Flowers and Plants

White Crocus

It’s certainly starting to look a bit like spring. The trees are still bare and there are not a lot of flowers around yet, but they are starting. The snow drops (Galanthus) have been blooming a while. I had a single flower on the new Lenten rose and there were a few purple crocuses in the back yard last week. Today a few white crocuses have opened up in the front.

Spring is accelerating.

Galanthus nivalis (Common snowdrop)

The snow drops (Galanthus nivalis) have been out in our yard for a few weeks now but I haven’t posted any pictures of them this year. This afternoon I went out into the back yard and took a few pictures of a clump of snow drops growing in our back bed. They are pretty little things and their appearance so early in the year is their chief attraction. The flowers open during the day and then close up in the evening, as seen in this photo.

Spring it upon us.

Helleborus ‘Mango Magic’

It was another beautiful day today, cool but sunny. We went to church this morning and then to our other church in the afternoon. We got home at about 4:45 p.m. and it was so nice that we sat out in the back yard in the sun until the sun went down and it got too cool. While we were out back, I took some pictures of this Lenten rose called ‘Mango Magic’ that I planted in the fall. It is the first to bloom of the twelve things (mostly bulbs) that I planted for Cathy’s birthday. It isn’t a perfect flower but it’s the first, so I thought it worth recording.

Eranthis hyemalis (Winter Aconite)

These are not the first flowers we have had this year. The snow drops (Galanthus nivalis) were blooming as the snow melted off of them last week. But these are still quite welcome. They are fairly small and there are only the two little flowers so far, but they are so bright and cheerful that they make up in quality what they lack in quantity. I’m looking forward to the spring because I planted quite a few new bulbs last fall. Newly planted bulbs tend to come up a little later than those that have been in the ground a bit longer, which builds the anticipation a bit, but that’s all to the good. Spring has certainly arrived.

Poncirus trifoliata (Trifoliate Orange)

On the morning of February 3 I planted about four dozen seeds of Trifoliate Orange (Poncirus trifoliata) that Ralph and I had collected from the plant out the farm in Pennsylvania. When I got them in December, I took the seeds from the fruit and put them in a plastic bag and put them in a drawer in our refrigerator. They were there for nearly two months, pretending that it was winter. That’s necessary to their germination.

About a week ago they started coming up and this one was the first to break through the soil. It is currently the largest of about 18 that are up so far (and quite a few more have come up between when I took the picture and when I’m posting it, on March 21).

I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with them all, so if you want a hardy orange plant, let me know.

Oak Branches

I have two pictures for today but I’m going to post them separately. Sometimes I do that because they are unrelated. This time, they are somewhat related but different enough that I’m still going to separate them. They were both taken on a walk that Cathy and I took in the neighborhood early this evening. With the sun staying up an hour longer (relative to the clocks), we had a good chance to do that. The sky was a beautiful blue and the snow was melting about as fast as it possibly could. The trees, as you can see in this photograph, are still in their winter form, but the lines of the branches of these oaks are still lovely.

Glass Azalea Leaves

As I mentioned in my previous post, there was a bit of weather today. That is to say, there was frozen water falling from the sky, accumulating on whatever it struck. When it came to pavement, particularly sidewalks not treated with salt, that made for quite treacherous conditions. When it came to branches and leaves, though, it made for some lovely, ice coated, plants. These are the leaves of an azalea in our front yard, which turn various shades of orange and red for the winter, coated with a fairly thick layer of ice. It was too dark out for natural light, so this was taken with a flash, which actually enhances the colors, I think

Euonymus japonicus (Japanese spindle)

I went out into the yard this afternoon to take pictures but for the most part they are nothing to speak of. Mostly they were simple “stiff covered in snow” from our recent snowfall. This one is a bit different. These are the fruits on a Japanese spindle (Euonymus japonicus) hedge along the side of our back yard. The deer are quite fond of this plant and the lower half or so is currently stripped of leaves. It’s a vigorous plant and well enough established that it grows back in the spring, but we could do without the deer for a little while.

Crape Myrtle Seed Pods

It feels wintery today and I went out to take some pictures of ice on a small pond at a park nearby. I also saw a few small crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) trees and took a few pictures of them, as well. I like the little, empty seed pods. The exfoliating bark is also very nice, but those pictures were less interesting, I think. We don’t have any crape myrtle in our yard and I think with the size yard we have, it’s not something we’re going to have, but they make a nice show, with beautiful blooms but also with nice fall color and the peeling bark in the winter.

