Monday, March 12, 2012

First Flowers of Spring!

Wow!  Close to 70 degrees today!  No doubt about it, spring is here!  And here are the first flowers to prove it.


 The  red-mottled spathes of Skunk Cabbage have been up for some time, but today I found a spathe that had opened and the spadix inside was shedding pollen.  Little flies were flying in and out.




I searched among hundreds of catkin-draped American Hazelnut branches and finally found one twig that was tufted with the tiny red female flowers.


4 comments:

The Cranky Crone, she lives alone! said...

Wow! spectacular looking flower.

threecollie said...

Love the hazelnut flowers! Like little lipsticks at the end of the twigs...just lovely.

Ellen Rathbone said...

Ah...makes me wonder how the hazelnuts at my "old" house are doing. Did the kids who bought it leave them, and are they blooming? Or, like the large tree out front, did they cut them down and clear them out? I don't want to know.

HM...I wonder if hazelnuts will grow here...

Jacqueline Donnelly said...

Thanks for your comments, dear friends,I'm happy to show you these dear little flowers that I ignored for years because they are almost invisibly small. As for the hazelnuts, Ellen, I don't know why they wouldn't grow in Michigan.