Spring ephemera

hepatics

Spring ephemerals are blooming all around my cabin this week.  Out! They all popped all at once. They are such tiny and dainty little things.

I have to look for them, watching underfoot so I don’t accidentally step on one.  Friends who aren’t flower people tell me when they see my photos, “I’ve never seen anything like that.”  I think it’s because they expect the flowers to be large and showy, as sometimes the close-up photos make them appear. These are not your mother’s tulips. These are half-inch jewels that are easily overlooked, despite their colors.  Many of them close up at night and only reopen when the sun wakes them up again, and in a week or two they are gone, gone for another year.

They aren’t always easy to see or easy to find.  That’s part of what makes them so special and so spectacular in their own tiny little way.

Coltsfoot

Sunrise on a spring morning

My view of the western mountains is gone for another 5-6 months, a sure sign that the warm seasons are in full bloom.  The leaves are not yet so full that I have lost my view of the sky, though that is not long away either.  The tall oaks and hickories leaf out later than the beech and the smaller trees that strive not to be pushed out of the sun by their taller neighbors.

So considering that annual growth is still growing ever more lush by the day, it seems a little surprising that a few things are already dying back, done for another year.  The earliest of the bloomers are already tossing seeds into the wind.  Coltsfoot, that dandelion look-alike, has turned white and fuzzy, tall stems topped by the flat, white leftovers of the yellow flower. They remind me of straw hats, the kind called “boaters.”  A few still retain vestiges of the yellow flower, though tomorrow they will be little boaters, too.

The warblers are about done here until fall. I had a nice few mornings dominated by chestnut-sided warblers.  I don’t usually get many warblers on the side of the mountain, away from water, but I nearly always have a nice number of chestnut-sided.  Or perhaps it’s only that they are easier to spot—they come down to the mid-level of trees instead of flitting through the tallest ones.

On a recent misty morning warblers that favor the top canopy were nearly impossible for me to identify.  They were little gray silhouettes instead of flashes of color, and my poor hearing meant I can’t hear some of them .  That’s a bad combination when trying to identify them.  But chestnut-sided warblers are more cooperative. I can hear their little trill and they are low enough to see well and identify.  They seem more curious than most of the others, too, frequently bouncing lower to get a look at me or the dogs.

This morning the sunrise was especially good, perhaps foreshadowing thunderstorms later today.  Those are another sign of the warmer weather.  So far the storms have been meek—a few rumbles of distant thunder, a gathering of clouds that never quite turned into a storm.  That will soon change, I’m sure.

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!

Blooming bloodroot and other ephemera

Bloodroot

 ...Is here and gone already. Bloodroot is not quite a one-day wonder. It’s more like a 36 hour wonder. I don’t think it’s ever made it a full 48 hours. That’s about as ephemeral as it gets, at least here on Roundtop. One full day, never quite two, out of 365 days in the year is all you can expect to see this pretty little flower. It will be 363 days before it comes around again. It kind of gives a real meaning to the phrase “having a day in the sun.”

Gone again for another year.

I had 10-12 of the little blooms at the edge of my forest. Unlike the dog-toothed violets that may bloom successively over a week or so, all the bloodroot flowers bloom on the same day. This year, heavy rain on Saturday knocked down a few of the buds, so I ended up with fewer blooms on Sunday than I might have. Life is tough on these little flowers.


Coltsfoot



Gone already, the petals drop one by one and then the flower heads go to seed immediately. It seems kind of sad to me, such a short time in the sun—all that effort for one little day. A short time blooming and a long time gone. And who knows what the next year will bring? The spot where these blooms appear is a small one, a strip of earth perhaps 6 feet long and no more than 2 feet wide. Some year, after I’ve gone, if someone widens the car parking spot by even a foot, they will be gone. As it is, I have to take care not to back the car too wide and overshoot my parking area. I came within 6 inches of crushing one plant when I backed into the spot earlier this week.

