In Central Pennsylvania our last frost-free day is typically the 15th of May and we’ll expect all the Spring happenings to be in full swing by then.
Violets are blooming in earnest now. We have the Northern Downy Violet, Arrow-leaved Violet and the Common Blue Violet popping up in the yards and driveway. They don’t seem to mind the rocks and clay that we have for “soil” up here on the mountain.
Early spring flowers of the familiar bulbs that herald Spring are already faded or dried up and blown away. The greenery of the crocus, daffodil, hyacinth and tulip are still growing strong and collecting energy for reproductive purposes. After the leaves yellow the bulbs can be dug up and replanted to allow them to spread out.
A native plant with a large bulb for its size is the dainty little Spring Beauty, Claytonia virginica. Early Americans are said to have eaten the bulbs or tubers as a potato substitute. They’re edible, but small. It would take quite a number of plants to make a meal. Spring beauty tubers are up to a half inch in diameter. Perhaps a nice thing to know if you’re leaning toward survivalism, but not worth digging really. Let’s just enjoy their beauty, shall we?
In my early Spring post I was wrong about the Dark-eyed Juncos having gone north for the season. On the 9th of April I saw a small troupe of juncos pecking the stones on our gravel driveway. Obviously, all the juncos hadn’t flown back to Canada quite yet.
Robins made their Spring appearance and have been hopping around the place for a few weeks now. I suppose the juncos will leave any day, unless they are year-round residents that stay in the Appalachian Mountains all year.
Dark-eyed junco or slate-colored junco, female.
Another blooper popped up last week when listing a few early blooming plants that are ahead of schedule this year. As luck would have it coltsfoot was mentioned as one of the plants that were finished blooming for the season, albeit earlier than normal. Such a definitive statement is bound to get one in trouble with the whims of Mother Nature.
In most places along our country roads you can see the seed heads of coltsfoot plants that have already bloomed for the year. The round, composite seed heads are much like the spent flower heads of dandelions that a child picks up to blow the seeds into the air.
Coltsfoot seed heads are white in the background and dandelion is flowering yellow in the foreground. Photo taken 5 April 2012.
The flowers in the photo above faced south with at least a road’s width of open space to its south. One usually finds this early spring bloomer along roadsides and in full sun. Most of the coltsfoot flowers have ended their early blooming for the year but small pockets of flowering coltsfoot may still be seen. Look in secluded or shady areas for the last-flowering coltsfoot blossoms.
Coltsfoot flowers close up and droop their heads overnight, then raise them in the sunshine of the following day. Photo taken 12:30 p.m. on 5 April 2012.
Trading the cold of night for the warmth of sunshine, coltsfoot flowers gain enough energy to raise their heads and open their composite flowers. The coltsfoot in this particular location didn’t seem to open their flowers completely by late afternoon, so they were probably on their last few days before turning to seed.
Coltsfoot flower heads open up slowly in filtered sunshine. Photo taken at 2 p.m. 5 April 2012.
The last two photos are of the same clump of coltsfoot, taken about an hour-and-a-half apart. This grouping of coltsfoot was along a Pennsylvania country road and adjacent to woodlands on the south. Sunlight was filtered through the trees and so made for a late-blooming set of coltsfoot.
Bulbs and wildflowers are blooming now along with some early Spring flowering trees. Not many trees nor bulbs bloom in their entirely before April begins, but this is proving to be a different kind of year. Spring of 2012 is early and at times was way hot for March.
Early bloomers that have already finished showing off for this year include:
Some plants seem to be mixed up regarding their blooming times. Some individuals have already bloomed and died back, while others of the same kind growing nearby are just now blooming or have yet to push out their flowers. Hepatica is a good example. Some hepatica plants that are already spent were blooming last year on 14 April, three weeks later than this year. A few hepatica had both spent blossoms and flowers in bloom on 29 March 2012.
Three hepatica plants past blooming. The flower stalks can be seen with their three maroon sepals. Photo taken 30 March 2012.Hepatica americana blooming with three flowers. Photo taken 30 March 2012.
