Snowdrops | New Hampshire Garden Solutions

Posts Tagged ‘Snowdrops’

A Little Bit of Everything

Posted in Buds, Flowers, Fungi, Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Things I've Seen, Wildflowers, tagged Alder Catkins, Canon SX40 HS, Climbing Mount Monadnock, Cress, Crocuses, Early Spring, Early Spring Flowers, Early Spring Plants, Hazelnut Catkins, Keene, Mount Monadnock, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Nor'easter, Olympus TG-7, Plant with Blue Leaf Buds, Poplar Catkins, Purple Crocus, Reticulated Iris, Signs of Spring, Snowdrops, Split Gill Fungus, Spring Flowering Witch Hazek, Spring Snow Storm, Swanzey New Hampshire, Vernal Witch hazel, Winter Plants, Winter Woods on March 18, 2023| 26 Comments »

I went over to Perkin’s Pond in Troy last week to see how spring was getting on but it still looked wintery, even though the day was gloriously spring like. The view of Mount Monadnock was as good as it gets, all frosted with snow like it was. At just over 3,000 feet, It’s the tallest peak in the area and until recently it was the second most climbed mountain in the world after Mount Fuji in Japan. Now however, there is said to be a mountain in China that sees over two million visitors each year. Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among a few of the well known people who have climbed Monadnock, and countless poets, authors, artists, and musicians have described how it made them feel. Thoreau said that it was far more beautiful when seen from a distance than it was looking off from the summit, and I agree. Its name is said to mean “mountain that stands alone” in the native Abenaki language. In warmer months this stretch of road is often lined with painters, photographers, and tourists.

Years ago, a friend and I climbed Monadnock in mid April when the snowpack looked much like it does in this shot. You can if you’re careful, pick your way around the snow, but there are spots where you have to go through it. We climbed unprepared for the conditions, and foolish mistakes like that can be dangerous and even deadly up there. In places we found ourselves in snow so deep we had to spread ourselves out and kind of swim -wriggle -crawl over the top of it. When we finally got to the top exhausted and drenched, we found ourselves in a fog so thick we couldn’t see enough of the landscape to know if we had even reached the summit. The world had become a blank, uniformly gray nothingness. Over on the right in this shot you can see a group of maybe 7 or 8 people, and I’d guess when they got got home they were able to wring water out of everything they wore, just like we were that day. But at least they weren’t in a fog.

The ice on Perkin’s Pond was starting to melt but I could see tracks on the ice leading to or away from the open water. I hope they were made by some thing rather than some one. This is not a good time of year to be on the ice.

I saw some shy old friends, the split gill mushrooms. These true winter mushrooms are small and always wear a fuzzy coat, as can be seen here. I couldn’t call them rare but neither are they common. I might find one group of them per year if I’m lucky.

These examples were dry and quite small; the largest one in this shot might have been as big as an aspirin. The “gills” on the split gill fungus are actually folds in the tissue of its spore bearing surface that split lengthwise when it dries out. The splits close over the fertile surfaces as the mushroom shrivels in dry weather. When rehydrated by rain the splits reopen, the spore-producing surfaces are exposed to the air, and spores are released. These little mushrooms are very tough and leathery and even though they’re white they can be hard to spot.

I mentioned in that last post how subtle the start of spring can be, and these hazelnut catkins illustrate that very well. You can just see that they’ve started to turn golden from the green they’ve been all winter, and that’s just one subtle sign of spring that I look for. At this time of year, it really doesn’t matter what the calendar says.

You can look at the seasons in two ways. Meteorologically, seasons go by temperature, with the hottest three months in the northern hemisphere being summer and the coldest three months winter. This way, winter starts on December first, spring on March first, summer on June first, and autumn on September first. This is the way meteorologists prefer to see the seasons. Another way to look at the seasons is astronomically. Equinoxes are when day and night are closest to equal length; spring begins around March 21st and autumn around September 22nd. The solstices are days with the longest and shortest amounts of sunlight; summer begins around June 21st and winter around December 22nd. The dates of the solstices and equinoxes can vary from year to year, and that’s why meteorologists don’t use them. They like solid, three month intervals. I forget all of it and watch nature.

Poplar catkins look a lot like pussy willow catkins and that’s not surprising, because poplar trees are in the willow family. North American poplars are divided into three main groups: the cottonwoods, the aspens, and the balsam poplars. If the buds aren’t sticky then the tree belongs in the aspen group. These bud scales were beautifully shiny but not at all sticky so this was an aspen. Poplar catkins often appear right around the same time willow catkins do. Maybe a week or so later.

I saw signs that the alder catkins were loosening up. The grayish “glue” that keeps water from getting in under the bud scales had disappeared on the catkins that receive the most sunlight and they had also started to show some red and purple coloration. When the bud scales open and reveal the flowers the purple and green catkins sparkle as they move on the breeze, and it looks like jewels have been hung from the bushes. It’s another of those many things that makes spring so special.

Encouraged by the warm sunshine I went to the local college campus again. There I found the first snowdrops I’ve seen this spring. They bloom early but they aren’t the earliest flowers to appear.

I also saw the first purple crocus of the year, and it was beautiful. I haven’t seen any bees yet but I’ve seen a lot of other insects.

I found cress in bloom as well. I don’t know if it’s winter cress or spring cress but it doesn’t matter; all that matters is its beauty. It’s a very early flower that I always like to see.

It’s also a very small flower. A bouqet of four or five of these could hide behind a pea. I wanted to put a flower on a penny for scale but I didn’t have a single coin with me. They are so hard for me to see it took me a few tries to get a shot that was useable.

This was the strangest thing I saw on this day. Blue leaf buds? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I tried to just forget the color and looked the plant over. From what I saw I believe it was some variety of big leaf hydrangea but I couldn’t swear to it. There were several plants in a group, all maybe two to three feet tall, and they baffled Google lens as well. I’m hoping someone might know what it is; maybe one of the master gardeners out there? I’d love to hear about it. I’d plant it just for that beautiful blue bud color.

One of my favorite spring flowers is reticulated iris and here they were in full bloom. When I first started visiting the college campus to see the spring flowers that bloomed there I often saw these little irises coming up and blooming right through the snow. Back then they were the earliest of all the flowers on the campus but no longer. Now they’re well behind crocuses, and I can’t imagine why.

In the last post I showed you some crocuses trying to bloom under the snow, and this is what I found in that spot on this day. After a long New Hampshire winter, a scene like this can melt even the hardest of hearts. Flowers give so much and ask so little. They are precious jewels, and I try to remember to be grateful for the richness they bring to life each time I see them.

I saw a new spring blooming witch hazel in bloom. It was very showy and looked much like its cousin the native fall blooming witch hazel. These spring bloomers are extremely fragrant and their scent always says spring to me.

But then there was another bump in the road to spring this week. This is what we woke up to Wednesday morning: more heavy wet snow. The snow pasted on the trees said the wind had come out of the northeast and I’ve heard that in places, it howled. It often does when we have a nor’easter.

One of my favorite snow quotes is by William Sharp, who said “There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.” That is a perfect description of what I saw, and it was amazingly beautiful.

The trouble is, the same thing that makes this kind of snow so very beautiful also makes it problematic. It is so wet it sticks to everything and when you get several inches of it, it gets very heavy. Everywhere I went I heard tales of snow blowers that had broken down and plow trucks that could just barely move it. In the view above, birch trees were bent right down to the ground under the weight of it. Sometimes they will recover and stand up straight again but more often than not they have to be cut. I’m thankful that we don’t see storms like this one very often, and that I was able to shovel what fell at my house.

