What a slow spring! Last week it snowed in western Pennsylvania. With an inch on the ground in Du Bois, Marianne Atkinson noticed that the forsythia blossoms stood out but they looked very odd.
In her own yard the forsythia had flowered near the ground but the top looked dead. Did other shrubs have this problem? As she traveled around town she took photos of other forsythia bushes and discovered that all of them looked like this. The buds on top were winter-killed.
Why were the bottoms of the bushes OK? With a little research Marianne found:
We had a second very cold winter in a row, with occasional temperatures in the well below 0 range. We also had about 18 inches of snow cover for about 2 ½ months this winter. I thought that the snow cover may have acted as insulation for the lower forsythia flower buds and it is true! You can read about this phenomenon in the links below:
Cold Damage to Forsythia Flower Buds at Arnold Arboretum
Why are trees and shrubs so slow to leaf out this spring?
How cold was it? Here’s a photo of last winter’s record in Marianne’s backyard. -19 degrees Fahrenheit!
Last winter left its mark this spring.
(photos by Marianne Atkinson)
When are Dorothy’s eggs due to hatch?
Kurt, they will hatch around May 10, perhaps as early as May 9.
Just reading in Michael Dirr’s “Manual of Woody Landscape Plants”. He says that temperatures of about -10 to -15 degrees F seem to coincide with flower bud kill. Also, “…it is common in the North to see forsythia flowering only below the snow line…” Buds which do open may turn to brown mush with a hard freeze overnight. There are, however, cold hardy selections available, among them ‘Northern Gold’, ‘New Hampshire Gold’ and ‘Northern Sun’. Forsythias are not native and, therefore, are of no particular value to our wildlife. They come from Europe and Asia.
I’m horribly allergic to forsythia in particular. This article made me feel unusually cheery. I do have an appointment tomorrow AM with the allergist, tho. It’s an annual affair.
(Don’t get me started about Ragweed season)
I observed the same phenomena a few winters ago in our forsythia. In addition to the cold killing off the top and the snow insulating the bottom, we had an unusually large population of small birds living in the bushes. they pecked off all the buds well before the blooming season arrived.