BLACK WILLOW AND SUGAR MAPLE FLOWERS

A CHANGEABLE MORNING

LOTS OF EARLY SPRING COLOR IN THE GARDEN

BLACK WILLOW, STAMINATE (MALE) FLOWER

SUGAR MAPLE, COMPOUND FLOWERS WITH BOTH STAMENS (MALE) AND PISTILS (FEMALE) PARTS

Thursday, 8:15 AM.  51 degrees at the Ferry Dock, 61 on the back porch.  Wind variable, light.  The sky is partly cloudy and overcast, but clearing.  There has been enough lake fog to activate an occasional fog horn.  The humidity is 95% after a trace of rainfall yesterday afternoon and evening.  The barometer is still falling, now standing at 29.86".  Hopefully, we will get a real rainfall this evening.  The ten degree difference between the Ferry Dock and the back porch is a function of wind direction at each location, the Ferry Dock being on the water with probably a northerly light wind, the back porch receiving a light southwest wind (it should be obvious how thermometer placement can skew temperature records one way or another, even in locations as near as a mile from each other; add to that differences in thermometer accuracy over the years and many records become unreliable, or worse).
   Black willow, Salix nigra, in the willow family (Salicaceae) is a large, prominent tree of wet areas that is native to the upper Midwest and the eastern US and Canada.  They are now in flower in the Bayfield area and the trees are very prominent in the landscape with their golden-yellow blooms.  The photograph is of a male flower at full anthesis (shedding pollen).  Black willows are monoecious, i.e., bearing both male and female flowers on the same tree.
   Sugar maples are very obvious when flowering, entire large trees becoming a bright yellow-green, but few folks realize they are seeing flowers rather than new leaves.  The same tree bears both male and female flowers, and the flowers have both male and female parts.  But functionally some flowers are male, others female.  The female flowers are towards the top of the tree, the male at the bottom, as is usual with many trees, since wind-blown pollen tends to rise.  It can be hard to photograph the flowers, since the trees do not flower until they are fairly large (about twenty years old).  The fertilized flowers will bear the typical two-winged samaras we are all familiar with.  The native range of sugar maple is the eastern US and Canada, centered on the Great Lakes.  These trees grow on a variety of soils, but the fallen leaves eventually turn the soils alkaline, with soil pH and nutrients favorable to agricultural crops, and  early settlers looked for maple woods to clear for farmland. Oak leaf litter turns soils acid, and therefore not as good for agriculture.

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