I was lucky as far as snow totals go. Though the official total was supposed to be 17 inches here, I measured slightly less than 7 inches in my yard. Snow this wet and heavy can compact itself though, so that might account for the difference. I didn’t lose power here but many thousands of people did. About 12 miles to the northeast in the town of Nelson, they saw 40 inches, according to the local news station. That’s an incredible amount of snow from one storm, even for New Hampshire. I’d bet there are a lot of sore backs among the unlucky folks in that part of the state. It will most likely take about a week for it to all melt depending on the weather, so I probably won’t be seeing flowers again for a while. If there is one thing you learn quickly when you take up nature blogging it is that you can’t pick and choose. You learn to take what comes without complaint. I have been known to whine about the #$+&@^!* weather now and then but I won’t do that today. Instead, I’ll think about calendar spring, which starts in two days. My 12th year of blogging also starts on that day.

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself. ~Annie Leibovitz

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More March Flowers

Posted in Buds, Nature, Wildflowers, tagged American Hazelnut Catkins, American Hazelnut Female Blossoms, Canon SX40 HS, Chickweed, Coltsfoot Flower, Crocus Flowers, Forsythia, Hellebore Buds, Hyacinth Bud, Keene New Hampshire, Magnolia Bud, Male Alder Catkins, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus TG-6, Plantain Leaved Sedge, Red Maple Female Flowers, Red Maple Male Flowers, Reticulated Iris, Scilla, Snowdrops, Spring Flowering Bulbs, Spring Flowers, Spring in New Hampshire, Spring Peepers, Spring Plants, Spring Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Witch Hazel Blossoms, Wood Frogs on March 30, 2022| 39 Comments »

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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Spring Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Canon SX40 HS, Crocus, Dandelion, Ground Ivy Blossom, Hairy Bittercress, Hazelnut Catkins, Hazelnut Female Flower, Johnny Jump Ups, Keene, Keene New Hampshire, Native Pink Azalea, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus TG-6, Red maple Buds, Red Maple Flowers, Signs of Spring, Skunk Cabbage Flowers, Snowdrops, Solomon's Seal Shoot, Spring Blooming Witch Hazels, Spring Cress, Spring Flowering Bulbs, Spring Flowers, Spring in New Hampshire, Spring Plants, Spring Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Willow Catkins on March 23, 2022| 26 Comments »

We’ve had a string of very warm days here lately and that was all it took to kick spring into high gear. As you can see in this photo of the buds, red maples are responding to the warmth and buds are breaking. You can just see the male stamens all tucked inside the now open buds.

And then on another branch of the same tree the male flowers had fully opened and were producing pollen. I looked at several different red maples on this day, but this was the only one I saw flowering. Tree blossoming periods are staggered over several weeks, so if frost damages some flowers it won’t damage them all. That’s a good thing because this tree has misjudged the weather and jumped the gun. The night time forecasts include below freezing temperatures this week, so there is a good chance that any open flowers on this tree will die. However, thanks to the staggered bloom times that nature has seen to, I might still find red maples flowering a month from now.

I checked hundreds of hazelnut buds but hadn’t seen any of the tiny scarlet, female thread like flowers. They would appear at the top of a bud much like this one, which is so small I don’t really know how to describe it.

But then I saw this bush, loaded with golden colored male catkins, so I decided to check it for female flowers. Hazelnut catkins are just a string of tiny male flowers that usually spiral around a central stalk, and though these weren’t open and producing pollen yet the fact that they have readied themselves to do so is enough to awaken the female flowers.

And there they were, just barely opened on the first day of spring. If the wind blows just right and they are pollinated these almost microscopic scarlet threads will become hazelnuts, which will hopefully ripen by next fall.

There was a time, when I was gardening professionally, that I dreaded seeing dandelions starting to bloom, but I can’t tell you how happy I was to see this, the first dandelion I’ve seen this year.

I suppose my outlook must have changed. All the prejudices that I had toward them began to slip away and I started seeing dandelions for what they really are, which is a beautiful yellow flower that shouts spring is here! When I stopped fighting them and just let them be, I saw the beauty that had always been there. It was only my thoughts about them that had kept their beauty hidden. As Marcus Aurelius said “If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.” Though I didn’t consciously “wipe out my judgement” of dandelions I have certainly softened my attitude toward them over the years. My dislike (that was mostly learned from others who didn’t like them) has completely fallen away, and maybe that is as it should be. All of my life they have been here. I have eaten their leaves and drank the coffee I made from their roots and dusted the tip of my nose with their pollen, and they are old friends.

I’ve spent a few years trying to figure out what the name of this plant is. I know it is in the mustard family and I know it’s a cress, but I’m not sure which one so I’ll just call it a spring cress. I think it might actually be hairy bittercress but by most accounts it’s a hated weed that is almost impossible to eradicate because of the huge numbers of seeds it produces. You can pull plants until the cows come home but you’ll always miss one or two. It’s like sea turtles; most will get eaten by birds or fish but there will always be some that survive to carry on the Prime Directive, which is continuation of the species. Nature has taken care of it.

Can you see the beauty in this “horrible weed?” Its leaves were just unfolding when I got there, which I thought made it even prettier.

If I go all the way back as far as my memory will go, I find the flowers of ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) living there. Both houses I spent my time at when I was young, my father’s and grandmother’s, had plenty of ground ivy in the lawns and I used to love seeing them bloom so early in spring. Ground ivy is in the mint family and is related to henbit. It has a powerful and unusual odor when it is mowed, with the kind of smell that gets in the back of your throat and stays there for a while.

I brushed some leaves aside where I know Solomon’s seal plants grow and there were the spring shoots. After I took this photo, I covered them up again and let them be. They’re beautiful just as their first leaves start to unfurl, so I’ll try to be there at the end of April to see it happening.

Even after temperatures in the 60s and 70s F. willows still aren’t showing any signs of their yellow flowers. They know what they’re doing and they bloom when they’re ready but I have seen bees and other insects flying already, and they would love to forage on some willow pollen, I’m sure.

I looked at the buds of a native pink azalea (Rhododendron periclymenoides) and though the bud scales looked like they had relaxed I’m not sure any actual swelling had begun. They bloom in June so there is time. As can be seen in this photo this is a very hairy plant, and it is the hairs on the outside of the flowers that exude the wonderful scent.

Looking for the seedpods of a wild azalea is a good way to find them. They’re quite large and showy.

Snowdrops bloomed while there was still a bit of snow left near them. Maybe that’s how they came by their name.

Johnny jump ups have lifted their heads up and are blooming far better now than they were just a week ago. The warm weather and rapidly melting snow have given everything a boost and plants now seem anxious to get going.

I saw a crocus, then two, and then just a day or two later they were everywhere. It’s remarkable what a couple of warm days will do for flowers in springtime. It was all very sudden; it seemed like most of the flowers in this post had appeared overnight.

I saw some of my old favorites. There were lots of bees buzzing around all the open flowers but they were too skittish for me to get a shot of them.

This one was very dark. Better to show off the yellow stamens and pistil in the center to the bees, maybe. I certainly enjoyed the contrasting colors.

This white one was quite small for a crocus. I’d guess barely an inch across.

All of these crocuses were small. I don’t know if they’re a new kind of hybrid or if they’re just getting smaller with age.

A new witch hazel has come out, or at least it’s new to me, and it’s very pink. I don’t remember ever seeing one with pink petals but I must have because I visit these bushes every spring.

I went to see the skunk cabbages and wow; I saw a lot of them. So many in fact, that I couldn’t move without stepping on the ones still under leaves that I couldn’t see. When you step on a skunk cabbage spathe they squeak, much like a head of cabbage does sometimes when you cut into it, and that’s how I knew I had stepped on them.

