The weather is like spring rather than the winter that I love. I might as well be dreaming about the season to come. April, with a Confederate Violet (Viola sororia priceana) and a Falcate Orangetip (Anthocharis midea). Soon to be reality.
Dreaming
Category: Spring
What Season is it Anyway?
Though spring is moving right along, things got very confusing today, as graupel pummeled my mountain, off and on for several hours. But spring is here. Very soon Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida) will be filling the verdant woods with creamy white blossoms. Despite today’s weather, spring is here.
Sassafras Trees Are Dioecious
Seems winter has given up. Spring has won the battle of the seasons and is stepping through the woods. Right now, mid-April, Sassafras Trees (Sassafras albidum) are in bloom throughout the woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains in central Virginia. Creating a soft watercolor wash of pale yellow.
Sassafras is a dioecious tree, meaning any Sassafras tree that you may come upon in the woods or in your yard is either a female tree or a male tree. Each individual tree’s flowers in turn are either female flowers or male flowers. The blossoms in the image immediately above are female flowers. Each female flower is very small at about one third inch across. Each has six sepals, an elongated central pistil and six small sterile stamens.
The male flower to my eyes looks like a busier flower. These are male flowers in the photo above. Each little flower, one third inch across, consists of six sepals and nine stamens with yellow anthers.
Going from tree to tree, the flowers are pollinated by various bees, flies, sawflies, beetles and wasps. Fertilized female flowers produce oval drupes. A drupe is also known as a fleshy fruit with thin skin and a central stone containing the seed. Drupe is easier to say.
When the drupes are ripe, reaching a deep blue-black color, seated on a pedicel that appears to be a rich red goblet, songbirds, Wild Turkeys, and Bobwhites enjoy the buffet and spread seeds through the woods. Bringing us more gorgeous Sassafras Trees.
Tomorrow is SPRING!
Many of you know that I love winter, my totally, over the top, favorite season. But I also delight in the seasons changing. If the seasons stayed the same, day after day after day after day I wouldn’t be content. I think the world of CHANGE.
Sometimes even Mother Nature just doesn’t want to let go. To let the seasons do their things. And she brings us surprises. These images are from April 15, 2020. I think this was one of those times when she felt, if nothing else, mischievous.
For the winter lover in me, I’m certainly at an advantage being at a slightly higher elevation than those in the lowlands of Virginia. Mountains have their benefits. That elevation helps create snow, when otherwise there might not be any. For sure it was the case on this day.
Blooms of Redbud (Cercis canadensis), and Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida), and new unfurling fronds of Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) all got dumped on with a fair amount of wet snow. But they are native plants and can take what is dished out.
A few hours of sunshine and things were back to normal. And we all were quite content.
One week later, another native plant, Dwarf Crested Iris (Iris cristata), was up and blooming as if it was a perfectly normal spring.
Cutleaf Toothwort
A spring ephemeral, a perennial native to eastern North America. Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata).
The “toothwort” of its name is thanks to the appearance of its rhizome.
The Cutleaf Toothwort likes woods with mesic soils covered with lots of leaf litter. This certainly must be the description of the woods where I live. Many of these plants greet the spring each year up here, including a few spots where colonies have formed.
Buds protected by four pale green sepals open to reveal four barely pale pink petals. At the center of each flower is a style with a sphere topped stigma which are surrounded by stamens with green filaments of varying lengths topped by yellow anthers.
Many different pollinators visit these blooms. Fruit of the Toothwort is a slender pod about an inch long containing a single row of tiny seeds.
When the invasive, Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), starts growing in the area of a population of Cutleaf Toothwort its numbers soon decline. A good reason to fight those invasives.
The Middle of March
It’s the middle of March and the first of my daffodils are up and blooming. Looking so lovely as they trumpet the arrival of spring. Don’t get too confident though you golden beauties. Mother Nature has a way of bringing surprises. Surprises like SNOW, even in the middle of APRIL!
