Actually, nothing in any of these photos or any post you may find here is secret or hidden but most people never see these things, and that’s too bad. Just look at how beautiful this young shagbark hickory bud (Carya ovata) was after it opened. A tree full of them looks like a tree full of beautiful flowers and they’re right there in plain sight, so I hope you’ll look for them.
Every bit as beautiful but not quite as colorful is a spring beech bud (Fagus grandifolia) opening. A tree full of these looks like it has been festooned with tiny angel wings and they are one of my favorite things to see in spring. But you have to watch closely because they don’t stay like this for more than a day. A good sign that beech bud break is about to happen is when the normally small, straight buds grow longer and curl like a rainbow. Once that happens they are ready to break and let the leaves unfurl.
A new beech leaf still has some of the delicate silver hairs left from its time in the bud, but it loses them quickly. The orange turns to green quickly too, and then the magic ends for another year.
I saw some beautiful young red buckeye leaves on the Central Ohio Nature blog, a link to which you can find over there on the right in the Favorite Links section. I don’t have the same tree but I do have a bottlebrush buckeye and this photo is of its leaves, which are more of a rosy brown / brick red color.
New oak leaves are covered in soft velvet and come in many colors…
…including hot pink. They also shed water quickly.
Some oaks are already flowering.
According to my color finding software this maple leaf also had pink in it, along with plum purple and fire brick red. I don’t see those colors but I believe the software is accurate.
New poison ivy leaves (Toxicodendron radicans) are often a deep maroon color but these were green with a white fringe. I’ve noticed this year that many new spring leaves that would normally wear various shades of red and bronze are instead shades of green. What this means I don’t know. They seem to want to get a jump on photosynthesizing.
I checked on the field horsetails (Equisetum arvense) each day and there was no sign of them and then overnight there they were, hundreds of them. One little tap and what looks like clouds of pollen float off them but the “pollen” is actually a cloud of microscopic spores.
The fertile spore bearing stem of a field horsetail ends in a light brown cone shaped structure called a strobilus. Since it doesn’t photosynthesize at this point in its development the plant has no need for chlorophyll so most of it is a pale whitish color. When it’s ready to release spores the cone opens to reveal tiny, mushroom shaped sporangiophores. The whitish ruffles at the base of each brown sporangiophore are the spore producing sporangia. When the horsetail looks like the one in this photo it has released its spores and will shortly die.
When the fertile spore bearing stems of the horsetail have released their spores the infertile green, photosynthesizing stems pf the plant appear. These shoots are rough and gritty since they contain a lot of silica. In fact they are often used by campers to scrub pots and dishes because they are so gritty. They are also very close to impossible to eradicate from a garden, so this isn’t a plant to wish grew closer to home.
I didn’t see a goldfinch but I knew it had been here. A beautiful gift from a beautiful little bird.
The big buds of Norway maple (Acer platanoides) opened a week or so ago but the flowers still persist on the trees. Last year they were blossoming in late April so they’re clearly late this year. These trees are native to Europe and are considered invasive here. Finding white sap in the leaf stem (Petiole) is one way to identify Norway maple. Sugar maple and red maple have clear sap.
The flower clusters of Norway maples are large and appear before the leaves so they can be seen from quite a distance. Though invasive the trees were once used extensively as landscape specimens and you can find them all over this town. Unfortunately the tree has escaped into the forests and in places is crowding out sugar and other maples. Norway maple is recognized as an invasive species in at least 20 states and it’s against the law to sell or plant them in New Hampshire.
The new spring shoots of cattails (Typha latifolia) are coming up among last year’s fallen stalks. Science has recorded cattail marshes growing up to 17 feet in a single year, but animals like muskrats often eat the roots and this helps keep them in check. Cattail roots contain more starch than potatoes and more protein than rice and they were an important food source for Native Americans. They made flour from the fleshy roots and ate the new shoots in spring. They had uses for every part of the plant, including its pollen. To anyone thinking they’ll go collect a basketful of cattail roots I say be very careful, because blue and yellow flag iris leaves look much like cattails and often grow right along with them, and iris roots are very poisonous. Know your roots!
