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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Late March Flowers

I saw my first dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) of the season last Saturday. It was beautiful as they always are, and very welcome.

But the dandelion that I saw wasn’t the first dandelion of the season. This seed head surprised me.

Coltsfoot plants (Tussilago farfara) still seem a little reluctant to bloom heavily but I do see them. They like moist to wet soil and these two were in a roadside ditch. Coltsfoot flowers would be hard to confuse with dandelion but I suppose it happens.

Coltsfoot flowers are flat and dandelions are more mounded. Dandelion stems are smooth and coltsfoot stems have scales. Coltsfoot is said to be the earliest blooming wildflower in the northeast but there are tree and shrub flowers that appear earlier, so I suppose “earliest” depends on what your definition of a wildflower is.

Crocuses are blooming well now, and I saw a couple of open daffodils but I couldn’t get close to them because they were in the middle of large beds and I couldn’t step on the other plants.

I was able to get closer to the crocuses. I used to work for a lady who had quite a few crocuses and also many squirrels and chipmunks and we used to laugh each spring at the odd places that crocus bloomed. They came up in places where neither of us would have planted them so we always blamed the squirrels and / or chipmunks for moving the small bulbs around. It isn’t odd or unusual for flowers to come with memories and I think of her every time I see crocuses. They bring so much pleasure and ask for nothing in return.

These reticulated iris had some amazing color, I thought.  My color finding software says the color is orchid in light, medium and dark tones. The yellow is perfect with it.

In northern Greece early Neolithic people left behind remains of meals that included cornelian cherry fruit. Man has had a relationship with this now little known shrub for about 7000 years. The Persians and early Romans knew it well and Homer, Rumi, and Marcus Aurelius all probably tasted the sour red, olive like fruit, which is high in vitamin C. Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) is in the dogwood family and is our earliest blooming member of that family, often blooming at just about the same time as forsythias do. Its yellow flowers are quite small.

Friends of mine grow hellebores and this was the first to bloom. I love its beautiful dark color. Since Lent ended on Thursday, March 24 this plant lived up to its common name of Lenten rose. There is one called “Dark and Handsome” that looks much like this one, but I’m not sure if this is it. It’s a beautiful thing.

Pliny said that if an eagle saw you digging up a hellebore it (the eagle) would cause your death. He also said that you should draw a circle around the plant, face east and offer a prayer before digging it up. Apparently doing so would appease the eagle. I’ve never seen an eagle near these plants but I haven’t dug one up either.

Skunk cabbages seemed to be having a hard time producing pollen this year but I’ve seen a few with pollen now that the maroon and yellow splotched spathes have started opening. They were holding back for a while as if not sure whether they should open or not. This one had a new green leaf shooting up beside it but its spathe was still tightly closed. There is a time when they’re young that the leaves do look somewhat cabbage like but they grow quickly and lose any resemblance once they age.

Inside the skunk cabbage’s spathe is the spadix, which is a one inch round, often pink or yellow stalked flower head from which the small flowers emerge. The flowers don’t have petals but do have four yellowish sepals. The male stamens grow up through the sepals and release their pollen before the female style and pistil grow out of the flower’s center to catch any pollen that visiting insects might carry from other plants. The spadix carries most of the skunk like odor at this stage of the plant’s life, and it is thought that it uses the odor to attract flies and other early spring insects. In 1749 in what was once the township of Raccoon, New Jersey they called the plant bear’s leaf because bears ate it when they came out of hibernation. Since skunk cabbage was and is the only thing green so early in the spring so the bears had to eat it or go hungry.

Our willows (Salix) finally bloomed after what seemed like a prolonged gray, fuzzy stage. Or maybe I was just impatient, because I always love seeing them in early spring. The male (Staminate) flowers are shown in the above photo. The inner bark and leaves of some willows contain salicylic acid, which is the active ingredient in aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid). Native Americans chewed or made tea from the willow’s leaves and inner bark to relieve fever or toothaches, headaches, or arthritis, and that is why the willow is often called “toothache tree.” It was a very important medicine that no healer would have been without.

The female willow flowers aren’t quite as showy as the male flowers but I’m happy to see them nonetheless. Tomorrow and Monday are supposed to be cold and snowy and it might harm a few flowers. We’ll have to wait and see; early spring flowers are fairly tough.

In my own yard the Scilla has started blooming. This fall planted bulb with small blue flowers is also called Siberian squill and comes from Russia and Turkey. It spreads quite quickly and is a good flower to grow in a lawn because it usually goes dormant before the grass needs to be cut. I grow it because it takes care of itself and is my favorite color.

Flowers have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music.  They relax the tenseness of the mind.  They dissolve its vigor. ~Henry Ward Beecher.

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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Glimpses

Here in the southwest corner of New Hampshire we’re getting into three straight weeks of cloudy weather. When the sun peeks out from behind the clouds everyone seems to stop-as if they need a moment to remember what it is.

One day while I was out walking the clouds parted long enough to get a teasing glimpse of blue sky and sunshine. This tree is a favorite perch for red winged blackbirds. I didn’t see any in the tree but I could hear several, so that’s a good sign.

 

I saw some black jelly fungi nearby (Exidia glandulosa.) With its matte finish and pillow like shapes it doesn’t look like other jelly fungi, but that’s what it is. I find it on alders and oaks in this area. It’s called black witch’s butter or black jelly roll.

 

Orange jelly fungus (Dacrymyces palmatus) seems to seep out from beneath tree bark, which makes sense since jelly fungi are actually parasites that grow on the mycelium of other fungi. Jelly fungi can be found throughout the winter. This one grew on a fallen hemlock limb.

The scilla I planted 2 years ago has come up already, but I was even more surprised to see roots already coming from acorns that the squirrels buried last fall. Scilla is also called Siberian squill (Scilla siberica.) The small blue flowers will be a welcome sight.

 

Bristly beard lichen (Usnea hirta) is common and can be seen on birch limbs or growing directly on the trunk of pine trees in this area. It likes the high humidity found near ponds and streams.

The husks of hazel nuts (Corylus) make good, dry homes for spiders, apparently. A large, shallow pit full of the remains of hundreds of thousands of burned hazelnut shells, estimated to be 9,000 years old, was found in Scotland in 1995. Man has been enjoying eating these nuts for a very long time.

 In cushion mosses (Leucobryum) each cushion shaped group is made up of thousands of individual plants. The leaves of these plants have outer layers of cells that are dead and which fill with water. This water filled outer coating helps protect the living cells by slowing dehydration. When the cushion does dry out it turns a much lighter green and can even look white.

Turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) have been peeking out from under the snow for weeks now-the snow is melting very slowly.

This frosted grain-spored lichen (Sarcogyne regularis) has reddish brown discs that have waxy, reflective crystals dusted (or frosted) over their surfaces. The crystals are called pruina and make the discs appear bluish gray. At a glance they appear to be Smokey Eye Boulder Lichen (Porpidia albocaerulescens) but there are differences.

Its sharp thorns couldn’t protect this thistle from winter’s wrath, but it wasn’t eaten.

Glimpses, that’s all we’ve see of the sun-just long enough to feel a little of its warmth and then it’s gone again. The weather people have been promising all week that we will see sunshine all weekend. It’s too early right now to tell what today will bring, but I hope their prediction is accurate.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:  when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~Charles Dickens.

Thanks for coming by.

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