A Few More Baby Steps For Spring

"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain." With these opening lines to his long poem "The Waste Land," T. S. Eliot sure got that right.  April IS a cruel month, as we flower-starved nature nerds search and search for the first flowers of Spring, grasping at hope with the first warm days, then having our hopes dashed by the return of sub-freezing weather. But every week now, Spring does take a few more baby steps forward. Those cold-thwarted Snow Trilliums I worried about 10 days ago?  This week, those seemingly suffering buds have opened into perfectly unscathed, snowy-white petals.  Ta Da!   Ha ha, Winter, you lose!

 

A few warmer days got me thinking there might be more flowers about to bloom in the Skidmore woods here in Saratoga, so I headed out there yesterday afternoon, stopping to check on a patch of super-early-blooming English Violets (Viola odorata) along Clinton Street.  At first sight, I was appalled to see that a huge fallen White Pine, its tangle of broken branches and all its shed needles had completely obscured the few square yards of roadside where I always found these super-fragrant, deep-purple flowers.  But searching about the edges of this huge heap of dead-tree detritus, I managed to find a few clusters of violet leaves and many purple flower buds just about to open their sweet-smelling blooms.  With such a depleted population, I hope I can find enough in bloom this year to collect just a small nosegay, a teeny-tiny bouquet that would be sufficient to perfume an entire room.

This find encouraged me to cross to the other side of the campus, where a trail through the woods led me straight to a second patch of English Violets, this one of only the white variety, possessing pure-white, non-veined petals that are backed by purple spurs. And sure enough, these violets, too, were just about to bloom.  I bet by the next sunny day they will do just that.

I had already found, more than a week ago, the first open blooms of Round-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica americana) here in the Skidmore woods. Would the Sharp-lobed species (H. acutiloba) be blooming now, too?  Yes, indeed, they sure were! This species of Hepatica prefers a lime-rich habitat, which the limestone-underlaid North Woods at Skidmore College certainly provides.

Here's a second Sharp-lobed Hepatica I found in perfect bloom.  I bet that within a week, hundreds and hundreds more will follow, displaying blooms in various colors, from sparkling white to pink to this lovely pale lavender to the deepest purple.

I thought that was IT, for blooming flowers today. But many buds were emerging now, including these chubby buds of Plantain-leaved Pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginifolia), whitened by a coating of fine hairs.

The Spicebush shrubs (Lindera benzoin), which just a few days ago bore nothing but bare twigs, today were sporting the small green spherical buds that soon will sprout into tufts of yellow flowers, staminate and pistillate blooms on separate shrubs.

As I scanned a wooded area thick with Leatherwood shrubs (Dirca palustris), it didn't appear that their furry buds had developed any further than the closed-tight ones I had observed a few days ago. But a ray of sunlight picked out a dot of bright yellow among the many brown buds of one shrub.  And a closer inspection revealed that the bright-yellow, trumpet-shaped blooms had burst through their protective bud scales to dangle their super-long pistils and stubbier, pollen-laden anthers. I think that it's fair to say, with these reproductive organs revealed, that the Leatherwood is blooming!  Chalk one more up for Spring!