Luckily, I only stepped on one or two and didn’t damage them too badly. In any event the spathe isn’t quite as critical as the spadix, which is the pinkish thing that carries the tiny flowers seen here. The spadix is what, through a process called thermogenesis, can raise the temperature of the plant to as much as 70 degrees F. inside the spathe, thereby attracting insects to the tiny flowers, which on this day were already producing pollen. To a cold, hungry insect it is a nice warm cave that serves food. Though this plant’s roots are poisonous and the leaves can cause burning in the mouth Native Americans new how to prepare it, and used skunk cabbage medicinally. I’ve read that they also used the roots as an underarm deodorant, though I’m not sure just how that might have worked. In the 1800s medicine made from the plant was sold as a cure all, most likely by traveling salesman.

Spring in the world! And all things are made new! ~Richard Hovey

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More Spring Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged American Hazelnut Catkins, American Hazelnut Flowers, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Cornelian Cherry Flowers, Crocus Blossoms, Daffodils, Early Spring Plants, Forsythia Buds, Grape Hyacinths, Hyacinths, Keene, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Poplar Catkins, Poplar Flowers, Red Maple Flowers, Snowdrops, Spring, Spring Beauties, Swanzey New Hampshire, Willow Flowers on April 1, 2020| 24 Comments »

Daffodils have finally arrived so it must really be spring. And spring, at least as it is spoken by flowers, is early. I went back to previous posts and this appears to be the first daffodil to show itself in March since I’ve been doing this blog. Most have appeared in mid-April.

There were more daffodils. Lots more.

I was also surprised to see hyacinths blooming. They’re also very early this year.

Crocuses get more beautiful each time I see them. I loved the color combination seen in this one.

Inside a crocus the central style branches into three feathery stigmas, which are its female pollen accepting organs. Below these and unseen in this photo are three anthers, which are its pollen producing organs. You can see how the pollen has fallen onto the petals. Many people don’t realize that the garden crocus is a very toxic plant which can kill through respiratory failure. The only crocus with edible parts is the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus,) which is unknown in the wild. Human cultivation of saffron crocus and the use of saffron has gone on for more than 3,500 years.

Crocus buds have an upside down tear-drop shape formed by six petals in two whorls of three. The outer whorl’s petals are slightly larger than the inner whorl’s. But I forget all that when I see their beauty. I chose this one as the most beautiful I saw on this day. Pastel, quiet, and understated it easily loses itself in a bed full of cousins, but my eye was drawn right to it.

Last week I saw two or three grape hyacinths. This week there were more than I wanted to count.

I love the beautiful cobalt blue of the flowers with their little insect guiding white fringe around the opening.

The snowdrops have opened enough to show their little green spots on their inner petals. Snowdrops aren’t common here so I see very few of them. I have seen them blooming while surrounded by snow though, so they live up to their name. I read once that the plant is in the amaryllis family, which was a surprise.

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. 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.

This year the Cornelian cherries have beaten the Forsythias into bloom, but it won’t be long.

Aquatics are just starting to show and they were beautiful to see coming up in this little pond. It’s rare to see very much real cold weather once they start to appear. The trees, the sunlight and blue of the sky reflected in nature’s mirror made me want to just sit and enjoy this scene.

I thought for sure that I’d find seed pods (samaras) of the red maples (Acer rubrum) but I didn’t see a single one. It was a cool week so that might have held them back a bit. After a very warm February March has been a bit anti-climactic, as far as spring goes.

There is a very old tree by a highway, standing all by itself. It’s an oddity because of how it was left standing when all of the trees around it were cut down when the highway was built. I like to think it was left because of the beautiful flowers it is positively loaded with each spring. They are male flowers and come into bloom slightly later than the red maples, and I think it must be a silver maple (Acer saccharinum.) I keep forgetting to go back and look at its leaves in the summer but this year I’ve written myself a note. I did notice when I took this photo that its bark looks different than a red maple, so we’ll see.

There is little that catches the eye like the catkins of the American hazelnut (Corylus americana) hanging golden in the low evening sunlight. It is one of the first signs of spring I look for each year.

Each male flower on the catkin consists of a pair of tiny bracts and 4 stamens but they’re almost impossible to see under the horseshoe crab shaped bud scales. You can see the golden colored flower buds at the very top of this catkin though. The male staminate flowers will bloom from the top down.

The female hazelnut flowers have been blooming for weeks, waiting for a dose of pollen. I’m not sure why they would open so far ahead of the male flowers. 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.

Poplar catkins have limbered up and lengthened and they will continue to do so for a while. A tree full of the gray, 3 or 4 inch long, fuzzy catkins is impressive.

If you look closely you can see, in this case, the reddish brown male anthers. Once pollinated the 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.

Our willows are in full bloom now. I wish I could tell you this one’s name but I don’t know it. It doesn’t matter; you don’t need to know its name to appreciate its beauty. They’re so welcome in early spring when there are so few flowers to see.

It’s hard to explain what happens when I see the first spring beauty of the season but I go away for a while. I go to that joyous place you go when you are lost inside a painting or a beautiful piece of music, or when you lose yourself in your work. It’s a special place and while I’m there I wouldn’t even know if a parade passed me. I hope you also have such a place where you can go now and then.

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought? ~Sophie Scholl

Thanks for coming by. Stay safe and be well and if you can, think of creative ways to help one another. I’d guess that your abilities are far beyond what you believe them to be.

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More Spring Blossoms

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged American Hazelnut Flowers, Ashuelot River, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Cornelian Cherry Buds, Crocus Blossoms, Daffodil Buds, Dandelion, Early Spring Plants, Hairy Bittercress, Ice Baubles, Johnny Jump Ups, Keene, Maple Sap Buckets, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Red Maple Flowers, Skunk Cabbage, Skunk Cabbage Flowers, Snowdrops, Speckled Alder Catkins, Spring, Swanzey New Hampshire, Vernal Witch hazel, Winter Plants on March 11, 2020| 16 Comments »

I didn’t think I saw Johnny jump ups (Viola tricolor) until April but I checked back on previous blog posts and found that I did see them in bloom on March 28 once. Because of that I can say that this is the earliest one I’ve seen since doing this blog. The hardy little plants were introduced from Europe so long ago that they are thought to be native by many. Today’s garden pansies were developed from this plant. The flowers can be white, purple, blue, yellow, or combinations of any or all of them. The word pansy comes from the French pensée, which means thought or reflection. I’m not sure what thought has to do with it but folklore tells us that, if the juice from the plant is squeezed onto the eyelids of a sleeping person, they will fall in love with the next person that they see. Another name for it is love in idleness, and it can be found in its love potion form in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Not too many people have heard of this non-native, early blooming shrub called Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) but it hails from the Mediterranean regions and was well known to Ancient Greeks and Romans. Archeological digs show that it’s small, tart, cherry red fruits have been eaten by man for thousands of years. It has quite small bright yellow, four petaled flowers that bees absolutely love. The flowers aren’t spectacular but they are a sure sign of spring and I always check to see how they’re coming along. The bright yellow flower buds are just showing between the opening bud scales but it might still be 2 weeks before they’re in full bloom.

I thought I’d go and see how the red maple buds (Acer rubrum) were coming along and you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found flowers instead of buds. 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. 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. If you’re lucky you can often find male and female flowers on the same tree. I didn’t see a single male bud open though, and I wasn’t surprised because maple flowers usually appear in April.

