.  From afar, each looks like a perfect ornament -- open towards the sky.  up close, each bloom is slightly asymmetrical, bracts twisted and misshapen and bruised."

Another dogwood sketch.

 Exploring the forests above the caves, we noticed distinctive burgundy flowers hanging like bells from many small trees.  We didn't know, at first, what they were... and neither did any of the rangers that we asked, and  we asked several.  (In their defense, I think Mammoth Caves hires their rangers based on geological knowledge, not botanical...)  Leaves weren't much help as they were just emerging, translucent and tiny ad the terminals of the twigs.  Turns out, these were pawpaw flowers!  Very lovely and unique.

My Pawpaw sketches and description.

We also saw a number of ground-dwelling wildflowers, including but probably not limited to:
bellwort, bluebells, celandine poppies, chickweed, Dutchman's breeches, fire-pink, foamflower, forget-me-nots, ginger, irises, jack-in-the-pulpit, larkspur, Mayapples (not blooming yet), phlox, pussytoes, ragwort, rue anenomes, trillium (multiple species), twinleaf (not blooming), violets, wild geranium, something I didn't know maybe a snakeroot...

We're Blooming and Leafing

There is a lot going on right now.  And a lot of it is going on early.  Most people I talk to make some comment about how the weather is freaking them out.  My response is something along the lines of, it may be freaky, but we can't do anything about it, so let's enjoy it... because if you ignore the fact that its mid-March, it's perfect weather... not too hot for an early morning run, warm enough to read outside all afternoon, but not so warm that you get uncomfortable weeding, and then cool enough in the night time for sleeping under the covers with open windows.  

BUT... if you want to add more data to the freak-out part of it... I could include photos of about a hundred things, but no one would bother to scroll through them.  Here are some highlights. 

Violet

 Violets flowered today, which have previously been noted in early April...

Bloodroot

The bloodroot started to open... over a month earlier than last year (April 21 they looked like this), and a couple of weeks before 2010 bloom-time.

Hepatica

Hepatica isn't quite open but it's close, I mean, this flower will be open tomorrow.  Again, this is exactly how they looked on April 21 last year.  Same with the trillium and mayapples (Aprilapples, this year?), below.

Trillium

Mayapples poke through the soil.

Ginger leaves emerging from the earth.

Other things to report...

• A lot of surprising leaf-outs, including...
• Crab apples leafing out (3/16)
• Willows catkining and leafing out (3/17)
• Wasps extremely active (3/18)
• Currants leafing out (3/17) 
• Maple-leaf viburnum leafing out (3/18)
• And today, there were tons of millipedes undulating their way across the trail.  I was trying to avoid them, but it became too difficult, and eventually, I had to just decide that some myriapods are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Spice bushes flowering (since last week, but I liked this photo:) 

A Few Quick Updates

I really haven't the energy or inclination to write much. I actually feel like I want to draw, but the plant I want to draw is no where near a place I could sit. And I don't draw from photographs, and I don't want to pick it, and it's getting dark anyhow. And so, a quick update on what's happening, mainly for record-keeping purposes. And there is so much going on, I'm leaving out a ton. Beech leaf outs, maple leaf outs, flowering ornamental shrubs all over the place...

First, early wild strawberry.

First, early golden Alexander.

Bellwort blooming (this is what I want to draw.)

Hepatica still blooming... it was the first of the ephemerals in my yard and it may well be the last... although spring beauties are still going strong...

Bluebells are in full bloom and I'm starting to see their color all over.

I used to have these dwarf irises all over my yard, and several large varieties that bloom later. The person who used to live here must have loved them. I have mostly killed them off by neglect. I liked them all right, but my attitude is this. The first year, I'll give you TLC like crazy. I love my plants and am very good to them. The second year, I'll help you out if I can. After that, you gotta be able to take it on your own. I don't want any perennials that I have to care for. This is why I plant native.

But it's also why I have tulips (full bloom) and daffodils (mostly spent at this point). If you're not evil, and you can compete with the big boys, you can stay.
If you're evil, on the other hand, I'll take care of you. This is creeping Charlie flowering. Creeping Charlie is the bane of my existence this year; I hate it. And I am losing the war against it. In other news of the evil, garlic mustard has started flowering as well. But not in my yard! I did win that battle the first year I lived here and have never had any since. I wish it were so easy with the others. I fight buckthorn every year...

