Birds, Buds, and Blossoms

Anyone who has spent time in nature knows that spring doesn’t happen on a certain calendar day. Spring happens when everything seems to just come together one day. The breeze is warmer, the sunshine is warmer, all the birds are singing, insects appear, and people are smiling for no reason they can explain. But even with all these outward signs the first day of spring is sensed more than anything else, and you find that you are finally able to say “this is spring.” That day came last Sunday, March 3rd. One of the outward signs was a beautiful bird song that seemed to be coming from everywhere. I was at the local college and the bird, which I believe was a purple finch, was up in the top of a tree on the corner of one of the large brick buildings surrounding the campus quad. Its warbling song echoed off the brick walls and made it sound like it came from all directions. I think it was enjoying the natural PA system it had found, because even though it saw me with my camera it still sang beautifully.

The purple finch, bird people say, has no purple on it but it does have a color they call “raspberry” on its head, chest, face and back. It’s the New Hampshire State Bird, and it gained that title by edging a chicken out of the top spot. I’d guess whoever named it, if they thought that color was purple, must have been even more colorblind than I am.

The purpose of this day’s outing was to see if I could find any female American hazelnut flowers in bloom. I chose a bush that had male catkins that were golden colored and pliable, signalling that they were almost ready to open and start releasing pollen.

And there were the tiny scarlet stigmas that are the female flowers. I saw several in bloom on this day.  The easiest way to find out if they’re ready to bloom is by watching the male catkins. When they turn a gold color the female flowers will be along at any time, because these tiny, sticky red threads are what will catch the pollen that is released on by the male flowers on the golden catkins. If pollination is successful each tiny thread will become a hazelnut.

As I usually do, I’ll show this photo I took years ago to give you a sense of scale. These are some of the smallest flowers I try to get photos of. The only way I can find them is by looking for a hint of color.  

While I was looking at the hazelnuts I noticed birds up in the staghord sumacs. They were quite far away and I couldn’t tell what they were, but I had seen flocks of robins here before eating the sumac berries so I assumed that’s what they were. I was surprised, once I started clicking the shutter, to see that they were bluebirds. I believe the one seen here is a female. It’s not a great shot but considering how far away I was on a dim, overcast day I had to be happy with it.

A male bluebird was high up on one of the rungs that climb the towers that hold up the high tension wires in this area. He didn’t have to worry about me following him up there.

Red winged blackbirds have come back in great numbers and for those who have never seen one, this is a classic pose for the males. Males are the only ones with red and yellow shoulder patches. Returning males will sit at the tops of cattail stems to guard the spot they’ve chosen for a nest, and they will fight off any interlopers. Their lives seem to revolve around cattail plants; they use them for cover and build their nests down low to the ground in them. They use their soft fluffy seeds to line the nest and they dig grubs out of last year’s stems. Males will often hide down in the cattails. Their strange whirring, clicking, and whistling calls are the only thing that gives them away. Males will also sit high in the tops of tall trees in large numbers, I found out just the other day.

I’ve never seen the back of a red winged blackbird before. They have some interesting makings.

I took a closer look at a few buds I saw here and there. This Japanese honeysuckle bud was already leafing out, and I wasn’t surprised. That’s one way invasives get a leg up on natives; they start photosynthesizing earlier in spring and later into the fall. It’s common to see Japanese honeysuckles with leaves after most other leaves have fallen.

I didn’t expect to see any movement in beech buds but it’ll soon be time to start watching them for signs of bending. Sunlight excites the cells on the sunlit side of the bud and they grow faster than the cells on the shaded side, and this creates tension in the bud. They slowly curl into a rainbow shaped arc until finally something has to give, and they quite literally tear themselves open. The new leaves just out of the bud are one of the most beautiful things seen in a spring forest but it isn’t just beech; oak, maple, hickory and others are also all beautiful in their own ways. Spring is the time to start watching nature closely if you care about learning anything from it.

Nothing is happening with the brambles like blackberry and raspberry yet but they open quite early so it shouldn’t be too long before they start leafing out.

Last year I saw the beautiful chrome yellow-green buds of bitternut hickory and I told myself I’d go back and see the leaves, but of course I forgot.