I often wonder how frequently such things we humans carelessly and mindlessly destroy. Someone builds a new house and never learns what grew there before the house was built. Perhaps it was a tree where pileated woodpeckers had nested for years. Perhaps it was a patch of lady slippers. For all I know when my cabin was built 40 years ago, perhaps all but a few bloodroot, those few that now hang on next to my car park, were destroyed.



It’s a sobering thought that we know so little about the land’s inhabitants, both flora and fauna, before we destroy the landscape to build something we think is important. Sometimes I wish that we’d consider the lives that lived before we came onto the land a little more. Do we really need a 4000 sq. ft. house when a 1000 sq. ft house would do (and save more of the land)? Could we simply change the location of our driveway to protect that patch of lady slippers? Of course, that would mean knowing our land before we build on it. I wish that wasn’t too much to ask.

Ta da!

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot is up! This little dandelion lookalike without the leaves is always the first bloom of spring and quite often the first anything above the ground here on Roundtop. I found this bloom on Sunday, the first warm day that stayed in the ‘60s for more than a minute and a half.

Timing of the arrival of this plant isn’t unusual. My blog tags show other blooming days of April 5 and April 7. I had a few late blooming days of April 20 and April 18, too, so overall the timing is quite typical.

Coltsfoot is from the aster family, which isn’t a surprise when you see the flower. The leaves don’t appear until after the bloom is done. The plant used to be used to make teas but was found in more modern times to cause severe liver problems, especially in infants and even when the mother drank the tea and not the child. So the plant has no good use except to announce the arrival of spring before anything else does.

Around the cabin, phoebes are singing on territory now and not just passing through on their trips further north. Yesterday I let the chickens run loose, though I checked on them frequently. Doodle my rooster alarmed every time a crow flew past, let alone a turkey vulture, and I would go outside to check that their alarms weren’t caused by something more predatory. Every time I went outside, from morning to evening, a phoebe was singing away.

Hawkwatches around the Great Lakes reported a good day yesterday, too. A nice southwesterly breeze gave migrants a nice tail wind to aid their flights. I am still waiting for and hoping for the first small migrants, such as blue-gray gnatcatcher or perhaps a yellow-rumped warbler. So far that hasn’t happened, but they will be moving north too and it’s likely this week will see the first arrivals of those.

Spring is underway, if not yet reaching the explosive point. That will come soon enough.

Blooms arrive! Birds, too

The first of the new spring wildflowers are out! Coltsfoot is up and blooming here on Roundtop Mountain. The only other blooms I found this weekend were two tiny spring beauties. Bloodroot is almost blooming and likely will appear today for the first of its one- or two-day annual extravaganza.

But yesterday was the day for the coltsfoot to appear, urged by the warm temperatures and the sun. Winter ended abruptly this year, replaced by a warm March. And though it feels to me as though it has been warm enough for long enough that the early blooms should have appeared before this, the reality is that they are blooming pretty much on time. In 2008 the first coltsfoot appeared on April 6 and in 2007 it was April 17, but that year a late cold snap likely affected them. In 2009 I didn’t record the date, but the blooms typically arrive the first week of April.

Coltsfoot is the earliest of the blooms I see here on the mountain. For years, I thought they were dandelions and didn’t pay much attention to them. Eventually I realized they had no dandelion leaves and that’s when I found out that are not dandelions at all. Coltsfoot isn’t native to this hemisphere, being among the huge number of plants brought over from Europe for their medicinal purposes.

On Saturday morning I left the mountain, dropped down about 650 feet in altitude and went to Pinchot State Park where I saw many more blooms. My best guess is that 650 feet in altitude equates to about a week’s difference between what I see on the mountain and what is happening down in the valley.

The good weather prompted large numbers of birds to fly north, starting on Friday. New arrivals on the mountain are eastern towhees, brown-headed cowbirds and chipping sparrows. Expect to see a lot of wildflower photos here at Roundtop Ruminations this week. Flowers are much better at sitting still than the birds!