Hoarfrost
The cold temperatures of winter can create such works of wonder. Often so delicate they can’t be touched for fear of destruction.
Occasionally the beauty makes me forget that what I am looking at, such as these rose hips of Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora), is something that I work diligently to rid my woods of. A very aggressive invasive that has the nerve to mimic our native blackberries during their times of blooming. But frosted during the cold of winter it has its charm. AND take a look at that image again. There is an undulating line of frost that starts on the left, about 1/4 of the way down that goes to the right, from that first rose hip, on to the second and then the third as it drops and then ends. THAT is a spider web also decorated with frostiness.
The berries of Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra) with its frost rivals ANY image of a Cardinal in the snow. Glorious red with stark white. Perfection.
With the hoarfrost the needles of Virginia Pine (Pinus virginiana) each get their own personal set of needles.
The leaves of young White Oak (Quercus alba) don’t drop as most deciduous leaves do in the fall, but hang onto them until late spring. That gives them the chance to be dressed up. To be decorated by the spines of ice. The artwork of Mother Nature.
Five Inches of Snow
It snowed overnight. Wet puffy snow has covered everything. I’ve been transported into a Christmas card waiting to be signed and sent on its way.
It’s the second snow here this winter making winter seem a bit more like the way winters ought to be. The winters that I think of when I think back to Kilmer Street and that wonderful hill. A great sledding hill, and oh! those snow forts!
I’m roaming this morning. Me with my camera getting pelted with snowballs as the wet snow dropped from the trees. We stopped to get a picture of the berries of Smooth Sumac that the Northern Flicker, and Hermit Thrush love to gobble.
The snow has really accumulated on the leaves of the White Oak tree. Young White Oak trees often keep their leaves during winter. Other trees that have this same characteristic are Beech, and Hornbeam. They are said to be marcescent.
The snow has collected in the Flowering Dogwood trees as if they are stocking up on snowballs. Getting set for that big snowball battle surely soon to happen.
Camera and I follow the tracks of a wild turkey for a long way, until the tracks take a turn up and over a rock wall. We don’t feel like climbing.
The turkey’s track is about 4.5 inches long and the big critter has a stride of 2.5 feet. WOW!
The Forsythia has reached up, catching many clumps of snow. Stretching to where the sun might have been on any other morning. Stretching tall, other branches drooping. All waiting for the warmth of the sun. The warmth of early spring to be brightened by its blooms.
Perhaps those blooms will wait a little longer. I don’t think winter is close to being over. I hope not.
In Praise of Blueberries
In my yard I’ve got a good number of mature blueberry bushes. Twelve? Fourteen? Enough that I can stock my freezer with loads of quarts of luscious berries to last throughout the year. And the birds? They’re welcome to their share. I love that the berries entice them.
Of the birds that come to enjoy the berries some are frequent visitors that I know well. A cardinal, a perfect example. Other birds don’t often make their presence known depending on the magic of camouflage to hide from my attentive eyes. A female scarlet tanager blending right in.
Each of the seasons provides a different aspect. A different way to appreciate the berries, the bushes. Winter with the buds anticipating the following spring develop sometimes encased in ice.
Winter as the rusty-red branches provide an accent to the snow that falls.
Spring with buds creamy white. Spring with buds soft red.
Spring and her blooms. A pollinators’ playground.
And then there’s summer. You know what that means.
Harvesting and eating.
Autumn celebrates with a brilliant palette. Sumptuous warm colors that tell me there is more to come with each season.
Can you tell? I am in love with blueberries and their bushes.
Intrepid Daffodil
In the garden today – the intrepid daffodil. Sending fingers up to test out conditions. Or perhaps their bulbs are sending up periscopes to see if it’s safe.
But for Daffodils things are just fine. They can take most anything. Even snow in late March.
Tough as nails they stand up to wintery conditions. Surprise ice and snow in mid April? No worry. The daffodils say, “Bring on spring! We’re READY!”