Trifoliate Orange (Citrus trifoliata)

We had our annual outing to cut Christmas trees today but this picture isn’t of our Christmas tree or even of the Christmas tree farm. As per usual, we went to the family farm first, not to look at the Christmas trees there, they have all grown much too large. Still, we go there. Ralph and I collected some fruit of this plant, a trifoliate orange, otherwise known as hardy orange, and depending on who you ask, either Poncirus trifoliata or Citrus trifoliata. The former is more widely used but DNA evidence suggests the latter.

From five small fruits, small pubescent (covered with fine soft short hairs) oranges, I collected 269 seeds. They will get one month cold stratification and then I’ll plant them. Obviously I won’t need 269 plants, so if you are interested in a very thorny shrub with inedible fruit, you will be more than welcome to a few. They would make a great hedge.

Wet Weeds

Merriam-Webster defines a weed as “a plant that is not valued where it is growing and is usually of vigorous growth.” That sounds about right. It’s easier to define what you mean by the word “weed” than it is to decide what qualifies as a weed. Some plants are easy—most of us consider dandelions to be weeds. Crabgrass and nutsedge are another pair that won’t get much argument. What about when it’s something you planted? If it gets out of hand, you might consider it a weed. We have a few things like that and this might qualify. Where we had two trees cut down we have a pretty vigorous growth of black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia), purple vervain (Verbena bonariensis), and Virginia knotweed (a.k.a. painter’s palette, Persicaria virginiana var. filiformis). This picture is of knotweed, and we might need to start treating it as a weed. It is pretty, though, and more so with beads of water on the stems.

Ilex verticillata (Winterberry)

Holly isn’t my favorite genus but there are hollies and then there are hollies. What I most people think of when you mention holly is thick, leathery leaves with spines along the sides and end. To my way of thinking, they are not ideal in a yard, especially if you like to go barefoot. Ilex verticillata, on the other hand, has leaves that do not impale your feet. They also lose their leaves in the winter and make up for it with an abundance of bright red berries. It is aptly named winterberry.

Celastrus orbiculatus (Oriental Bittersweet)

Cathy and I went for a walk on the Blue Mash trail in Laytonsville. It’s just behind a landfil and is mostly reverting to woods but there are some areas kept open, as well. There is a small pond and around it there were fairly dense stands of oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), also known as climbing spindleberry. It is a non-native, invasive species and grows much more vigorously than the native C. scandens (American bittersweet). I know we’re not suppose to like invasive species but I find it quite pretty and (probably because I don’t have to do battle with it in our yard) don’t mind it too much.

American lobster (Homarus americanus)

Cathy and I went to dinner with her mom for Cathy’s birthday this evening. We went to Red Lobster and had a good meal and a nice time together. As we were leaving, I stopped to take a few pictures of the lobsters (not yet red) in the tank inside the door.

Growing up, there was a book on our shelves called Animals Without Backbones by Ralph Buchsbaum of the Department of Zoölogy at The University of Chicago. One of my best friends in high school happened to have the same book in their house. We were both amused by the caption for a picture of a lobster at the top of page 268-8 which read as follows:

The lobster, Homarus, is mostly dark green when alive; but when boiled, like this one and like millions of others every year, turns bright red. Abouot half an hour after this picture was taken this lobster was reduced to an empty exoskeleton.

Nice.

Frost on Vinca

This isn’t our first frost of the year. There have been two or three days when many of the lawns in our neighborhood have been touched with white in the morning. But this is the first time this fall it’s been enough to include the shady areas of our back yard. Waking up and seeing frost in the yard is a good way to remind us of how fortunate we are to have heated homes. So naturally, I went out back to lie on the icy grass to take some pictures. I did put something down to lie on, of course, which made it a bit more comfortable. I love the way the ice limns the edges of these vinca leaves.

Cornus kousa

Outside my office building there are quite a few trees. At the front, just around the corner from my office there are kousa dogwood trees (Cornus kousa). Then in the back at the far end there are more. These are in the afternoon sun and this time of year they are quite lovely, blazing in their deep, fiery, orange-red leaves. I know it’s not hip to prefer a non-native but there is a lot to recommend these over our native dogwood. I don’t think there is any danger of the native trees being put out of business any time soon.