This year I’ve written myself a note and stuck it on the refrigerator. SEE BITTERNUT HICKORY LEAVES it says. Whether I see them or not is still a 50/50 chance. The thing about writing notes to yourself is, you can still forget where you put the note.

I took another look look at red maple buds to see how they were coming along. Each one of these buds is just about the size of a BB that you’d put in an air rifle. The one in the middle, just above center, had a hole in it and that meant the bud scales were pulling back to let the flowers out of the bud. Very soon I thought, there will be red and silver maple flowers everywhere.

I went back to the same tree a few days later, after a night of heavy rain, and found that most of the buds had indeed opened and had flowers showing. But I also found many of them filled with water. This illustrates the danger of buds opening too early; if we were to have cold enough weather and the rain water in these buds was to freeze, every flower in the bud, 20-25 of them, would be killed. That’s what bud scales are for; they protect the flower buds inside from getting wet and freezing. If they happen to open too early freezing is a real possibility. We had a freeze in May last spring that wiped out most of the apple crop but by then the maples had done their job and were setting seed.

The vernal pools and wetlands are all free of ice now so I’d guess that the spring peepers will start in any time. They usually start singing just about the time the redwing blackbirds appear.

Willows have yet to flower but the catkins get bigger every day, so it won’t be long.

This is the first scilla of the season that I’ve seen. I think they’re one of the prettiest spring flowering bulbs, especially when massed in the hundreds. I found it in bloom at the local college. Mine aren’t showing yet.

This is the second viola I’ve seen this spring; another college find. I couldn’t get close to it so we could get a better look but there should be many more coming along. I like its color.

Last week I told the story of the lady who asked me about coming to see the locust when what she meant was crocus. This week I was standing on the sidewalk getting shots of these yellow crocus blossoms when a young girl came along with who I would guess must have been her mother and grandmother. “Oh look honey!” the mother said, “The tulips are blooming!” I just smiled and said hello. As John Maxwell said: You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.

I saw a few reticulated irises at the college, but just a few. There used to be large numbers of them but I suppose they must be fading away with age. Or something. From what I understand the college no longer has a gardener, or someone dedicated to strictly gardening. It’s too bad, because they need one.

These particular reticulated irises are not fading away. In fact they’re increasing and I’m happy about that because they grow in my yard. Last year I had one flower and this year I have four. I have to thank my blogging friend Ginny for them because she sent them up from Maryland. They’re much bigger than those at the college so I’m guessing they must be a hybrid. They’re beautiful whatever they are, so thanks Ginny!

Another thing I’m happy about is daylight savings time begins tonight. I’m all for later sunsets.

It’s spring fever, that’s what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain

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Spring Knocks Louder

This week the temperature reached nearly 60 degrees on three or four days and we also had some rain, and this meant that most of the snow left in a hurry. The ice on vernal pools is melting and I was happy to see this, because places like these is where many spring peeper frogs will sing from. Much life depends on these pools; not only frogs but at least three different salamanders and fairy shrimp rely on them. They also ease the burden of finding a water source for many other animals and birds. They play a very important role in the life of the forest in spring and early summer but by August almost all of them will have dried up.

For those who have never seen one, this is a spring peeper. It is a small tree frog which might reach an inch and a half long on a good day, but its small size doesn’t mean it doesn’t have powerful lungs. Standing beside a pond full of them singing on an April evening can be almost deafening. The easiest way to identify them, if you can even find one in all the leaf litter, is by the X on its back. Some call it a cross but it looks more like an X to me. They can be tan, brown, green, or gray and have round pads on the ends of their fingers and toes. If you’d like to hear them there are videos of them on You Tube, some less than a minute long. They should start singing here any day now.

I looked at red maple buds one day and they hadn’t changed much, but then I went back two days later and saw trees full of flowers. These are male (staminate) flowers, many already laden with pollen.

The sticky red maple female (pistilate) flowers are ready for pollen. It really is amazing how fast this happens. You have to look at them every day to catch the various stages.

