More March Flowers

Red maple season (Acer rubrum) is in full swing now, and the hillside are starting to take on that reddish haze that is so common to this area in spring. It’s beautiful but so far in my experience, impossible to capture with a camera. Maybe I’ll do another climb and try again.

The female flowers, tiny scarlet stigmas, have appeared right on schedule and the male flowers continue to bloom. They might not look like much but to me they are as beautiful as any other flower, especially because they tell me that spring has arrived.

The male flowers cover the whole spectrum of blooming. Some have shed their pollen and are dying off while others are justs starting to open, as these were. Sugar maple flowers haven’t opened yet but it shouldn’t be too much longer. Once they open that will be the end of the maple sugaring season. I’ve heard it was a good year, though shortened because of the early warmth. I’m sure it was welcome after a terrible year last year.

One morning I went to one of the spots where I know coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) grows and saw nothing at all. Then that afternoon, after a day in the 50s F., there they were.

Coltsfoot isn’t native but it is still welcomed as one of our earliest blooming wildflowers. It won’t be too long before the plant’s leaves apper, and that will mean the end of their season. I was happy to see them; they helped push winter a little further back into my memory.

I know where to go to find almost all of the spring flowers that appear in these posts, but little chickweed is always a surprise. I never know when or where it will pop up. I’m not sure which one it was but it was pretty.

American hazelnuts (Corylus cornuta) continue their spring journey with the male catkins just starting to release pollen. I was happy to get this shot because it shows the transition from what the catkins look like in winter, there on the right, to what they look like in spring, on the left. As can be seen, the catkins lengthen by quite a lot and turn golden.

But that isn’t all that happens to the catkins. If you think of a catkin as a spring, when the spring gets pulled the coils are pulled apart, and that’s essentially what happens to a catkin. Each of the tiny manta ray like parts are bud scales. They have a white fringe and a blackish “tail.” As the central stalk of the catkin lengthens in spring the spirally arranged buds slowly pull apart, and under each tiny bud scale the actual flowers are revealed. The hundreds of flowers are the very small, roundish golden bits under each bud scale; maybe 3 to 5 per scale. To me all of this is simply a miracle. I can’t think of any other way to describe it.

And there were the tiny, sticky female flowers, already dusted with pollen grains.

Just after the hazelnuts start taking care of their spring business the alders (Alnus) begin, so as soon as I see golden hazelnut catkins blowing in the wind I start checking the alders. The two plants aren’t that different really, as far as strategy goes. It’s easy to see the way alder buds are arranged in spirals just like the hazelnuts, even in catkins that haven’t opened. Spirals are nature’s way of packing the most life into any given space and you see them used in everything from galaxies to our own inner ear.

I think alder catkins are more attractive than hazelnut catkins because of the contrasting purple and yellow colors. The brown and purple scales on the catkin are on short stalks and there are three yellow/ green flowers beneath each scale, each with a lobed calyx cup and three to five stamens with anthers, which are usually covered in yellow pollen. This was the only bush I found with open catkins and it was very early, I thought. Soon though, all the bushes that line pond edges will look like they’ve been strung with jewels.

I wanted to see what the plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea) was doing. It looked fine but it was too early for it to be flowering. It is one of the earliest though, so it shouldn’t be too long.

The other day I saw a Forsythia trying to bloom.

And the next day it had bloomed with two or three blossoms showing, but the day after that it got cold again, with a low of 15 degrees at night, so I’ll have to go see how it’s doing. Many of the plants that grow here have built in cold resistance but since Forsythia isn’t native it might have suffered.

Scilla have started blooming as well. I love the color of these small blossoms. I once worked for some people who had a large drift of scilla, thousands of them, under some old oaks, and it was beautiful.

There was no wind but this one looked as if it was in a gale. It was also beautiful.

Reticulated irises have finally appeared. This is a strange plant, because some years it blooms before crocuses and other years after, so I’ve learned not to count on it doing anything that I expect it to.

This was my favorite iris, but there was only one. I’ve heard that they will kind of fade over the years so that what was once twenty can become just one or two.

Snowdrops have fully opened.