I thought I’d show you some ice baubles I saw at the river just before I saw the red maple flowers in the previous photo. It was about 36 degrees, which is why I was so surprised to find them in bloom.

Ice baubles usually display great symmetry but these were asymmetrical for some reason. Maybe they were melting.

It still snows occasionally, though the snow decorating this sugar maple was little more than a nuisance inch or so. I searched for the latest price of maple syrup and found a gallon of pure Vermont maple syrup for $68.95. I’m guessing it’s going to go up with an early spring.

And spring is indeed early.

Hairy bittercress plants (Cardamine hirsuta) are blooming. Cress is in the huge family of plants known as Brassicaceae. With over 150 species it’s hard to know what you’re looking at sometimes, but hairy bittercress is a common lawn weed that stays green under the snow and blooms almost as soon as it melts.

Hairy bittercress flowers can be white, pink or lavender and are very small; no bigger than Lincoln’s head on a penny. The plant is self-fertilizing and seed pods appear quickly. The seed pods will explode if touched or walked on and can fling the tiny seeds up to 3 feet away. Plants can form up to 1000 seeds, so if you have this plant in your lawn chances are good that you always will. Enjoy the flowers when there are few others blooming.

Over just the past few days alder catkins have taken on more color. They swell up and lengthen as the season progresses and the colors change to maroon and yellow-green. They sparkle in the sunlight and make the bushes look like someone has hung jewels from the branches. When they are fully opened and the tiny male blossoms start to release pollen I’ll look for the even smaller female flowers, which look like tiny threads of scarlet red.

The brown and purple scales on the alder catkins are on short stalks and there are three flowers beneath each scale, each with a lobed calyx cup and three to five stamens with anthers, which are covered in yellow pollen. These hadn’t quite opened yet but you can see how they spiral down their central flower stalk.

One of the smallest flowers that I know of is the female blossom of the American hazelnut (Corylus americana,) and they’ve just started blossoming. The crimson thread-like bits are the stigmas of the female flowers, waiting for the wind to bring them some pollen from the golden male catkins. To give you a sense of just how small they are, the bud that the flowers grow from is about the size of a single strand of cooked spaghetti. They’re so small all I can see is their color, so the camera has to do the rest.

This photo shows two things; how windy it was and how the ice on our smaller ponds is melting back away from shore. Pond and lake ice melts at the shore first, while river and stream ice starts in the center of the flow and melts at the shore last. Wind helps melt ice.

The skunk cabbages seemed happy; I saw many of their mottled spathes. They come in maroon with yellow splotches or yellow with maroon splotches.

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. I could just see it in this open spathe.

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 the only thing green so early in the spring the bears had to eat it or go hungry.

This year it seems that everything is blooming at once, with wild flowers blooming early and garden flowers pretty much on time, so for a flower lover it’s a dream come true. I don’t think it’s unprecedented but it isn’t common either.

Some crocuses were just dipping their toes in, not sure if they should go all the way or not.

Others were somewhere in between. I like this one’s light pastel blush but you’d need hundreds of them to make any impact because they’re tiny at not even an inch across. There were only these two in this bed.

Snowdrop buds looked like tiny white Christmas bulbs. The old fashioned kind that I grew up with.

Vernal witch hazels (Hamamelis vernalis) started blooming very early and it seems like they’ll go on for quite a while yet. I wish I could let you smell their fragrance. It’s one of the lightest, freshest, cleanest scents I’ve experienced in nature. Someone once said the flowers smelled like clean laundry just taken in from the line, but I can’t verify that. I have a dryer.

It won’t be long before we’re seeing daffodil blossoms.

Since I started with a Johnny jump up I might as well end with one. This one bloomed in Hancock while that first one bloomed in Keene. That illustrates the oddness of this spring, because flowers usually bloom in Keene before blooming in Hancock. That’s because Keene has a lot of pavement and is slightly warmer. In any case it’s always nice to see their beauty no matter where I am.

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

Thanks for coming by.

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Ever So Slowly

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Alder Catkins, Alder Flowers, Canon SX40 HS, Crocus Blossoms, Daffodils, Dandelion, Early Spring Plants, Grape Hyacinth, Ground Ivy, Hyacinth, Keene, Magnolia, Native Plants, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Scilla, Skunk Cabbage Flowers, Snowdrops, Speckled Alder Flowers, Spring, Spring Beauty, Swanzey New Hampshire, Willow Flowers on April 13, 2019| 24 Comments »

The male (staminate) flowers of speckled alder (Alnus incana) have just started opening, making the forest edges look as if someone has hung jewels from the bushes. Soon they will release their pollen and start a new generation of alders. Two of these catkins haven’t fully elongated and opened, so you can see what they look like both before and after blossoming. At first they are tough and rigid, almost like twigs, but when they open they’re pliable and blow in the wind. They’re quite pretty, I think.

Each stalked brownish-purple bud scale on a male speckled alder catkin 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 even though it is heavily cropped they are still tiny. The entire catkin is only about 2 ½ inches long.

When I see the male catkins open on alders I start looking for the female flowers. In this photo the tiny scarlet female stigmas poking out from under the bud scales are hard to see. 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 pollinated each thread like female stigma will become a small cone like seed pod (strobile) that I think most of us are used to seeing on alders. These female flowers are just threads and aren’t much bigger than female hazelnut flowers.

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.

American hazelnuts (Corylus americana) are still blooming, as this shot of the female flowers shows. What’s odd about this bud though is that it is terminal, and sits at the end of a twig. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen this. They usually appear along the length of the branch at an angle. Each tiny bud is about the size of a cooked piece of spaghetti, so that should tell you how small each scarlet, thread like female flower is.

I saw some willow flowers way up high at the top of the tree, far out of reach of a macro lens. I never knew that willows went from the top down so it was an interesting find.

The willows I could reach were still in the bud stage. Though I’ve never experimented with it I’ve always been fascinated at all the uses willows have. They contain a compounds similar to those found in aspirin and Native Americans used them for everything from pain relief to basket weaving. They even used the twigs to make fish traps and dolls. The burnt wood is said to make excellent drawing charcoal.

Dandelions are still blooming and will do so until the weather warms up. I never noticed until two or three years ago that they don’t like the heat of summer. It’s almost impossible to find one blooming in July and August these days.

They aren’t wasting any time about continuing on with new generations.

I got excited when I found budded spring beauties (Claytonia virginica), let me tell you. They’re very beautiful little flowers and it’s been so long since I’ve seen them. I’m guessing that, by the time this post sees the light of day they’ll be blooming.

This photo of spring beauties from two years shows why I got excited when I saw those buds. It’s hard to put into words how I feel when I find such beautiful little flowers; it’s like I’m lost in them for a while and this world no longer exists. A hint on photographing spring beauties: their color will be more saturated if you find and photograph the ones in shade. It doesn’t take much sunlight to wash out such delicate colors.

Speaking of harsh sunlight, that’s all I had when I went to see what the skunk cabbages were doing. As I suspected, leaves are beginning to show. Just when the leaves develop is the only time these plants even remotely resemble cabbage, in my opinion.

The open spathe of a skunk cabbage flower allowed a peek at the spadix with all of its flowers inside, which is something very few people ever get to see. Only if you hunt for it and look carefully will you find it, and I suppose a lot of people don’t even realize it’s there. Each tiny flower on the spadix has both male stamens and female styles and pistils. It’s all about pollen at this stage but science doesn’t know for sure how it gets between one plant and another. My money is on insects; I’m seeing lots of them right now. Small, fly like creatures that don’t sit still more than a few seconds. I guess you’d call them gnats.

I found a bed with hundreds of crocus blossoms in it, and they just happened to be in one of my favorite color combinations.