Other flowers that have bloomed for at least a week or longer and that are still blooming include:
Spring has sprung a little early this year. The calendar says it starts on March 21st but we’re seeing all the signs already. Meteorologically speaking winter is December, January and February, so any time in March we should start seeing Spring happening.
We have been hearing the flocks of Canada geese and swans flying north for a couple of weeks now. Robins have appeared and are singing loudly from the oak treetops. It occurs to me that I haven’t seen juncos for a while now, so maybe they’ve flown back to Canada, too.
The crocuses started poking their heads out of the ground and yesterday was the first day to see them blooming. A different type of bulb, anemones, bloomed last week. We call them “early crocuses”.
Early crocuses or anemones in bloom. Photo taken March 6, 2012.
The anemones have thinner petals whereas the later crocuses have wider petals that are rounded at the tips. The linear leaves are very similar with the white midrib, but the anemone leaves are also thinner.
Crocuses showing off their wide petals in bright white and purple. Photo taken March 13, 2012.
The temperatures here in the eastern US are about 20 degrees warmer than usual, so many trees have popped their leaf buds. Maple trees, elderberry canes, wild roses and blackberries have all pushed out their leaves. The elderberry leaves have grown the most so far, but with warm weather predicted for the next ten days or so, we expect the pollen levels to shoot up from lots of tree activity.
In the woods hepatica isn’t blooming yet. I did see one flower bud at the soil surface when I checked them yesterday, so I suspect that hepatica may bloom early this Spring.
Hepatica not quite blooming yet this year. The maroon-tinted leaves remain from last year. Photo taken March 12, 2012.
Hepatica americana is a favorite of mine and since it’s growing wild on our property, you know I’ll be checking these plants often until they bloom.
Friends up and down the East Coast have shared that some flowers are blooming way early this year. The very mild winter seems to have confused a lot of plants out there. We have tulips poking out their greenery about three inches. They’re right next to the house and gather more heat than plants further from the house, but it’s still surprising to see them out in February.
It was a beautiful day yesterday so the dog and I took a walk together. I think we both really enjoyed being outside. We walked together up the lane and back to the old bean field. Stubble from last year’s soybean crop had delicious smells, evidently. The dog left his scent many times for the deer and turkeys that we regularly see in this field.
We walked the edge of the field to a rise on the north side. This area gets lots of sun as the open field lies to its south. The day was unseasonably warm, just like the rest of this winter. I was wearing just a shirt and hoodie and was totally comfortable, if not a little warm once we walked a bit.
To my surprise once we got to the highest spot in the field there were the tiny white flowers of Pennsylvania Bittercress blooming in the sunshine! That has to be the earliest I’ve seen them blooming. We usually see these tiny flowers appear in the middle of March, not February.
Since I didn’t take the camera on our walk, I picked a couple of these weeds and plopped them on the scanner once we got home. Do you see the detail in the images above that can be picked up with a scanner as compared to a macro photo? If I could have scanned the items when they were freshly picked instead of after being squished in my pocket for a while, you’d be able to identify the plants more easily.
Chamomile flowers don’t seem to be afraid of the late autumn weather. It’s been a pleasant surprise to see the little daisy-like flowers popping up all the last month. Even though we had 8 inches of snow just before Halloween and several hard frosts since then, the chamomile plants still had flower buds on them in the beginning of December.
fresh chamomile flowers
Chamomile flowers were picked fresh on 26Nov2011 and dried for several days on a window sill. Dried flower photo below taken 7Dec2011.
dried chamomile flowers
Several dried chamomile flower heads can be steeped in a cup of hot water for a delicious and calming cup of tea. Chamomile tea smells like green apples and has a soothing effect. To keep the scent fresh, store the dried flower heads in a glass jar. Keep the lid loose until you’re sure the flowers are completely dry. Enjoy with honey in a cup of tea.
It finally occurred to me a while back that we didn’t spend any time taking care of bag worm nests this year. Evidently, the manual destruction of bag worm nests really does work to remove them.