For a short time between when they appear and when they ripen and fall American elm (Ulmus americana) seeds have a white fringe. When they ripen they’ll become dry and papery and finally fall to the wind. I grew up on a street that had huge 200 year old elms on it and those trees put out seeds in what must have been the millions. I remember how they wreaked havoc with cars by clogging the vents. My father complained about them more than once. Elm seeds contain 45% protein and 7% fiber and in the great famine of 1812 they were used as food in Norway.
I finally found some developing silver maple seeds to show you. Normally when very young they’re bright red with white hairs but these had gone over to green, even though they still had the hair. I’ll have to try again next spring. You really can’t see everything there is to see in spring unless you have all day every day to look, and even then I doubt it would be possible.
Some ferns are just coming up and others are knee high and ready to unfurl. I think these were cinnamon ferns (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) but they could be interrupted ferns (Osmundastrum claytoniana.) Royal ferns and sensitive ferns are still in the just out of the ground fiddlehead stage.
This isn’t a very good photo because all I had with me was the small camera I use for macro shots, but how often do we get to see baby squirrels playing? These three babies were less than half the size of an adult squirrel and spent quite a lot of time chasing each other in and out of a hollow tree, learning all the while I suppose. I’ve always liked watching squirrels. They’re a lot of fun to watch because they seem to have a lot of fun.
Go out, go out I beg of you
And taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the earth
With all the wonder of a child.
~Edna Jaques
Thanks for stopping in.
Yes, youth is a beautiful time.
I remember it well!
Me too and still keeping it alive as best I can. 🙂
The speed with which bud break occurs is fast most years but this year it seems to have broken all records! I am so pleased you managed to get shots of so many beautiful new leaves.
Thank you Clare. It’s the same here, and with spring flowers too. Some have passed on before I could get back to see them a second time.
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I agree that the first image of the shagbark hickory leaves opening is stunning! But then, like you, I spend as much time admiring the beauty of leaves as they appear as much as I do flowers, so I loved this post as you’ve captured all of the leaves featured in this post very well.
I also enjoyed the photo of the three young squirrels, you’re right, they do love to play, and it’s loads of fun watching them while they do.
It’s a shame in a way that the first days of spring pass so quickly in nature, while I look forward to each flower, leaf, bird, or what have you as it appears, they all come at the same time so quickly that it’s impossible to catch them all well in photos in any one single year. That seems truer this year than most, as everything seems to be in more of a hurry to catch up because of the late start.
Thanks Jerry! New leaves really add another dimension to spring.
Yes, I love watching squirrels and I do quite often.
I know what you mean; the flowers come and go so quickly in spring I only got to see the trout lilies once this year before they disappeared. They do all seem to be in a hurry!
Thank you so much for all you do for us nature lovers. I look forward to your blog each week, to learn more about the the world around us.
Thanks very much David, I’m happy to hear that!
I hope you’ll think of me as just a fellow nature lover though. I’m really not trying to teach, but I understand what you mean. I’m sure I could learn a lot from you as well.
A really delightful photo essay on newly opened buds. Thanks for showing us this underappreciated beauty.
You’re welcome, and thank you.
Lovely images of the ‘great unfolding’ of spring. How I love this time of year!
Thank you Eliza. I’ll second that!
Your focus on the detail of leaves, flowers and everything you see has made me look more carefully at my own world. I love the goldfinch feather … Looks as if it has been dipped into a pot of gold..
Thank you Gerrie. I’m sure you’re seeing many wonderful things by looking a little more closely.
I agree about the feather’s color but another reader wrote in to say it was a yellow shafted flicker’s feather, which is also a very pretty bird that I’ve been trying for years to get a photo of.
This is a wonderful series of photos of things so many of us overlook. The first photo is just splendid!