Part of my days have included looking at hazelnut buds and I must have looked at hundreds before I found this one in bloom. Each tiny red filament coming out of the bud is a female flower and on this day they were radiant and glowing with an inner light. If everything goes well each tiny flower will become a hazelnut.

For those who haven’t seen hazelnut flowers, here is a photo from a few years ago with a paperclip for scale. They are some of the smallest flowers that I try to photograph and they can be a real challenge.

One very windy day I went to try to get a photo of some male hazelnut catkins and this is the so-so result. It’s not a great shot but it shows that the catkins have loosened up and lost their winter stiffness, and will now move in the wind. This is important, because hazelnuts are wind pollinated. Though the catkins, which are just long strings of male flowers, aren’t releasing pollen yet it won’t be long now. This is what the sticky red female flowers in the previous shot are waiting for.

Alder catkins have started to open up and they’re beautiful as always. All the greenish parts seen here are male flower buds just starting to peek out from under the tiny red /purple bud scales. They are very beautiful the way they sparkle and shine as the wind moves them. They make the bushes look as if someone had strung jewels or lights on them. I haven’t seen any of the very tiny female flowers yet but with this happening it won’t be long.

The willows are filled with furry gray catkins But I haven’t seen any of their yellow flowers yet.

The skunk cabbages, once more released from their cover of snow, sit and wait patiently in their swamp, still leafless. Soon they will hear a signal only they can hear and this swamp will erupt with big green leaves.

A dandelion flower seemed as bright as the sun after a string of cloudy days. Botanically speaking this is a flower head made up of many small ray florets. Each yellow strap shaped petal is actually five petals fused into one, and the five notches at their ends show that. You can see the many tiny ram’s horn shaped stigmas loaded with pollen in this shot. On a dandelion blossom the stigma comes out of a tiny tube formed by the anthers. This plant is calling loudly to the bees.

But the bees are rolling around drunkenly in the crocus blossoms, spilling pollen grains all over their petals. What a life.

The bees didn’t seem to care for these pale yellow crocuses.

Hellebores are also showing their big buds. Interestingly on these plants the buds are prettier than the sickly looking greenish white flowers. That’s just my opinion but there are a lot of them in this city park, as if a nursery donated all the hellebores that didn’t sell. I’m not sure who would buy a dozen or so plants with that color flower and then scatter them here and there.

I was surprised to see scilla up and blooming already at the local college. The plants in my own yard aren’t even showing yet.

These are pretty little flowers but getting a shot looking into one can be challenging. I had to gently bend the stem back with one hand and take this photo with the other. I’m often glad that cameras have built in image stabilization these days.

The cress is flowering madly and if all those flowers are allowed to go to seed, it will do so for years to come.

Cornellian cherries often remind me of a child dipping their toes in the water to decide if they want to go in swimming or not. This bush has been slowly opening its buds and dipping its toes for weeks now so I hope it decides to bloom soon.

The beautiful plum colored reticulated irises are in bloom. At one time the only way to get this color to dye with was by boiling a certain kind of snail for three days, Is it any wonder that the color was reserved for royalty? They were the only ones who could afford it.

A robin wanted to show me that the ground had fully thawed so it hopped my way and pulled out a worm. I’ve seen this countless times but this is the first photo I’ve gotten of it. Mr. Robin had better eat his fill because it won’t be long before he has several more mouths to feed. The trees are filled with female birds that squawk warning cries when you get too close, so I assume they’re nesting.

Listen, can you hear it?  Spring’s sweet cantata. The strains of grass pushing through the snow. The song of buds swelling on the vine. The tender timpani of a baby robin’s heart.  Spring!
~Diane Frolov

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Mid April Flowers

It’s that time of year when spring ephemeral flowers appear to live out their short lives before the leaves appear on the trees. Once that happens the trees will cast shade deep enough to keep most flowers from blossoming so they grow, bloom and go dormant in about a month’s time. Vernal pools like the one in this photo are good places to look for wildflowers. And frogs and salamanders too.