First Flower of Spring

Today’s photo is a coltsfoot flower, the first flower in my area in this or any other year. Coltsfoot is so anxious to bloom that it pokes its yellow head out even before its leaves appear. This year, the flowering is right on schedule, blooming as it usually does the first week of April. Last year the bloom was late because of a severe cold snap during late March and early April.

Except for this single coltsfoot flower, spring didn’t move forward very much this past weekend up on the mountain. The weather is grey and gloomy, with only momentary appearances of sun or blue sky. It has been that way since the middle of last week. It is still that way this morning.

I went birding on Saturday morning but have no new spring residents or even new non-residents to report. The spring growth on the forest floor is a little higher every day but only a little. The trees are not yet budding, though the leaves of a few shrubs are close. Yesterday, the cats were entranced with the sight of a squirrel ripping the leaf buds off what I think is a wild rose shrub. The bird feeder was full, so presumably the squirrel was just looking for a fresh "salad" after a winter of seeds and nuts.

It feels as though spring is taking a bit of a breather right now. After the giddiness of its first appearance, nothing much visible is going on right now, though I expect the plants are all stretching in the soft earth, their roots waking up. Just because I can’t see anything new right now doesn’t mean spring isn’t going on underneath the surface of my feet.

I took photo #2 in my experiment (see entry of March 26) of seeing the changes in the forest as spring progresses. It’s been exactly a week since my first photo. So far, I can see no differences that I’m sure of. It’s possible the moss on one of the boulders is brighter and greener, but it’s also possible this is because the second photo was taken in a moment of sunshine and the first was taken during an overcast sky.

Coltsfoot in Full Bloom

The coltsfoot plant I photographed the other day is now in full bloom. The overcast sky that has darkened the day for weeks has now cleared, and today is clear and warm. The result is that spring is about to explode.

Instead of the baby steps of the past few weeks, the speed of the new season will now likely move so quickly, I won't be able to see or note it all. It will suddenly just be here in full force, probably by tomorrow morning. I am certainly ready for something to change. It feels as though I've been living in November since, well, November.

Gee, it's Friday, and the sky is clear. I have two days to enjoy the outdoors and the forest. Let the weekend begin!

Coltsfoot and Other Insanities

If you want a better indication of how late this spring is arriving, today’s photo is it. This is coltsfoot, which is typically the first wildflower to appear each year. In fact, this flower is so anxious to bloom that it blooms before its leaves appear. As you can see in this photo, the plant is not yet (quite) blooming as the flowers haven’t opened up yet.

It is not uncommon for me to first see a blooming coltsfoot around the first week of April. I wouldn’t be surprised, in some years, to find it before the end of March. I have also seen it in bloom when patches of snow were still around. But this year, today will be its blooming day. It is no exaggeration to say that it is blooming about 3 weeks later than usual.

The coltsfoot, as I have only just found out to my dismay, is not native to North America but to Europe, where it was used to treat asthma and colds, usually in a tea sweetened with lemon. It is also, apparently, smoked in a pipe to treat asthma, which to a modern sensibility seems like a contradiction in terms.

Spring continues its slow progress, though the speed of the season is beginning to increase. Last night, as I drove past the old snowmaking pond, several tree swallows skimmed along its surface—another first of the year!

And this morning, for at least several seconds, I was briefly convinced I’d overslept. Dog and I were walking along one of the ponds when I saw brightness in the east and was momentarily blinded. The sun! If the sun was up, it could only mean that I was late for work because when Dog and I walk it is still dark. In fact, it was dead dark only yesterday on our walk, and it doesn’t go from dark to sunny in one day when we walk at the same time each morning, so…Oh, wait. The sky is clear this morning. The sun is supposed to be rising now. It’s only because it’s been so flippin’ overcast for the past two weeks that I couldn’t see morning was rising to greet us on our walks. Okay, so I’m not late. Deep breath.