Thanks Montucky! It’s hard to take a bad photo of a shagbark hickory bud opening when it grows on a river.
I look forward to each of your posts. I appreciate the images and the information and always think about writing to thank you for them. The recent post with its stunning photos of beautiful bud breaks is another winner … so THANK YOU!
You’re welcome, and thank you for being a regular reader!
Lovely to see the treasures and the baby squirrels. I was just saying recently how I never seem to see the babies, even where the grown-ups are common.
Thank you. I think we don’t usually see them because they’re so high up. but this split in an oak tree trunk is low down and they come out to sun themselves and play. Before this I hadn’t ever seen one either.
Great post as always. I’m up in Alaska for the summer. We are way behind you but the other day when I was cleaning out one of the flower beds here, I came across huge patches of horsetails. They are everywhere. I think of you often when I can identify something in the wild I’ve seen in your posts. Thank you for teaching me so much! There is a hillside by our camp that is so full of lichens, mosses and liverworts, you’d be there for days trying to identify them all. You’d be in heaven here! Laura from TouringNH
Wow, you sure do get around Laura! I envy you. I’ve always wanted to see Alaska.
Too bad about the horsetails. I’ve seen them covered by black plastic for a year and they still thrived.
I’d love to see that hillside full of lichens, mosses, and liverworts!
I hope you’re having a whole bunch of fun!
We are! I’ve been writing about all the places we’ve been this year on TheWanderingRVer blog. As soon as I get caught up, I’m going to write a post about some of the flora I’ve seen. I’ll be sure to let you know when I post it. You would absolutely love it here!
I just read your post on Death Valley. That’s fascinating about the moving stones. I didn’t know they had figured it out!
I’d like to have that blooming cactus. It’s a beauty.
I’m looking forward to seeing all the beauty of Alaska too!
I thank you so much for your reverant love of nature and for sharing your photos, knowledge and inspirations with us!!
I look forward to your posts and have shared your blog with many others.
I live in CT, so the trees here are a little ahead of yours…it seemed everything was late this year, but nature knows how to speed up and do what it needs to do to keep up!
I love the picture of the feather, but I’m pretty sure it belonged to a Yellow-Shafted Flicker. It is truly a Gift when you find one… its a good one to keep in your car and home, as Native American Knowledge tells us it is for Protection.
Thank you, again for sharing so much Beauty🌸
Sonya Wulff
Wallingford, CT
You’re welcome Sonya and thank you very much. I appreciate you sharing this blog with others. Hopefully it will introduce more people to parts of nature that they haven’t seen.
I’ll take your word for the identification of the feather; thank you. Regular readers of this blog know that I don’t “do birds” because of colorblindness, but I do know the flicker and wish I had seen it. It’s a beautiful bird!
I’m also happy to know that is for protection. I think we can all use all of that we can get but unfortunately I didn’t keep the feather.
This link may work…it shows the tail feathers of the Yellow-Shafted Northern Flicker…just finding the tail feather will be protection for you, I’m sure!
https://www.fws.gov/lab/featheratlas/feather.php?Bird=YSFL_tail_adult_ventral
Thank you Sonya, actually the link didn’t work but I have seen the flicker’s tail feathers on another site and I think your identification is correct. Now if I could only see the bird!
Greetings!
I just came across your wonderful blog and immediately subscribed. In addition to your great text and imagery, your listing of Favorite Links is a goldmine!
I am an amateur naturalist / picture-maker located about 500 miles NorthWest of you. So I’ll be checking your blog to get a “heads up” as springtime makes it way northward.
Spring ephemerals are just starting here now.
Thanks for your fine work.
Tom
https://brtthome.com/
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You’re welcome Tom and welcome! I like reading blogs from south of here for the same reason. Our spring ephemerals are just about finishing up now but we have plenty more flowers to come, many of which are native to your area.
Your opening shot was a prize winner by itself and I loved those squirrels, thanks for including them.
Thank you Susan. Watching those squirrels is a lot of fun!