1 April 2023

Welcome to April! Last month brought flowering trees, frost damage, more flowers and early leaf out.

The star magnolia (Magnolia stellata) above was looking good on 27 March but the one below bloomed too early on Pitt’s campus and sustained frost damage.

This honeybee didn’t care about the brown petals. She probably flew in from The Porch beehives across the street.

Non-native flowers are blooming. Eyebright (Euphrasia sp) popped up in the grass at Frick.

Purple dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum) bloomed before the frost and still looked good on the 29th, here with chickweed (Stellaria media) in a Shadyside front yard.

Meanwhile leafout is already underway. Bush honeysuckle had leaves on 18 March.

And by the time I noticed this yellow buckeye (Aesculus flava) in Schenley Park, it was already well beyond first leaves. Two photos show the same branch two days apart, 28 and 30 March. Last year, yellow buckeyes were still in bud on this date.

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Meanwhile our trees are in for too much excitement today with high winds gusting to 60 mph. We expect downed trees and power outages in our future.

Batten down the hatches, Pittsburgh!

(photos by Kate St. John, maps from @NWSPittsburgh)