I’ve spoken before about how some things can be as beautiful in death as they are in life and this passing crocus blossom reminded me of that. If you’re serious about nature study you have to get used to seeing death, because it’s part of the cycle of life.

When I was gardening professionally not a single client grew snowdrops and as far as I know nobody in my family did either, so I don’t know them well. I do know that they’re scarce in this area; I see small clumps of 4 or 5 flowers every spring but not the huge drifts of them that I’ve seen online. They simply don’t seem to like it here and that could be because they aren’t used to our kind of cold.

Scilla (Scilla siberica) came up fast. They’re very cheery little flowers and they’re my favorite color. The only complaint I’ve heard about these nonnative bulbs is that they can be invasive. They can get into lawns here sometimes but people don’t seem to mind. In fact that’s just what many people want them to do.

Another plant related to scilla is the striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica) and I love to see it each year, but the one place I know of where they grow has had a new in ground sprinkler system installed and this year I’m not seeing a single blossom. It’s too bad because they’re a very beautiful but rare blossom in this area.

I’ve been watching the trees and one of the things I’ve seen was a magnolia bud shrugging off its winter fur coat. I’d guess it will be a flower by next week at this time. Some magnolias are very fragrant and I’m looking forward to smelling them again.

It’s actually a little too early for grape hyacinths here but these were warmed by growing near a building’s foundation, so they came up with the crocuses. It was nice to see them; almost like a reward, but you can see how they’ve been bitten by the cold. It’s the price I’ve seen many plants pay for over exuberance in the spring.

I’m guessing that hyacinths are going to be beautiful this year. I’ve seen a lot of them showing color.

It’s just another guess but I’d say you’ll be seeing a lot more flowers in the next post like this one. I could be wrong though because we’ve had a cold week. Nighttime temperatures have fallen below freezing a few nights and we had a dusting of snow Wednesday, so we’ll see. One thing is certain: spring will happen.

Keep your faith in beautiful things;
in the sun when it is hidden,
in the Spring when it is gone.
~Roy R. Gibson

Thanks for stopping in.

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Mid April Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged American Hazelnut, Canon SX40 HS, Coltsfoot, Cornelian Cherry, Crocus, Daffodils, Dandelion, Forsythia, Keene, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Skunk Cabbage, Snowdrops, Spring, Striped Squill, Swanzey New Hampshire, Vernal Witch hazel, Willow Flowers, Yellow Trout Lily on April 18, 2018| 38 Comments »

We had an inch or two more snow yesterday so spring seems to be unfolding excruciatingly slowly this year but I’ve discovered that it’s really my own impatience that is making it seem that way, because according to last year’s blog posts I saw my first daffodil blossom on April 15, 2017. I saw this one, the first of 2018, on April 14.

There is a bed of hyacinths that I’ve been visiting and last time I was there one plant had a bud that was much further along than all the others. Some weren’t even showing buds, but on this day every single one was blooming, just like this example. How they all suddenly caught up to each other I don’t know, but I wish you could have smelled them.

Crocuses drifted across a flower bed at the local college.

Plant breeders have been having fun with crocuses but does it make any difference to the bees, I wondered. I didn’t see a single bee on any of these. In fact I haven’t seen one yet this spring.

If you’re serious about nature study you have to get used to seeing death because it’s part of the cycle of life. All things eventually die but at times you might be surprised to find that some things are as beautiful in death as they were in life. This crocus blossom for example was dying, but I chose it as my favorite flower of the day because as the petals curled they became even more beautiful. Its death contractions gave it movement, and made this little crocus as beautiful as a parrot tulip.

I don’t know snowdrops well because nobody in my family ever grew them when I was young and later when I was gardening professionally not a single client grew them either. That could be because they don’t seem to do that well here, but I’ve discovered something about them that everyone might already know; sunlight has nothing to do with when they bloom. I’ve watched them closely this year and noticed that they don’t open on cold sunny days, but they will on warm, cloudy days. This tells me that it is temperature and not the amount of light that they go by. I wonder if anyone else has seen this.

I don’t think I’ve ever waited for a flower to bloom as long as I’ve waited for the Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas.) I think the buds started showing color more than a month ago and I’ve been checking on them ever since. This small tree in the dogwood family gets its name from its small, tart red fruits, which have been eaten by man since the Neanderthals walked this earth.

Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica) are blooming and since blue is my favorite color I’m very happy to see them. But I don’t see many; they border on rare here and I hardly ever see them. The flowers on this spring flowering bulb are about the same size as the scilla (Scilla siberica) flowers I think most of us are familiar with. They’re beautiful little things and I’d happily devote large parts of my yard to them if I could.

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 as the inside, as the unopened buds in this photo show. I think it must be their simplicity that makes them so beautiful.

I was surprised to see this uncared for Forsythia blooming because just a few feet away a cared for, trimmed plant wasn’t blooming. In fact I haven’t seen another Forsythia blooming anywhere I’ve gone. Forsythia is said to forecast the weather because as the old saying goes “Three snows after the Forsythia shows.” Since I saw one blooming in February we might be okay. But I heard spring peepers singing on the same day I saw these flowers and it is also said that “Frogs will look through ice twice,” so we might not be done with the cold nights just yet.

In spite of the predictions Forsythia blossoms might bring forth nothing seems to shout spring as loudly as Forsythia, and that might be because they are on virtually every street that you travel at this time of year. They may be ho-hum common but spring would be a much duller season without their cheery blooms.

And still the vernal witch hazels (Hamamelis vernalis) bloom. I’ve never seen them bloom so long before. It must be six weeks of flowers so far this year and the only thing I can think of that is different is the prolonged cold; all through March and now April. It must be warmth that signals them to stop blooming.

I loved how wild this dandelion looked. It’s flying off in every direction at once and making itself even more beautiful in the process.

Coltsfoot flowers on the other hand, looked all neat and trim and buttoned up for spring. In fact the only similarities between coltsfoot and dandelion flowers that I can think of are the color and the fact that they often bloom at the same time. Coltsfoot has a scaly stem, a flat flower head and leaves that don’t appear until it is done flowering. Dandelions have smooth stems, mounded flower heads, and the leaves appear before the blossoms.

Last week I checked for signs of yellow trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) and there wasn’t a sign of them. This week the leaves are up everywhere and next week I expect to see at least flower buds if not flowers. Spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) grow in the same place, so I hope to be able to show you both in the next flower post. Their time here is brief; they’ll be gone by mid-May, but they’re beautiful enough to make me want to visit them regularly while they’re here.

The only time a skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) leaf resembles a cabbage leaf is right now, just as they start to unfurl. They are one of the earliest leaves to unfurl in spring and hungry bears will sometimes eat them when they can’t find anything else. I think their smell probably keeps most people from eating them.

Tiny little American hazelnut flowers (Corylus americana) are all over the bushes now so it looks like we’ll have a good crop of hazelnuts this year. Native Americans used the nuts to flavor soups and also ground them into flour. In Scotland in 1995 a large shallow pit full of burned hazelnut shells was discovered. It was estimated to be 9,000 years old, so we’ve been eating these nuts for a very long time.

Male and female red maple (Acer rubrum) flowers often grow on the same tree but I’ve never seen them grow out of the same bud cluster as these were doing. A single bud over on the left at about 10 o’clock has male flowers while all of the others have female flowers, and many other bud clusters on this tree were doing the same. Just when you think you have nature all figured out it throws you a curve ball.

