What a Difference a Few Days Make!

Oh man, I thought that our snow would NEVER leave!  Just 4 days ago, on 3/23, I stopped by the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in Wilton, N.Y., hoping to see if any native wildflowers might be starting to bloom in the woods.  Hah!  Not very likely, since snow still lay deep throughout the preserve, as this photo taken that day reveals.

But look!  All that snow had disappeared by today, 3/27, thanks to some rain and continued warmth.

Four days ago, even our earliest blooming wildflower, the Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), still held its spathes tightly closed.  Not until those bulbous red spathes open to allow light to enter their hollow chambers would we expect to see the interior spadices covered with tiny flowers.

Well, this spathe sure was open today, displaying the pollen-shedding spadix within. As were all the other Skunk Cabbage plants that shared this muddy swale.

Some of the Skunk Cabbage plants even had their tightly furled green leaves beginning to emerge.

But the most exciting find at Orra Phelps today was this tiny Snow Trillium (Trillium nivale), its snow-white flower bud just emerging from its enveloping leaves. The Snow Trillium is certainly an aptly named plant, since it starts to bloom almost as soon as any open ground appears in an otherwise snowy woods.  

I feel extremely lucky to encounter this diminutive flower anywhere in Saratoga County, since its native range is far south and west of here (think Ohio or Pennsylvania).  But a healthy patch of them have made their home here in this preserve, thanks to this land's original owner, the late Orra Phelps, who planted them here many years ago.  I believe by tomorrow this flower should be wide open, so I will be sure to hurry back here to photograph it in full bloom.

Excited by these floral finds, I stopped by the North Woods at Skidmore College on my way home.  When I was last here on 3/21,  six days ago, I had hoped to hear Spring Peepers or Wood Frogs sounding their spring mating calls from the woodland pond pictured below.  Sadly, though, on that day, the pond was still frozen tight from shore to shore and absolutely silent of any frog calls.  But look!  Can you see the open water now along the shore?  And boy, was the woods resounding today with the shrill chorus of Spring Peepers, as well as the croaking "quacks" of the amorous Wood Frogs! Spring music, indeed!

When I was here in the Skidmore woods last Sunday, I could see last year's reddish leaves of Sharp-lobed and Round-lobed Hepatica plants, made obvious on the forest floor by their distinctive color. I had peered into the center of one of those plants and detected a tiny emerging flower bud.  How long, I wondered, before that bud will open to produce a flower?

Less than a week, I learned today!  Peering closely into that same cluster of reddish leaves I'd examined last Sunday, I found not just one, but a whole ready-made bouquet of pink opening flowers, newly emerged from their very furry  buds.

Nearby was another cluster of hepatica leaves, and on this plant that central floral bouquet included a wide-open flower, colored the prettiest pale lavender.

No doubt about it now:  the spring wildflower season is definitely upon us!