Late last week, we had just a dusting of snow. Will this be IT? Is winter (if we can call this puny one that) really over? All winter long, the snow in the woods was not much good for animal tracking, but at least I got to see these bird prints last week as a Starling made a bee line to the cat chow we put out on our porch for a feral cat. I thought the bird's trail looked as pretty as an ornamental frieze.
Today, it must have been close to 70 degrees under a clear blue sky, when I visited Mud Pond at Moreau Lake State Park. The pond was completely clear of all ice, and no snow remained on the ground. I walked the powerline that runs just north of the pond, curious to see if the American Hazelnuts (Corylus americana) that thrive there had come into bloom.
The dangling male catkins were evident on nearly every shrub, but it requires very close examination of every twig to espy the itty bitty female flowers. And with so many hazelnut shrubs at this site, there were thousands of twigs to examine.
Ta da! I found some! If the sun had not caused the tiny scarlet pistils to glow like miniature Christmas lights, I probably wouldn't have seen them, they are so small. These flowers vie with Skunk Cabbage to be the first flowers of spring.
I was surprised to see a few clusters of hazelnuts remaining on the shrubs. Usually, squirrels and other animals strip the shrubs of their nuts even before the nuts are fully ripe.
Aha! Holes in the nuts reveal that a female Hazelnut Weevil got there before the squirrels and bored a hole in each nut to deposit her eggs inside, where the larvae hatched and consumed the nut from within.
Well, if the American Hazelnuts are blooming now, I surmised that the Skunk Cabbage plants (Symplocarpus foetidus) that thrive in the watery ditches along the Spring Run Trail in downtown Saratoga Springs should all be in full bloom, too. We've been finding occasional plants in bloom so far, but most plants in a given population had not yet opened by late last week. I next stopped off at the Spring Run Trail to check on the Skunk Cabbages' progress.
Oh yes, progress had occurred! Almost every Skunk Cabbage spathe was wide open now, with interior spadices covered with blooming florets.
All along the trail, many male Alder catkins (Alnus species) were already shedding pollen, even though the smaller female flowers on the same tree had not yet opened enough to receive the pollen as it wafted on the breeze (and dusted my hand). This is the Alder's strategy to avoid self-pollination. The females will open after the pollen from their own tree has been spent, ready then to welcome the pollen wafted from neighboring trees.
And here was the first wildflower of spring that actually LOOKs like a flower! An abundant patch of Colt's Foot (Tussilago farfara) had sprung up virtually overnight from the muddy bank of the Spring Run Creek.
What a gorgeous sunburst of bloom, with staminate disc flowers already opening, surrounded by the wispy pistils. Colt's Foot is not a native of North America, but the bees that were visiting did not apparently disparage these immigrants.
I knew that if all these other wildflowers were blooming now, I would surely find masses of two super-early bloomers in an area enclosed by an old stone wall off Parkhurst Road in Wilton: Winter Aconite (Eranthus hyemalis) and Snowdrops (Galanthus species). And yes, I certainly did!
I don't know if these old stone walls surround a cellar hole or a former garden, but the latter seems a more likely spot for these two non-native species, popular with home gardeners for their exceptionally early bloom time. On other years, I have seen these flowers poking up right through the snow,
The Winter Aconite blooms are so sunny, they almost seem to produce their own warmth!
So all these flowers must indicate that winter is truly over. Recalling a three-foot snow that fell on St. Patrick's Day a few years back, I acknowledge we might yet get a wintry surprise, but these early bloomers can all keep blooming despite such deep snowcover. I only wish we'd had such snow this past winter.
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