TAG ALDER ARE THROUGH BLOOMING

DISTINCTIVE TAG ALDER MALE CATKIN, ABOUT 3 INCHESLONG

LAST YEAR'S DRY, EMPTY FEMALE" CONES"

MALE CATKIN, NEW FEMALE "CONES, " STILL-DORMANT LEAF BUD

Wednesday, 26 degrees F, wind SW, gusty at times.  The sky is filled with haze, fog, a low overcast and low clouds.  It continues to snow lightly, after dropping about 2" on Bayfield last night.  The humidity is 84% and the barometer is rising, now at 29.78".  Things look wintry, but it will all melt tomorrow.
   Tag alder, Alnus incana subspecies rugosa, in the birch family, are nearly omnipresent shrubs or small trees in the northern landscape.  With speckled, shiny dark brown bark on young stems and trunks tag alder is easily confused with young birch saplings (see post of 4/06/15) when both are dormant, except for the persistent dried female "cones"(technically called a strobile)  that hang on the alders after seeds are shed.  The long, worms-like male catkins of the alder are also very distinctive, both catkins and cones occurring on the same plant. Leaves are simple and toothed.
   The tag alder, or speckled alder, is native in the far northeast of the North American Continent, and inhabits wet locations, roadside ditches and disturbed areas almost to the point of ubiquity. It is replaced in the northwest  of the continent and western mountains by the thinleaf alder, and it hybridizes with the gray alder in the east.  The more complicated hybridizations of these species are beyond my expertise.
   The tag alder is one of the very first plants to bloom in the north, often as early as March, and these male catkins have already shed their pollen, and the female cones are fertilized.  The leaves have as yet not unfurled.

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