From Cold to Hot!

In my last post, I grumbled about how cold the weather continued, how slowly the season of flowers was progressing. Well, it has suddenly turned extra warm.  It was in the high 70s yesterday, it was over 80 today and will be again tomorrow. And the next day.  This means I'll be rushing to keep up with the wildflower explosion and record their appearance on my blog.  Before I do that, I want to post here, just for the record, the few flowers I found this past week.

While walking trails along the Hoosic River in Rensselaer County last Thursday, I was truly surprised to find this patch of Trailing Arbutus (Epigaea repens) in nearly full bloom.  Earlier along the same trail, I had passed other patches of it showing just tight buds, but here were some perfect pure-white flowers, fully open.  Beautiful!

I'd been watching a small population of Snow Trillium (Trillium nivale) for over a week, as its flower buds remained stubbornly closed. No surprise, since nighttime temps still fell to the frigid 20s.  But boy, were they open today!  And there were many more plants -- nearly two dozen -- than I've ever seen at this location before.  Since this native wildflower has a very limited distribution in midwestern North America, we would never see it here in northeastern New York if one of our local naturalists had not planted it in her Saratoga County woods many years ago.  A very aptly named trillium, since it often blooms while snow still lies in the shady hollows of the same woods.

Round-leaved Violets (Viola rotundifolia) grow in the same woods as the Snow Trilliums do, and they usually open their vivid lemon-yellow blooms about the same time. These are our earliest native violets to bloom.  I did find them today, although the flowers were still in bud. But the yellow petals were just poking out, and I bet by the time my blog readers see this photo, the budding violets I found today will be just as wide open as these in the photo I took of the same plants exactly one year ago. With this violet species, the leaves do not fully unfurl until after the flowers have opened wide.