Many of the willows (Salix) are in all stages of bloom now. I’ve seen many that are fully open and some still in the gray furry catkin stage, so they should be blooming for a while yet. Though a hot spell could finish them quickly it doesn’t look like we’ll have one of those right away. The male blossoms of this particular variety of willow are slightly larger and more vibrant than the female blossoms, and easier to see from a distance. I think of them as being louder, because they seem to shout at me from a distance.

Female willow blossoms are quieter, more subdued and orderly, and their yellow green color is less intense. I always wonder why wind pollinated flowers have evolved to be so colorful. It isn’t to attract insects; even grass flowers can be beautifully colored. It’s another one of those mysteries of nature that I don’t suppose will ever be explained.

Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment. Ellis Peters

Thanks for coming by.

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Finally, Flowers

Posted in Nature, Things I've Seen, Wildflowers, tagged Ashuelot River, Canon SX40 HS, Crocus, Daffodil, Early Spring Plants, Hairy Bittercress, Honeysuckle, Hyacinth, Keene, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Pussy Willow Flowers, Red Maple Flowers, Reticulated Iris, Robins, Skunk Cabbage, Snowdrops, Spring, Swanzey New Hampshire, Winter Hiking, Winter Plants, Winter Woods on April 4, 2018| 31 Comments »

I’ve seen reticulated iris (Iris reticulata) blossoms with snow on them in early March. They are usually our earliest garden flower but this year they decided to wait a bit. I like the dark orchid one on the right. This little iris does well in rock gardens and looks good along with miniature daffodils like tete-a-tete. They originally came from Turkey, the Caucasus, Northern Iraq and Iran. The reticulated part of their name comes from the net like pattern on the bulbs.

I love this color too but I’m not sure it works on these small irises.

Like someone flipped a switch all of the sudden there were flowers, including crocuses. These yellow ones were a photographic challenge in bright sunlight.

These purple crocuses were being blown about by the breeze. I wondered if that was why I didn’t see any bees on them even though it was a warm day.

My favorite flowers on this day were these beautiful crocus blossoms. I love the shading on the inside of each petal. There are about 90 species of crocus and each spring it seems like I see one that I’ve never seen before. They are in the iris family and originally came from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. They grow naturally from sea level all the way to Alpine tundra, so they’re tough little plants. Though they’re not native to the Netherlands they’ve been grown there since about 1560.

I just missed the first daffodil flower.

There is a bulb bed at the local college that I’ve been struggling with since the snow melted. I remember last year kneeling before it to smell the hyacinths that grew there but this year all I saw were tulip leaves. Somehow I convinced myself that the tulip leaves must be hyacinth leaves, even though they don’t look at all alike and I knew better. The answer came with this budded hyacinth flower head when I realized that there are both tulips and hyacinths growing here. I think what confused me were the early tulips. I saw tulip leaves even before crocus or reticulated iris leaves, and that’s very early.

What I think is bittercress was blooming. Cress is in the huge family of plants known as Brassicaceae. With over 150 species it’s hard to know what you’re looking at sometimes, but hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) is a common lawn weed that stays green under the snow and blooms almost as soon as it melts. The flowers can be white, pink or lavender and are very small; no bigger than Lincoln’s head on a penny. The plant is self-fertilizing and seed pods appear quickly. The seed pods will explode if touched or walked on and can fling the tiny seeds up to 3 feet away. Plants can form up to 1000 seeds, so if you have this plant in your lawn chances are good that you always will.

Snowdrops were living up to their name on this day.

But just a few days later all the snow had gone and there were snowdrop blossoms instead of buds. This is a flower I rarely see. It seems to be rarely used here and I’m not sure why. The flowers are beautiful, especially when seen in large drifts. As well as the snowdrops, this photo shows that my macro camera isn’t very good with depth of field. It would have been a better shot if all the trailing blossoms were in focus as well.

All that melting snow and a day or two of rain have pushed the Ashuelot River to bank full again. I hope all of those April showers come in the form of a gentle drizzle. I wondered if the Canada geese had their new nests flooded; though I’ve seen them in this spot for the past several weeks there was no sign of them this day.

I think I must have been a half mile downwind of these vernal witch hazel shrubs (Hamamelis vernalis) when I first smelled them, so powerful is their fragrance. This year they’ve bloomed steadily for over a month, through four nor’easters and bitterly cold nights, so they’re very hardy. In fact I think the cold must prolong their bloom time, because I’ve never seen them bloom for so long.

Female red maple flowers (Acer rubrum) have almost fully opened now. The scarlet stigmas will grow longer before becoming pollinated and turning into winged seed pods (Samaras.) Each bud is about the size of a pea and holds several female flowers which are about the same diameter as an uncooked piece of spaghetti. Sugar maple flowers haven’t opened yet but it shouldn’t be too much longer.

The male red maple flowers aren’t as pretty as the female flowers but their pollen is important because without it there would be no viable seed. Mature red maples can produce nearly a million seeds in a single season. They are also called soft or swamp maples, even though silver maples are usually found in the wetter spots.

Grasses and sedges have started growing in areas that are wet in spring. By June this spot will be dry and the waist high grasses will have stopped growing.

Since the skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) have been blooming for about a month I thought I might see some leaves appearing but apparently the cold and snow has held even them back. Many of the mottled spathes had softened and darkened signaling the end of their bloom period, but a few still looked fresh like these two. I’m guessing that their leaves will appear soon. The new spring leaves are the only part of the plant that actually resemble a cabbage, and then only for a very short time.

One reason invasive honeysuckle shrubs are so successful is because they grow leaves and begin photosynthesizing weeks before most of our native shrubs. We have 3 invasive honeysuckles here in New Hampshire. Bell’s honeysuckle (Lonicera x bella) has whitish to pink flowers that fade to yellow, along with slightly hairy stems and leaf undersides. They are very common. Morrow’s Honeysuckle (Lonicera morrowii) also has whitish pink flowers but they’re on long, slightly hairy flower stalks. The leaves are also slightly hairy on the underside. Tatarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) is the prettiest among the invasives, having pink or red flowers on long stalks. Its leaves are hairless on the undersides. Stems of all three shrubs are hollow while native honeysuckle stems are solid. It is illegal to sell, propagate or plant these shrubs in New Hampshire.

The willows still haven’t produced flowers but the fuzzy gray catkins are much bigger now than they were just a week ago, so I decided to look a little closer.

In the right light I could see the yellow willow flower buds just under the gray fuzz. Any day now there should be bright yellow flowers on this bush.

I’m finally seeing robins and I watched this one pull a worm out of the lawn he was on and gulp it down. That means the soil is well thawed, so the spring explosion of growth is right on schedule in spite of the wintery March. Nature always seems to balance things out somehow.

It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what. ~ John Galsworthy

Thanks for coming by.

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Spring (again)

Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, tagged American Hazelnut Catkins, Ashuelot River, Canon SX40 HS, Corneilian Cherry, Crocus, Dandelion, Early Spring Plants, Forsythia, Hyacinth, Keene, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Red Maple Flowers, Reticulated Iris, Robin, Scilla, Snowdrops, Spring, Spring Cress, Winter Hiking, Winter Plants, Winter Woods on April 12, 2017| 23 Comments »

Though he stopped when he saw me watching this male robin was pulling worms from the ground, and that told me that the soil had warmed and thawed enough for things to start growing in it, so off I went last Saturday looking for growing and hopefully blooming things.

