Today's Flowers

Enjoying a lovely day.  Here are some things in flower:

Marsh marigold.

Wild Ginger.

Bellflower.

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

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 Yellow Day (Plus)

Celandine poppies first opened yesterday, and are all open today!

The marsh marigolds opened fully sometime this week...

Yellow maple flowers and yellow willow flowers give many trees a spring-green appearance.

Wild ginger's hidden burgundy flowers bloom among the leaf litter.

If this is any indication, my evil plot to have jewelweeds take over my side yard is working!

The most phenologically significant bird sighting I've had is baby goslings. I saw the brown and yellow fluff balls from the driver's seat of the car, however, so I didn't get a photo. But the egret was so close yesterday, I took its picture; and the tree swallow so shimmery in the sun...

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.

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.

Updates

The sun is back out and I traipsed around for a short while to see what was happening:

• Grebes are here, tiny ducks on the lake looking strikingly different from the typical mallard.
• Northern Sea oats are growing (actually I noticed this a few days ago).
• Bellwort has sprouted and is about 2 inches tall.
• Also genitan has sprouted and is about 3 inches tall.
• Some thing I thought were done for are popping up... I got a Dutchman's breeches, and a new mayapple, over a week after the others were already umbrella-ing, even though their conditions are the same. Hmm.

Also... a wild ginger flower.

I am quite taken with these flowers. We focus all our attention on the showy flowers. This week, with my students, we are learning about pollination and we focus on the idea that brightly colored petals attract pollinating insects, which often see them differently than us due to their eyes. The petals are the insect version of the Golden Arches or the neon "Eat at Joe's" sign. But not all flowers are using brightly colored flowers to attract their pollinators. Some, of course, are pollinated by wind -- these tend to be green... why waste pigment on something that can't see? They also tend to be long and hangy. Some flowers smell nasty to attract insects that might normally go for rotting flesh. These have the same demographic of pollinator. Flesh-colored flowers right along the ground where something creepy-crawling could happen right into them. But they're really quite striking... deep brown-red, fuzzy all over, with three twisty triangle petals like a jester's cap. They have white insides that make it seem as though a bug is "heading toward the bright light." A treat for the lucky folks that bother to look in the leaf litter for flowers instead of waiting for the bright colors to hit you in the head!

Oh, What a Difference a Day Makes...

...Especially when it's a day such as the last 24 hours have been, warm, mostly sunny, partly windy, all around beautiful. Yesterday morning's round buds...

are today's hepatica flowers!

Mayapples popped open their still-tiny umbrellas.

Ginger leaves burst through the soil.

And trillium's three-leaves have appeared.

Couldn't resist showing the bloodroot again, now that the flower bud has poked out.

In the non-ephemeral plant world, here's the yellow coneflower, which emerged a while ago but I was struck by how big it's already gotten, about 4 inches tall.

And, my maple-leaf vibernum leafed out... along with some crab apples and other shrubs.

Unfortunately, these leaf-outs are not all good. Throughout the yard, previously nearly-invisible little sticks have sprouted buckthorn leaves... they are everywhere, these little weeds that want to be terribly invasive, soil-poisoning trees. And among them are tiny leafing-out box elders (whose parents are flowering at the moment). I could work for days and days, it seems, and still have these invasive babies around. The honeysuckle, which has become the bane of our gardening existence, has also leafed out. (When I installed my vegetable garden on the south side of the yard, there was a honeysuckle hedge, about 8 feet tall, in the neighbor's yard, that did not interfere with the garden. Six years later, those things are about 20 feet tall and shade out more of the growing space each year. The boughs that hang over our yard get chopped, but the trees are not ours to level. I could make a lovely garden in that area, though, if I were allowed...)

And speaking of the garden... we planted carrots and peas this morning, to go along with the spinach that I didn't mention we planted earlier in the week.

Wild Ginger

Wild Ginger:  A Study

Wild ginger is flowering; this plant is unassuming, with flowers that are neither showy nor large.  And yet, I am quite taken with them.  Their leaves are simultaneously shiny and fuzzy.  These aren't quite opposites, but they're close.  Like being small but powerful, or joyful but sedated.  Many things manage to live life as a paradox, ginger leaves included.  The veins on the leaves form a branching pattern, constantly splitting in two like a river delta.  They are so thick and accentuated that they form shadows on the leaf.

Leaves are the showboat of this plant; the flowers are barely noticeable.  They lie on the ground in the leaf litter, touching the soil.  Burgundy and cream in color, they are practically furry.  Their three long petals curve to points.  These flowers are not trying to attract butterflies or bees, but rather flies and gnats... less discriminating pollinators at first glance, but up close, the flowers are quite pretty.  They have a white and burgundy design inside them that only the few get to see!