It's spring flower week!

Rue anemone

 

The forest’s first, tiny ephemeral flowers are blooming at Roundtop. In addition to the yellow dog-toothed violets I found several days ago, I’ve now added bloodwort, rue anemone and coltsfoot. All of these flowers are small and easy to overlook.

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot is the most obvious of the three new species I found yesterday, and even that one is easy to overlook. The flower looks so much like dandelion that I believe a lot of people overlook it because of that. But though the flowers are similar, the similarity ends there. Coltsfoot is taller that most dandelions and the plant flowers before you find any leaves. Often, it is the first new flower I find in the spring, but not this year.

Bloodwort is another tiny plant. The flowers are about half an inch and the waxy, clover-shaped leaves are perhaps 2-3 inches. An entire plant may be only 3-4 inches long. I found just two plants of this one, within 4-5 feet of each other. Likely, there are more that I haven’t found yet.

Rue anemone is a common plant in my forest. Every year I have multiple plants that vary in shade from white to a nice lavender. This plant is no larger than bloodwort but it grows much more densely, and I often find 10-12 plants in one area. Even a tiny flower is hard to overlook when so many are grouped together.



Bloodwort

Finding spring’s first flowers is a true sign of spring, along with the appearance of that lovely little Eastern blue butterfly. This weekend I also had golden-crowned kinglets, ruby kinglets and a pair of very curious blue-gray gnatcatchers. For the first time this year, I finally feel confident that I can finally put those snow shovels away!

Spring is beginning to spring here on Roundtop Mtn.  It's been a little tough to find amongst all the rainstorms, tornados and dense fog.  Yesterday brought sunny weather for several hours.  The chickens were glad to get out of their pen and roam around the woods. A few found worms, which to chickens is apparently a lot like finding gold.  The others scratched and found other good stuff.  They certainly had a good time. Who'd have thought that chickens would like the woods so much?  They are pretty canny, too.  Yesterday, I heard one squawk with the danger signal and went out to investigate.  They'd all run back into the pen as a red-tailed hawk soared overhead.  Smart girls!

A few migrants are starting to pass over as well.  In dense fog on Wednesday morning I had blue-gray gnatcatcher, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets.  I've gotten reports of warblers elsewhere but so far they haven't visited here.  Down at Lake Pinchot, a spotted sandpiper bobbled its way along the shoreline.  Spring is still slow here, especially when compared to recent springs.  I am only just starting to see the first hints of redbud trees, though I really have to know which trees to look at to see those red buds.  Dogwood is also starting but only a few trees.

It's not just the rain that's kept spring from exploding.  With a few days of exceptions, temperatures are averaging about 10 degrees lower than average. The few sunny days have been near normal, but there's been so few sunny days that they don't have much impact. So for now I am just waiting, still using the fireplace occasionally and waiting for the next batch of weekend rain. Spring will arrive eventually.  In fact, at this point, it wouldn't entirely surprise me if spring pretty much bypassed this area entirely and ended up with summer being the next season on the mountain.