Also noteworthy: I have 13 stalks of sweetgrass flowers. Apparently it's hard to get it to flower, so I feel pretty good about that.

OK. It's 8 pm. Is that too early for bed?

In My Yard...

Bloodroot is blooming. I am pleased -- there are 7 flowers in 3 bunches, all doing very well despite the aggressive campaign being waged against them by creeping charlie.

Now, normally I wouldn't put a photo of what I just sketched. Besides being redundant, it only serves to highlight the inaccuracies in my drawing. Especially this sketch... I had to sit farther away than I prefer from the plant -- I like to be able to touch it, move my head around to different angles, etc. But I didn't want to crush a bunch of other stuff, like baby mayapples or uvularia or wild ginger or trout lilies, or even the Dutchman's breeches foliage that I found in 3 places in the yard but none with any hope of flowering this year. Anyway, to get to the point... a bee landed on the flower while I was sketching, and I got a picture of it, so I included it. Also the same bee landed on a clump of hepatica.

Also blooming in my yard...

spring beauties and Greek anenomes. A lot of fiddleheads are poking up, too... I tried to sketch the spring beauties, but only proved what I've known for a while and re-discovered yesterday. I can only do one sketch a day. Or at least without a significant break. I don't know what gets tires, my brain or my hands, or what, but the second one is always terrible. And usually incomplete. So, it's not here.

NOT yet blooming in my yard are marsh marigold or bluebells.

Ephemerals

Ephemeral. Fleeting. Our spring weather has been ephemeral this. Thursday, after snow and rain, we had a lovely spring day... to be followed by a cold and wet Friday. Today was, again, lovely, but by Monday we're supposed to be back to three days of chilly rain.

Today we walked at the gardens. The spring ephemerals were in full bloom. (Being 20 miles south, they are a couple of days ahead of us. Being professional horticulturists, they are probably another couple of days ahead of us.) As proof of point, I can't even get Dutchman's breeches (sketched above) to grow at my house. There it grows in huge clumps of feathery leaves.

Their bloodroot was actually on it's way out...

Trout lily.

Anenome.

Spring beauty.

Trillium.

Bluebells, just starting to bloom.

Marsh marigold.

This magnolia is from the exact tree I sketched last year on April 1 last year. It is, perhaps, a little further along in its lifecycle. But not much.

Prairie smoke. (OK, those last aren't ephemerals, but whatever.)

Today

"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.

"Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question of whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech..."

Pasqueflowers always make me think of Aldo Leopold. They secured an honored place in the second paragraph of the forward to ASCA... probably the most important and influential phenological document ever, not to mention one of the 2 most "impactful" environmental works ever written (and written over 60 years ago, so it's amazing how current its themes still seem. The other impactful book, by the way, is Silent Spring, this according to the American Nature Study Society). And so to me they have special significance. With their early bloom, they remind me that spring really will win over winter. Their rarity drives home the message of Leopold's book. Their diminutive size, almost hidden among last year's litter, tells us that beauty and wonder can come in small packages.

So, yea!! My pasqueflowers are blooming. I have no idea why they are so terribly pale, but I am thrilled that they came back. I've had a terrible time with them, never getting one to come back more than once. That includes this one, as we just put it in last year. Perhaps they only live for two years, though that doesn't seem right... And they're so hard to find, this is my last effort!

Other good news: my ephemerals did, indeed, come back. At least most of them. Shown below are bloodroot, mayapple, and a trillium, all behind last year's pace but there nonetheless. Shooting stars are also well along, and wild geraniums, and spring beauties, and wild ginger, and marsh marigold (one) and bluebells. The only things that didn't return to my yard are my red baneberry and my Dutchman's breeches.

These hepatica are in my mom's yard. They are a lot happier than mine. (Actually, my one that bloomed the other day isn't looking good at all. I suspect that was it's final attempt at productivity before expiring. I have two others that look like they'll be more like this, but they haven't bloomed yet at all.) My mom also has a Dutchman's breeches about 1.5 inches tall.

Oh, and we are having a major creeping charlie problem, which we may have to fight using drastic measures or we risk losing most of the aforementioned wildflowers.