I’ve posted here before on bagging the bag worms. Essentially, the bags or tents are manually destroyed by physical means using a stick or plastic bag-wrapped hand so the caterpillars don’t have a home to go back to after ravaging the forest. Yes, by destroying the nests and the worms that get in the way, we are killing living things. Just remember that we’re not using pesticides to do so!
Not only are the nests unsightly, but the caterpillars are very destructive. They eat all the leaves from a chosen tree, especially cherries and other members of the Prunus genus. If the tree is in otherwise good health, it may be able to sprout a second set of leaves to carry on living for the rest of the season. If the same tree is hit two years in a row with the hungry mouths of bag worms, the tree may become too weak and not survive.
It’s typical that the woods that surround our house are a haven for the tent caterpillars or bagworms. We used to see the ugly tents in many trees, but this year there were none. There seem to be plenty of nests that appear high in trees, especially near the rivers, so that makes a sort of reservoir of worms for future infestations.
Does anyone else see good results by manual nest removal? I’m curious to see what may appear next year. If we do see more bag worm nests then, you can bet that they’ll also be destroyed.
We grow the usual garden plants, including a few varieties of tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, ground cherries, peas, beans, cucumbers, garlic, lettuces, radishes, carrots and many herbs. This year we added into the mix the tomatillo. If it weren’t for the Tomato Family, we would have a garden half as big. The tomatoes, peppers, ground cherries and tomatillos are all members of this family.
We plant seedlings or seeds for many of the vegetables that we want to grow. In addition to planting known veggies, we allow certain ones that re-seed themselves to come up again. Lettuces, cherry tomatoes, and ground cherries are the common re-seeders. The only problem with this method is that the garden can quickly become overgrown if the volunteers are not thinned out vigorously. We learned that last year.
This year a new problem cropped up. A weedy plant was left to grow in the vegetable garden presumably because of its mistaken identity. We’re pretty good at pulling weeds and mulching to keep the weeds from overtaking the garden, but somehow this one weed was left to grow too big.
It turns out that the leaves of this alien plant look a lot like the leaves of the ground cherry. It was hiding under a cherry tomato, and when that was staked up the odd plant was finally noticed. Once detected, it was left to grow a while just for observation. It was pulled out before the fruit was dropped, so hopefully next year we won’t have a garden full.
The alien plant in question was the deadly Common Nightshade, Solanum nigrum. It’s a member of the Tomato family or the Nightshade family, Solanaceae. Other family members include plants that give edible fruits, such as the tomato, potato, ground cherry, bell pepper, chili pepper and eggplant. Tobacco is another useful family member.
Common nightshade hiding among the cherry tomatoes. Photo taken 25 July 2011.
Being in the tomato family suggests some similarity between these plants. Common Solanum characteristics include the flower shape with five petals that are often reflexed backwards, yellow stamens that form a beak around the central pistil, and somewhat triangular-shaped leaves.
Bug-bitten leaves of nightshade and five-petaled white flowers. Photo taken 17 August 2011.
Tomatoes, ground cherries and tomatillos are similar to the common nightshade. It seemed a little odd that the nightshade leaves were full of holes whereas the others were not. Of course they all had insect damage, but the small roundish holes in the nightshade leaves weren’t seen as much in the other tomato relatives.
Large lower leaves of Common Nightshade. Note the black or green berry clusters that arise in between leaves right from the main stem. Photo taken 17 August 2011.Leaves of the ground cherry plant look similar to the leaves of nightshade. Photo taken 25 August 2011.
Common places to find this nightshade are disturbed areas, waste ground and cultivated grounds, such as found in the vegetable garden. We probably have birds to thank for dropping seeds wherever they go.
Green and black berries of Common Nightshade. Note the five, star-like sepals of the berries. Photo taken 17 August 2011.
DO NOT INGEST NIGHTSHADE BERRIES OR ANY PLANT PART! A chemical called solanine is found in all parts of the plant and it is toxic. See comments below.