This little crocus is one of my favorites, but more for its beautiful outside than its plain white inside. My blogging friend Ginny tells me small crocuses like these are called snow crocuses, which I guess nobody I gardened for years ago ever grew or wanted, because I had never heard of them. They’re very pretty little things.

Hyacinths are up and showing color.

And magnolia bud scales are starting to split open, because the flowers inside are now growing. It won’t be long before they show themselves.

Daffodils, the last time I saw them, were heavily budded and I expect by now many have opened. I hope to be able to show them to you in the next flower post if the cold didn’t get them.

It’s hard to say when the hellebores will open but they were showing some fine looking big red buds. Though the buds are red, the flowers on these plants will be a kind of not very exciting light, greenish color.

I’ve met many people who didn’t think spring was anything special, and some who have even said they didn’t like it at all. I have to say that I felt sorry for them because I’ve never understood how anyone couldn’t become excited by the promise and hope of the season, and why the beautiful miracle of the earth awakening once again didn’t make them want to sing. I’ve loved spring forever; since I was a very small boy, and it still just blows my heart open and makes me want to run and play and see and smell every flower that blooms and see every new leaf unfold. While I was taking some of these photos I heard the loud quacking of wood frogs, and then the next day I heard spring peepers. The grass is starting to show green in places and all of the birds are singing their beautiful songs of spring, and how could you not love it? If you don’t love it, I hope you can at least put up with it because I’ll be showing a lot more of it in future posts.

Free your heart from your mind. Embrace wonder for one moment without the need to consider how that wonder came to be, without the need to justify if it be real or not. ~Charles de Lint

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Mid April Flowers

The weather people said it would be cloudy every day last week but we had sunshine each day and by the weekend it was 74 degrees. This of course brought out more flowers, including this magnificent magnolia in a local park.

Some magnolias are very fragrant but this one seemed to be scentless. It doesn’t matter; it was still very beautiful.

Very beautiful.

Red maples are still blooming despite the heat. I’m still seeing the flowers in all stages of growth, depending on where I am. These were the male flowers, ready to release their pollen to the wind.

This old silver maple was already producing seeds. I like the white fur that appears just as the seeds (samaras) form.

The female flowers of American elms have appeared and they’re also very furry and white. These flowers are much too small for me to actually see so I look for white and when I see it I take photos. If you’ve ever seen an elm seed you understand.

I know of a female American elm and a male tree, but they’re miles apart so the pollen from the male anthers will never reach the female tree. Still, I found seeds on the female last year so there must be another male I’m not aware of. There aren’t many left because of disease. This shot of the male flowers was taken previously, a year or two ago. When I went to visit the male tree this year I found that all the flowers had already passed on.

The male flowers of box elder (Acer negundo) are small and hang from long filaments, and aren’t very showy. Each reddish male flower has tan pollen-bearing stamens that are so small I can’t see them. The pollen is carried by the wind to female trees and once they’ve shed their pollen the male flowers dry up and drop from the tree. It’s common to see the ground covered with them under male trees.

The female lime green box elder flowers appear along with the leaves, and in addition to the flowers just starting to show you can see a new leaf or two unfolding in this shot as well.

The female blossoms of the beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) have just started showing. Though the tiny stigmas look like the female flowers of American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) that I’ve shown previously beaked hazelnuts grow in areas north and east of Keene and I’ve never seen one here. Beaked hazelnuts get their name from the case that surrounds the nut. It is long and tubular and looks like a bird’s beak, while the nut cases of American Hazelnut have two parts that come together like a clam shell. The best way to tell the two apart is by looking at the new growth. On American hazelnut the new twigs will be very hairy and on beaked hazelnut they’ll be smooth, as these were.

There isn’t anything surprising about seeing coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) in April but this one was a real surprise because it grew in the sand on a beach next to a pond. They do seem to like wet places but I was really surprised to find it there. The dark mass you see around it is last year’s leaf growth.

Though if I went deep into the woods I might find some snow, glory of the snow (Chionodoxa luciliae) usually blooms after the snow has gone in this area. I know of only one place to find these spring bulbs. They’re very pretty.

Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophyllas) is also called great forget-me-not. It’s a perennial garden plant native to the Caucasus that seems to prefer shade. It’s a pretty little thing that does remind me of a forget me not.

Many Forsythias have come into bloom, including this old overgrown example. It’s a hard shrub to keep up with but it blooms better if you do. It’s cheering after a long winter to see them blooming on nearly every street in town.

The hellebores have come into bloom but they missed Easter this year. Though another name is Lenten rose I think of them as an Easter bloomer.

The scilla (Scilla siberica) is beautiful this year. I love its intense color.

The little pushkins (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica.) are blooming. Also called striped squill, this scilla size flower is one of my very favorite spring flowering bulbs. Though catalogs will tell you that the blue stripes are found only on the inside of the blossom they actually go through each petal and show on the outside as well. I think it must be their simplicity that makes them so beautiful.

I got lost in a daffodil at a local park because it was absolutely perfect, without a single blemish.

Every flower has its good side but I couldn’t find a bad side on this daffodil. I could see it winning all the blue ribbons in a flower show.

Japanese andromeda (Pieris japonica) is an ornamental evergreen shrub that is very popular, and you can see why. Some think the blossoms resemble lily of the valley so another common name for the plant is lily of the valley shrub. Some varieties have beautiful red leaves on their new shoots. I’ve never seen them bloom like they’re doing this year and that makes me wonder if they like mild winters and warm dry springs.

The pretty, deeply pleated leaves of false hellebores (Veratrum viride) have appeared. False hellebore is one of the most toxic plants growing in a New England forest and people have died from eating it after mistaking it for something else. Even animals won’t eat them, but certain insects or slugs will, and usually by July the plant’s leaves look shot full of holes. They have small green flowers later in summer but the flowers only appear on plants that are 10 or more years old.

I check for trout lilies at least twice a week at this time of year so I know their leaves have appeared almost overnight. I love the little yellow, lily like flowers that should appear soon.

Near the trout lilies grow spring beauties, and I was so happy to find them in bloom. I’ve read that it is the amount of sunlight they grow in that determines color in a spring beauty blossom. The deeper the shade the more intense the color, so I look for them in more shaded areas. I’ve seen some that were almost pure white and others with prominent stripes like these. I took this photo with my phone and then used Google lens on the photo. It didn’t know if they were Carolina spring beauties (Claytonia carolinana) or Virginia spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) but I really didn’t care. To be honest plant names have lost their importance for me and the only reason I include them at all is for readers who like to know what they’re seeing. I’m interested more in their beauty than their name, and these tiny blossoms are extremely beautiful.

Another name for spring beauties is “good morning spring.” I’ve heard that each flower only lasts for three days but there are so many of them in this spot you’d never know it. I’m glad that I can be part of their too short lives each spring and I hope that you can say the same about the flowers you love.

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning. ~ Lydia M. Child

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Early April Flowers

It’s that time of year when we don’t know whether we’ll need summer clothes or winter clothes. The temperatures have soared and fallen and then done it again, and some plants seem to be holding back a bit. But not the skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus). I saw a few with leaves like this one. When that first leaf just unfurls is the only time that it actually looks like a cabbage leaf.

While I was in the skunk cabbage swamp I checked on the native early azaleas (Rhododendron prinophyllum). The bud scales are pulling back so that’s a good sign. I look forward to seeing these very fragrant pink flowers in early June when the pink lady’s slippers bloom.

I went to see if there was any sign of spring beauties or trout lilies and didn’t see any, but I did see lots of green shoots in the pond that they grow near. This scene is so simple, so every day, but also so very beautiful and pleasurable, in my opinion. Sitting alone in the spring forest where the world is hushed you can almost hear the new life springing from the earth. If you care to look closely you find that what looks like dead leaves and stems and dried blades of last year’s grass is alive with new green shoots much like these.

There was also green on the Japanese honeysuckles. That’s one reason invasive plants are so successful; they start photosynthesizing weeks before our native plants and so get a leg up.

