SUGAR MAPLES AND MARSH MARIGOLDS ARE FLOWERING

SUGAR MAPLE FLOWERS...

ARE A SIGNIFICANT ASPECT OF SPRING...

MARSH MARIGOLDS ARE SUDDENLY BLOOMING

Sunday, Mothers' Day. 8:30 AM.  45 degrees F at both the ferry dock and on the back porch.  Wind ENE, very light with light gusts.  The sky is partly cloudy, the humidity higher now, at 73%. The barometer is steady, at 29.9". The switch from westerly to northerly winds has cooled things off.   It is a nice spring morning.

   The sugar maples, Acer saccharum, in the Maple Family, are blooming.  The yellow-green flowers are easily mistaken for emergent leaves, and I imagine most folks simply do not see nor appreciate the flowers.  Too bad, as in mass they are a significant aspect of the beauty of the North American springtime.  Paper birch, red oak, poplar and willows are also blooming.  The red maples flowers, lasting a long time,  continue to be significant in the landscape.

  Maples are monoecious, having both male and female flowers on the same tree. Soon after fertilizaton the female flowers will develop the typical samara (winged nutlet) fruits that whirl away on the wind like little helicopters. 

   The very warm weather two days ago literally pushed the marsh marigolds, Caltha palustris, in the Buttercup Family, the Ranunculaceae, into leaf and flower.  I have been watching for them to emerge in roadside ditches and on Thursday I saw none, and by Saturday they were leafed out and blooming almost everywhere.

   From now on it will be one species after another flowering. 

   And in a few days the male hummingbirds will arrive.  Time to get the feeders hung up.