I find spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) near a vernal pool like the one in the previous photo. They seem to appear overnight, so at this time of year I check the spot where they grow every couple of days. I’m always surprised to see them, because just a day or two earlier there was no sign of them. This photo is of a very unusual spring beauty, like none I’ve ever seen. The white petals usually have purple stripes the same color as the purple anthers in this example, but this one had none. Each flower blossoms for just three days, but the stamens are active only for a day. The stamens consist of, in this case, a white filament tipped by a violet anther. The stamen is the male part of a flower and produces pollen. In a spring beauty the female part of the flower is in the center of the blossom and is called the pistil. It terminates in a three part (tripartite) style.

This example looks more like the spring beauties I know. I always try to find the flower with the deepest color and this was it on this day. I’ve read that it is the amount of sunlight 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. The Native American Iroquois tribe used the powdered roots of this plant medicinally and the Algonquin people cooked them like potatoes.

I usually see trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) blooming with spring beauties but on this day all I could find were the leaves, which are speckled like the body of a trout. The flowers will probably have appeared by next weekend and there should be many thousands of them in this spot.

Coltsfoot plants (Tussilago farfara) are late this year; I often see them in March but these are the first I’ve seen this year. They like moist to wet soil and these examples 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 many tree and shrub flowers that appear earlier, so I suppose “earliest” depends on what your definition of a wildflower is. In the past coltsfoot was thought to be good for the lungs and the dried leaves were often smoked as a remedy for asthma and coughs. It was also often used as a tobacco substitute, asthma or not. A native of Europe, it was most likely brought over by early settlers.

After having their flowers frostbitten again and again the red maples (Acer rubrum) are finally free to let go and open all of their blooms, as this photo of the male blossoms shows. Each tiny red anther will become greenish yellow with pollen, which the wind will then carry to the female blossoms.

These are the female (pistillate) flowers of the red maple, just emerging. They are tiny little things; each bud is hardly bigger than a pea and each crimson stigma not much bigger in diameter than an uncooked piece of spaghetti. Once the female flowers have been dusted by wind carried pollen from the male flowers they will begin the process of becoming the beautiful red seeds (samaras) that this tree is so well known for. Many parts of the red maple are red, including the twigs, buds, flowers and seed pods.

Each tiny female red maple flower (stigma) sparkles as if it had been dipped in sugar. They must be very sticky.

American elm (Ulmus americana) flowers form in small clusters. The flower stems (pedicels) are about half an inch long so they wave in the slightest breeze and that makes them very hard to get a good photo of. They are wind pollinated, so waving in the breeze makes perfect sense. Each tiny flower is about an eighth inch across with red tipped anthers that darken as they age.

The whitish feathery bit is the female pistil which protrudes from the center of each elm flower cluster. If the wind brings it pollen from male anthers it will form small, round, flat, winged seeds called samaras. I remember them falling by the many millions when I was a boy; raining down enough so you couldn’t even see the color of the road beneath them.

I finally found a pussy willow (Salix) that was showing some color but I don’t know if it was coming or going. This example looks a lot like the seed pods I see when they’re done flowering, but the gray fuzz hints at its just opening. I’ll have to go back and see it again.

I saw enough crocus blooms on Saturday to fill this entire post with nothing but crocuses, but I thought I’d restrain myself and show just this one, which was my favorite.

I also saw my first daffodil blossom on Saturday. Unfortunately I also saw many with frost bitten buds and leaves that won’t be blossoming this year. It’s a shame that so many were fooled by the early warmth.

The Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas) are finally blooming. The buds have been showing color for over a month but they refused to bloom until they were sure it was warm enough, and that was probably wise. This shrub is in the dogwood family and gets its common name from its red fruit. 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 often blooms at just about the same time as forsythias do. Its yellow flowers are very small but there are enough of them to put on a good show.

Japanese andromeda blossoms (Pieris japonica) look like tiny pearlescent glass fairy lights topped with gilded ormolu mounts, worthy of the art nouveau period. Japanese andromeda 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 don’t know what it is that grabs me about a white flower with a simple blue stripe down the center of each petal but striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica) has it. The flowers are much like the scilla (Scilla siberica) that most of us are familiar with in size and shape, but they aren’t seen anywhere near as often and border on rare in this area. They’re worth looking for because they’re very beautiful.