I went to see the willows and found them full of flowers. This isn’t a flower, by the way. This is a flower head, which is made up of many flowers. The flowers shown are the male (staminate) flowers. Female flowers appear on separate bushes slightly later than the male flowers and aren’t quite as showy. Willows are pollinated by insects, not wind.

There is quite a lot of tension in a willow flower head and you often see them bent nearly double. I think this is caused by the flowers on one side of the catkin opening first and growing faster than those on the opposite side. It’s the same way a beech bud opens.

I thought I’d see if I could find any coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara). I did but all I saw was the tiny yellow speck of a barely open flower.

Since I’d never seen a coltsfoot so close to blooming I went back the next day. They were in full bloom, so apparently once they start showing a little color it doesn’t take long. The flowers on coltsfoot plants come up before the leaves show so there is no hint of when it will appear. You have to remember where you’ve seen it last year and revisit the places the following spring. Coltsfoot is native to Europe and Asia and was brought here by early settlers. It has been used medicinally for centuries and another name for it is coughwort.

Dandelions are coming in twos now, and even threes, fours and fives.

The female red maple flowers are growing slowly due to the cool weather we had last week. I often describe red maple flowers are “petal-less” but that isn’t strictly true. They do have petals but at the stage I photograph them in early spring the petals are very hard to see, so even though they are indeed petal-less in the photo the petals will come along later. You can just see the tops of them coming out of the buds in this shot.  

I took this shot of male red maple flowers that were showing petals. You can see how the anther tipped filaments grow right up out of what almost looks like a tiny tulip.

I like this shot of male red maple flowers because it shows them in all of their stages. In the center you can see some that haven’t yet grown out of the bud and on the left the anthers have grown up out of the bud but they aren’t yet carrying any pollen. On the right the anthers are releasing pollen, which will hopefully find some female flowers. This is the first photo I’ve ever gotten of the male flowers in all stages of growth and I think it happened because of the up down, warm cold weather. Usually you find them all at about the same stage of growth.

The buds on box elder (Acer negundo), which is another member of the maple family, have also opened. The red brown bits are the male anthers, which will dangle at the ends of long filaments before long. I didn’t see any of the fuzzy, lime green female flowers yet but they don’t appear until the leaves just start to show.

Here is a preview of what those stamens of male box elder flowers will look like. Box elder is in the maple family but its wood is soft when compared to other maples. Several Native American tribes made syrup from its sap and the earliest example of a Native American flute, dating from 620-670 AD, was made from its wood.

Johnny jump ups have been blooming for weeks now. I love seeing them. They’re pretty, they self-seed readily and will bloom for years, and they ask for nothing.

Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) has come along all of the sudden and I’m seeing flowers by the hundreds in some places. It’s a pretty little thing which can also be invasive, but nobody really seems to care. It’s in the mint family and is related to henbit.

Promises were made by Forsythia…

…and the magnolias.

Bicolor daffodils have arrived.

And lots of hyacinths. They’re beautiful things.

Grape hyacinths are not hyacinths (they’re in the asparagus family) but they do look like upside down bunches of grapes.

These early tulips are very early this year. They looked orange when I was kneeling beside them but now they look red in the photo.

I was surprised that I didn’t see a single bee on this day but it wasn’t because the crocuses weren’t trying. A crocus blossom has three pollen bearing male anthers surrounding the central female stigma, which can be lobed and frilly like this example. I would have enjoyed seeing a pollen covered bee rolling in ecstasy in there.

Google lens tells me these are vernal crocuses (Crocus vernus). I can’t confirm that but I can tell you that they were extremely beautiful and I stood there for a while admiring them without caring what their name was. They, as Georgia O’Keefe once said, became my world for a moment.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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More Spring Flowers

We’ve had a week of record breaking warmth and things are happening fast now. The willows are starting to bloom even though when I checked three days prior to this photo there was no sign of them.

Poplars too are blooming, and their fuzzy catkins are getting longer quickly.

If you look closely you can see, in this case, the reddish brown male anthers on a poplar catkin. Once pollinated the female flowers will release their cottony seeds into the air and they will settle on everything. If you leave your car windows open near one you’ll have a fuzzy surprise inside. Male catkins will simply fall from the trees. By the thousands.

