Winter Returns!

Just as our hopes for Spring were rising, along with our first few wildflowers, Winter has returned with a frigid blast.  When temps were in the 50s just last Saturday, a big patch of Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis)  and Snowdrops (Galanthus sp.) were blooming profusely in an old abandoned garden on the edge of the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in Wilton. 

Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis)

Snowdrops (Galanthus species)

And back in the woods, the first leaves and buds of Snow Trillium had pushed up from the just-now unfrozen earth. Judging from how this plant has behaved in past years, I fully hoped both flowers and leaves would be wide open within a day or two.  True to their name, they are normally quite impervious to early-spring cold weather.

Snow Trillium (Trillium nivale)

But then, over Sunday night, the thermometer plunged down into the teens, with daytime temps remaining in the 20s all day Monday.  We even saw a few snow flurries that day.  (Even colder temps have continued into Tuesday, with only slight warming predicted for the coming week.)  Concerned about how those newly arisen Snow Trilliums had fared, I hurried out to the Orra Phelps Preserve on Monday afternoon to check on them.  As soon as I approached the Little Snook Kill that runs through this preserve, I noticed sure signs of freezing, with thick icicles dangling from streamside branches.

The Aconite and Snowdrops -- two introduced garden species famous for their cold hardiness -- appeared completely unaffected and were blooming away unfazed.  But the Snow Trilliums surely looked as if they had suffered: one plant had completely flopped over on a weakened stem, while the leaves of another looked as if its leaves had been nipped and scarred by the freeze.

Ah well, I guess this must be expected.  After all, Snow Trillium is a more southerly species, not native to northern New York, although it grows abundantly in its native states, like Pennsylvania and Ohio.  I am grateful to the late Orra Phelps herself, a noted Adirondack botanizer and former owner of this preserve that now bears her name, for if she had not planted this lovely little wildflower here, I would never find it anywhere else in these northerly regions.  And I have not yet given up hope that these freeze-afflicted specimens will yet revive, since, true to its name, this is usually a very cold-tolerant plant.  I also expect that a few more plants will yet emerge from the earth. I'm just hoping they stay safely underground until Spring stops letting Winter reassert itself.