Scilla (Scilla siberica) are also called Siberian squill and they are doing very well this year. Both striped squill and scilla grow to be about ankle high.  Scilla will spread and grow in lawns quite freely, so it’s wise to be careful when planting it. In some places it is considered invasive, but I haven’t ever seen that here. People usually plant it knowing that it will spread into large blue drifts.

Scilla has stripes on its petals and sepals much like striped squill but as far as I can tell they aren’t related. They look great planted together though.

Friends of mine grow hellebores that are very beautiful and when I see them I always wonder why, of all the people I gardened for, not one of them grew hellebores. I can’t even remember anyone asking about hellebores, and that seems odd considering their great beauty. 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. Maybe that’s why nobody I gardened for grew them.

I’ve seen flowers that were as beautiful but it’s hard to name one that could surpass the beauty of this hellebore blossom. It’s hard not to stare at it even here in a photo. it’s the kind of thing that I find very easy to lose myself in; mesmerizing, almost. I wonder how someone cannot love a life that is filled with things like this.

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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A Wider View

I apologize to those who came hoping to see snail’s tongues or some other minute wonder of nature, but every now and then I like to be standing up when I click the shutter, rather than lying in a prone position in the forest litter. A wider view is a little easier on the knees, which seem to creak and pop a little more now than they used to.

Sky and Telescope’s Sky Week program told me that I’d be able to see Saturn just above and to the left of the full moon last week and I saw what looked like a very bright star, but all my camera could see was the moon. I was happy to see that it had some yellow in it and had lost the harsh, white coldness of winter. Of course the moon doesn’t change color and was yellow only because I was seeing it through our atmosphere, but I kind of like this color. It feels warmer.

The sun was also playing color games. Last year corn was grown in this field and then last fall the farmer planted a cover crop of some kind. In the late afternoon sunshine it was such an impossible bright green color that I had to stop and get a picture of it. My color blindness cheating software tells me that it is yellow green.

I went to one of my favorite viewing spots in Marlborough, New Hampshire over the weekend to get a picture of Mount Monadnock. I don’t really need any more pictures of the mountain but I can’t seem to stop taking them.  When I was about 15 or so I foolishly thought that someday I would have made a list of every wildflower that grew on its flanks. I quickly realized that two lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to compile such a list.

 

I saw some fuzzy wild ginger leaves (Asarum canadense,) but no blossoms yet.

Once again I found a “late fall polypore” that didn’t know it was mid spring. This is Ischnoderma resinosum, whose common name is literally “Late Fall Polypore.” These are said to fruit on hardwood logs late in the year, but I wonder if temperature and day length isn’t a trigger for them. Days can have the same length and temperature in the spring as they do in fall and these seemed relatively fresh.

I expect trails to be muddy at times but this was ridiculous. Luckily there was plenty of room in a field off to the left so I could go around it.

It has been dry enough here to raise the brush fire danger to high. The water in the giant mud puddle in the previous photo went down so fast that the mud around the edges hadn’t even hardened when I saw it. Unfortunately frogs, counting on April showers that never came, miscalculated and didn’t lay their eggs deep enough to survive the lack of rain. Even nature makes an occasional mistake and in this case the price paid is fewer frogs in the forest, and that means more black flies and mosquitoes.

I stopped at a small pond hoping to see some frogs but all I saw were reflections and pollen.

I saw some colorful turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) but no turkeys.

 

Sometimes you have to climb a hill to see a mountain and that’s exactly what I had to do to see across the Connecticut River valley to Stratton Mountain in Vermont. On Sunday I climbed the hill known as “High Blue” in Walpole, New Hampshire. Whoever named this hill got it right because the view is always very blue. It has been quite warm so I was surprised to see snow still on the ski trails.

I’m seeing a lot of trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) flowers now. These are one of the most fragrant flowers in the forest, but since they grow so close to the ground you have to get down on your knees to smell them.  While I was down there smelling them I thought I’d get a picture too, so all of you who were betting that I couldn’t get through an entire post without at least one macro shot were right.

The influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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