The alders seemed to have bloomed overnight. One day the catkins had no color and the next day, this beauty. One of my favorite sights in spring is seeing alder catkins dangling from the bushes like jewels.

Each stalked reddish-purple bud scale on a male speckled alder catkin (Alnus incana) opens in spring to reveal three male flowers beneath, each with a lobed calyx cup and three to five stamens with anthers covered in yellow pollen. The flower parts are clearly visible in this photo but they are tiny.

The female alder flowers were showing as well. Each of what look like tiny hairs poking out of the catkin is a single female flower. They will become the alder’s cones (strobiles) that I think most of us are familiar with. The whitish material is the “glue” the plant produces to seal each shingle like bud scale against the wet and cold winter weather. If water got under the bud scale and froze it would kill the female blossoms.

When I see this happening on American hazelnuts (Corylus americana); their male catkins hanging golden in the low evening sunlight, I know that it’s time to start looking for the tiny female flowers.

And there they were. I’m surprised that the male and female blooming period have happened together this year. Last year the female hazelnut flowers bloomed for weeks before the male catkins released their pollen. For those who don’t know, the bud that the scarlet stigmas come out of is usually about the same diameter as a piece of cooked spaghetti. I have to look for a hint of red and led the camera do the rest, because they’re too small to see.

Female red maple (Acer rubrum) flowers are also ready to accept pollen. What you see here are sticky, petal-less stigmas. Though it’s hard to tell with so many blooming at once each one is Y shaped, and each upper leg of the Y will become one of a pair of seeds. Once they ripen they will helicopter their way to earth by the millions, if not billions.

The female red maple blossoms might be ready for spring but the male blossoms are still sleeping; just barely poking their anthers out of the buds. I could almost imagine them asking is it spring already?

Yes, it’s time to wake up.

I was quite surprised to find elm flowers already. This tree had a tag on it that identified it as a Liberty American Elm, which was developed by the Elm Research Institute here in Keene. I once worked in the greenhouses there, almost 40 years ago I’d guess, when they were in Harrisville. My job was to take rooted cuttings and repot them into larger pots. The Liberty elm is resistant to Dutch elm disease, which wiped out most of the trees here in what was once known as “The Elm City.”

I saw lots of henbit flowers over the weekend but no ground ivy yet.

I’m seeing lots of dandelion blossoms now too.

How incredibly beautiful a lowly weed can be.

I saw the first snowdrops of the season up in Hancock, which is quite a lot cooler than Keene.

This is the first daffodil I saw. There were many more coming along. It’s odd to see them in March. I hope we don’t get a cold snap now.

The Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas) seem to be blooming early this year as well. This shrub is in the dogwood family and gets its common name from its red fruit. Man has had a relationship with this now little known shrub for about 7000 years; in northern Greece early Neolithic people left behind remains of meals that included cornelian cherry fruit. Cornelian cherry often blooms at just about the same time as forsythias do but it has beaten them this year. Its yellow flowers are very small; the bud they come out of is about the size of a pea, but there are enough of them to put on a good show.

I saw my first scillas of the season as well. They are one of my favorite spring flowering bulbs.

I saw the first bleeding heart shoots up out of the ground. They’re as pretty at this stage as when they’re flowering, I think. I also saw hellebore shoots and buds ready to go.

We’re supposed to have cooler temps this week but just in case I thought I’d show the flowers of a vernal witch hazel once more. I don’t know how long they or any of the spring flowering bulbs will tolerate the early heat.

Reticulated iris are finally going strong and I’m seeing more of them now. They are also called “netted iris” due to the net like formations on the rhizomes.

I’m seeing large drifts of crocuses but I’ve also seen quite a few wilted ones, so they’re going by quickly in the heat.

For those who are interested, the Google Lens app I discovered on my new phone correctly identified all of the spring flowers I tried it on. It tripped up on lichens and fungi a bit but so far it has done well on flowers. I’ve read that it’s a stand-alone app, which means that anyone can get it for their phone, whether Apple or Android. And plants aren’t all it will identify; I’ve heard you can use it on just about anything.

The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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