I saw a single dandelion blooming a few weeks ago but on this day there were several blooming in the lawn that the robins worked. It’s too bad that chemical companies have convinced so many that dandelions should be hated. Any flower is a welcome sight at this time of year, even dandelions. Rather than dump chemicals on them maybe we should eat them; when I was a boy my grandmother cooked dandelion greens and served them much like spinach. They’re a good source of Folic acid, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Copper, Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Calcium, Iron, Potassium and Manganese. The leaves are higher in beta-carotene than carrots and contain more iron and calcium than spinach. According to the USDA Bulletin “Composition of Foods,” dandelions rank in the top 4 green vegetables in overall nutritional value.

American hazelnut (Corylus americana) is a common roadside shrub that I don’t think many people ever see. When I tell people about the shrubs and the nuts that they bear they always seem surprised. The best time to find a good stand of hazelnuts is right now, because the male catkins become golden colored and dance in the wind, and they can be seen from quite far away.

So far the hazelnuts have had a rough spring but the tiny female flowers still appear, waiting to be dusted with pollen from the male catkins. If the wind helps with pollination each of those tiny crimson filaments will turn into a sweet little hazelnut.

I was finally able to get a shot of some reticulated iris (Iris reticulata) without snow on them. This is a tough little plant with quite a long blooming period. Unlike bearded irises which grow from large roots and take up quite a lot of space these little flowers grow from bulbs that look something like crocus bulbs. Their leaves also turn yellow and die off in summer like crocus. They’d be a great low maintenance flower for a rock garden.

If I understand what I’ve read correctly reticulated iris flowers are always purple, yellow and white but the purple can be in many shades that vary considerably. The “reticulata” part of the scientific name means “netted” or “reticulated,” and refers to the netted pattern found on the bulbs.

One big difference between crocuses and reticulated iris is how most crocuses stay closed on cloudy days, while reticulated iris open in any weather.

But on the other hand, crocuses come in more colors than reticulated irises. I think if I were planting a bulb garden I’d have a lot of both.

A German doctor named Leonhardt Rauwolf brought hyacinths from Turkey.to Europe in 1573. The original wild hyacinth (Hyacinthus orientalis) was blue or pale blue but today hyacinths come in red, blue, white, orange, pink, violet or yellow. It’s hard to tell what color this example will be but I’m sure it’ll be fragrant. Both Homer and Virgil wrote about the hyacinth’s sweet fragrance, and that’s my favorite part of this flower.

For about a month now, every time I’ve gone to see the Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas,) I’ve said “next weekend they’ll be blossoming for sure” but, as the above photo shows; not yet. Surely the 70+ degree temperatures this week will have made it finally bloom. This very unusual, almost unknown shrub isn’t a cherry at all, it is a in the dogwood (Cornus) family and blooms very early in the spring before the leaves appear. It hails from Europe and Asia and has beautiful yellow, 4 petaled flowers that grow in large clusters. This is a not often seen, under-used plant that would be welcome in any garden.

The red maples (Acer rubrum) have also had a time of it this year; with 60 degree temperatures one day and 20s the next they haven’t known whether to bloom or not. The ones that bloomed early paid the price and were frost bitten, but from what I’ve seen many of them didn’t open at all. This bud cluster tells the story; there are male flowers still in the bud, some that had just come out of the bud, and quite a few that were frost bitten.

The female red maple flowers seem to have been a little more level headed and waited until now to bloom. These are the first I’ve seen, just peeking out of the end of the bud. if pollinated they will turn into winged seed pods called samaras that are a favorite of squirrels. Many parts of the red maple are red, including the twigs, buds, flowers and seed pods.

I was surprised to find this Forsythia blooming so soon after our cold snowy weather, but there it was. It’s easy to think of Forsythia being over used and boring but I always look forward to seeing the cheery yellow blossoms after a long cold winter. An embankment with uncountable thousands of its yellow blossoms spilling down and over it can take your breath away. They shout that spring has arrived and it’s hard to ignore them because they are everywhere. I think you’d have a hard time finding a street in this town that doesn’t have at least one.

Before 1850 there were no forsythias here, so spring must have been very different. Much less cheery, I would think.

In my own yard the Scilla are up and in a day or two should be 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. These bulbs are easily confused with glory of the snow (Chionodoxa) because the differences are so slight (flattened stamens) that even botanists have trouble telling them apart. It is for that reason that many botanists think the two plants should be classified as one.

Very small plants blossomed in a lawn; so small any one of them would fit in the bottom of a tea cup. I think they’re some type of spring cress; possibly small-flowered bitter cress (Cardamine parviflora.) Each white flower has 4 petals and is very small. None had fully opened on this cloudy day.

I don’t see many snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) but the ones I do see usually bloom right on the heels of skunk cabbage and vernal witch hazels. Their common name is a good one because they’ll blossom even when surrounded by snow. The first part of this plant’s scientific name comes from the Greek gala, meaning “milk,” and anthos, meaning “flower.” The second part nivalis means “of the snow,” and it all makes perfect sense. Snowdrops contain a substance called galantamine which has been shown to be helpful in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not a cure but any help is always welcome.

There was still ice on the trails on Saturday, but after a 70 degree Sunday and 84 degrees on Monday and yesterday, I’m guessing that it’s probably all gone now. It can’t disappear quickly enough for me. I can’t remember another winter with so much ice.

As is often the case here in this part of the state all the melting snow and ice has raised the levels of the rivers and streams. There was a flood watch for a couple of days and the Ashuelot River flooded a field or two in outlying areas, but I haven’t heard of anything serious. One of the good things about a few feet of snow is that it has eased the drought. They say we could slip back into a drought without too many dry days, but the threat has eased considerably.

Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! ~Sitting Bull

Thanks for coming by.

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Ice Out and Other Signs of Spring

Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, tagged Alder Catkins, Canon SX40 HS, Crocus, Early Spring Plants, Gray Squirrel, Half Moon Pond, Hancock New Hampshire, Ice Out, Keene, Lake Winnipesaukee, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Pussy Willow, Quaking Aspen, Red Maple Flowers, Snowdrops, Spring, Swanzey New Hampshire, Winter Hiking, Winter Plants, Winter Woods on March 19, 2016| 54 Comments »

Ice out is when the ice on a pond or lake melts or breaks up enough in spring to make the water navigable by boat again. I took this photo of Half-Moon Pond in Hancock on our first 70 degree day of the season, which was March 9th. In spite of the extremely warm temperatures there was still a lot of ice on the pond.

March 10th brought rain but it was a warm rain on a 60 degree day, and it made mist form wherever there was ice.

On March 11th the pond was completely ice free and I was surprised that it could happen that fast. Ice out dates on Lake Winnipesaukee, which is New Hampshire’s largest lake, have been recorded since 1887. The earliest ice out date for the big lake was March 23 in 2012 until yesterday at 11:30 am. Now the earliest ice out for Lake Winnipesaukee is March 17, nearly a full week earlier than the previous record. The latest ice out was May 12 in 1888. On average ice out has been happening earlier in the season each year throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Though most of the ice fell to our warmer than average temperatures there is still ice to be seen if you care to search for it. Most don’t care to.

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) are the third flower I’ve seen this season, coming right on the heels of skunk cabbage and vernal witch hazels. Their common name is a good one; there was a plowed snowbank just feet from where these grew. The first part of this plant’s scientific name comes from the Greek gala, meaning “milk,” and anthos, meaning “flower.” The second part nivalis means “of the snow,” and it all makes perfect sense. Snowdrops contain a substance called galantamine which has been shown to be helpful in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not a cure but any help is always welcome.

I was surprised to see quite a few crocuses blossoming. It’s easy to forget that it’s still winter when you see such sights. At least it’s still winter astronomically for one more day. Meteorological winter ended on March first. I didn’t realize it when I was taking this photo but every crocus was tilted towards the sun.

One crocus blossom had an upside down bee in it. That was another surprise.

The buds of red maples (Acer rubrum) have just opened so sugar maples won’t be far behind, and that means an end to this year’s maple sugaring season. Once the night temperatures stay above freezing and the trees begin to flower the sap becomes bitter, so sap collection ends. This photo is of the tree’s male (staminate) flowers just poking out of the buds.

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 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. If you’re lucky you can often find male and female flowers on the same tree.

Each year the hills that surround town come alive with the red haze caused by millions of red maple flowers opening at once. Each year I try to catch it in a photo but never have much luck.

Squirrels eat the seeds, buds and sap of red maples. They bite the trunk to let the sap run and then when it dries they come back and lick up the sugar. Red maples are one of the trees that squirrels nest in as well. I once read that squirrels can get enough moisture from trees to never have to come down out of them for a drink. I’m not sure what the squirrel in the photo was looking for but it probably wasn’t water.

I thought I’d see some beautiful yellow willow flowers but they’re holding back and are still in the silvery gray catkin stage. I’d guess by today they’ll be blooming profusely so I’m going to have to go and see.

Though these might look like pussy willow catkins they’re really quaking aspen catkins (Populus tremuloides.) Quaking aspen is the only poplar with catkins like these that doesn’t also have sticky bud scales. Balsam poplar catkins (Populus balsamifera) look much the same but their brown bud scales are very sticky to the touch.

Among all the beautiful things to see in the early spring woods one of the most beautiful are alder catkins (Alnus.) They hang from the shrubs all winter long but it is only when they are ready to release pollen that they become purple and golden striped jewels. They will stay this way for just a short time before becoming more gold than purple, and that’s when the shrub’s very tiny crimson female flowers will appear. Look for alders near streams and ponds.

The warmth and sunshine were great while they lasted but we’ve had rain almost every day for the last five and they say that tomorrow night and through Monday we might see a nor’easter which might leave more snow than any storm this winter. It would be just like New England weather to drop over a half foot of snow on the first full day of spring. Oh well, if it comes it’ll melt quickly and the flowers will still bloom; there’s no stopping spring now.

She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
“Winter is dead.”
~ A.A. Milne

Thanks for stopping in. Tomorrow the first day of spring is also the first day of the 6th year of this blog. I’d like to thank you for all your thoughtful comments and helpful input over the years.

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Exploring Nature in New Hampshire

Posts Tagged ‘Snowdrops’

Daffodils have finally arrived so it must really be spring. And spring, at least as it is spoken by flowers, is early. I went back to previous posts and this appears to be the first daffodil to show itself in March since I’ve been doing this blog. Most have appeared in mid-April.

There were more daffodils. Lots more.

I was also surprised to see hyacinths blooming. They’re also very early this year.

Crocuses get more beautiful each time I see them. I loved the color combination seen in this one.

Last week I saw two or three grape hyacinths. This week there were more than I wanted to count.

I love the beautiful cobalt blue of the flowers with their little insect guiding white fringe around the opening.

This year the Cornelian cherries have beaten the Forsythias into bloom, but it won’t be long.

Aquatics are just starting to show and they were beautiful to see coming up in this little pond. It’s rare to see very much real cold weather once they start to appear. The trees, the sunlight and blue of the sky reflected in nature’s mirror made me want to just sit and enjoy this scene.

I thought for sure that I’d find seed pods (samaras) of the red maples (Acer rubrum) but I didn’t see a single one. It was a cool week so that might have held them back a bit. After a very warm February March has been a bit anti-climactic, as far as spring goes.

There is little that catches the eye like the catkins of the American hazelnut (Corylus americana) hanging golden in the low evening sunlight. It is one of the first signs of spring I look for each year.

The female hazelnut flowers have been blooming for weeks, waiting for a dose of pollen. I’m not sure why they would open so far ahead of the male flowers. 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.

Poplar catkins have limbered up and lengthened and they will continue to do so for a while. A tree full of the gray, 3 or 4 inch long, fuzzy catkins is impressive.

If you look closely you can see, in this case, the reddish brown male anthers. Once pollinated the 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.

Our willows are in full bloom now. I wish I could tell you this one’s name but I don’t know it. It doesn’t matter; you don’t need to know its name to appreciate its beauty. They’re so welcome in early spring when there are so few flowers to see.

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought? ~Sophie Scholl

Thanks for coming by. Stay safe and be well and if you can, think of creative ways to help one another. I’d guess that your abilities are far beyond what you believe them to be.

I thought I’d show you some ice baubles I saw at the river just before I saw the red maple flowers in the previous photo. It was about 36 degrees, which is why I was so surprised to find them in bloom.

Ice baubles usually display great symmetry but these were asymmetrical for some reason. Maybe they were melting.

It still snows occasionally, though the snow decorating this sugar maple was little more than a nuisance inch or so. I searched for the latest price of maple syrup and found a gallon of pure Vermont maple syrup for $68.95. I’m guessing it’s going to go up with an early spring.

And spring is indeed early.

This photo shows two things; how windy it was and how the ice on our smaller ponds is melting back away from shore. Pond and lake ice melts at the shore first, while river and stream ice starts in the center of the flow and melts at the shore last. Wind helps melt ice.

The skunk cabbages seemed happy; I saw many of their mottled spathes. They come in maroon with yellow splotches or yellow with maroon splotches.

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. I could just see it in this open spathe.

This year it seems that everything is blooming at once, with wild flowers blooming early and garden flowers pretty much on time, so for a flower lover it’s a dream come true. I don’t think it’s unprecedented but it isn’t common either.

Some crocuses were just dipping their toes in, not sure if they should go all the way or not.

Others were somewhere in between. I like this one’s light pastel blush but you’d need hundreds of them to make any impact because they’re tiny at not even an inch across. There were only these two in this bed.

Snowdrop buds looked like tiny white Christmas bulbs. The old fashioned kind that I grew up with.

It won’t be long before we’re seeing daffodil blossoms.

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

Thanks for coming by.

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.

I saw some willow flowers way up high at the top of the tree, far out of reach of a macro lens. I never knew that willows went from the top down so it was an interesting find.

Dandelions are still blooming and will do so until the weather warms up. I never noticed until two or three years ago that they don’t like the heat of summer. It’s almost impossible to find one blooming in July and August these days.

They aren’t wasting any time about continuing on with new generations.

I got excited when I found budded spring beauties (Claytonia virginica), let me tell you. They’re very beautiful little flowers and it’s been so long since I’ve seen them. I’m guessing that, by the time this post sees the light of day they’ll be blooming.

Speaking of harsh sunlight, that’s all I had when I went to see what the skunk cabbages were doing. As I suspected, leaves are beginning to show. Just when the leaves develop is the only time these plants even remotely resemble cabbage, in my opinion.

I found a bed with hundreds of crocus blossoms in it, and they just happened to be in one of my favorite color combinations.

I’ve spoken before about how some things can be as beautiful in death as they are in life and this passing crocus blossom reminded me of that. If you’re serious about nature study you have to get used to seeing death, because it’s part of the cycle of life.

I’ve been watching the trees and one of the things I’ve seen was a magnolia bud shrugging off its winter fur coat. I’d guess it will be a flower by next week at this time. Some magnolias are very fragrant and I’m looking forward to smelling them again.

I’m guessing that hyacinths are going to be beautiful this year. I’ve seen a lot of them showing color.

Keep your faith in beautiful things; in the sun when it is hidden, in the Spring when it is gone. ~Roy R. Gibson

Thanks for stopping in.

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Keep your faith in beautiful things;
in the sun when it is hidden,
in the Spring when it is gone.
~Roy R. Gibson