As I mentioned yesterday, spring wildflowers are now blooming in southwestern Pennsylvania.  Here’s a sample of what Dianne Machesney, Donna Foyle, and I found in our outdoor travels last week.  Check the captions for the flower names, locations and dates.

• Toadshade or Sessile trillium (Trillium sessile) is found in rich woods.  The dark red flower holds the petals shut.  In my photo there are two Virginia spring beauties that hadn’t opened on that cloudy day.
• Virginia spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) is also found in rich woods.  The flowers are small with faint pink details.  They don’t open until the sun comes out.
• Lesser celandine (Ficaria verna) is an invasive import that does well in rich damp woods.  I’ve seen it in Schenley and Boyce-Mayview Parks. Dianne saw it at Enlow Fork.
• Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) is another import, a non-invasive garden plant that’s escaped to the wild.  I’ve seen it planted in Schenley Park.  Dianne photographed it at Enlow Fork.
• Purple deadnettle (Lamium purpureum) is an import that doesn’t care where it grows.  You’ll find it everywhere once you start to look.  Up close its flowers are intricate.  From a distance the leaves have a purplish cast.
• Horsetail (Equisetum) is a “living fossil” plant, the last species of a class of plants that dominated the dinosaurs’ forest.  Some were as big as trees. Today they are coal.  Visit the dinosaur exhibits at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to see what they looked like.

(photos by Kate St. John, Dianne Machesney, and Donna Foyle)

Despite this month’s cold weather yesterday’s outing* to Cedar Creek found two early-spring wildflowers.

Bright afternoon sunshine encouraged the wildflowers to bloom but it washed out the colors on the forest floor.  We all searched hard to find this Harbinger of Spring (Erigenia bulbosa).  Here’s a poor photo of the entire plant with an oak leaf for scale. It’s tiny! One leaf is sufficient to hide it.

We also found a lot of Snow Trillium (Trillium nivale) in bloom but I had to be shown each flower because I couldn’t see them in the glare.   My best photo is of the one I stepped on.  Oh how embarrassing!

* This was a joint outing of the Wissahickon Nature Club and the Botanical Society of Western Pennsylvania.  Feel free to join us as we explore the flora and fauna in western Pennsylvania.  Click here for Wissahickon’s 2015 outing schedule (page 3 of the pdf) and here for the Botanical Society’s calendar.

(photos by Kate St. John)

In my neighborhood bush honeysuckle is the first to show leaves in the spring.  Last Wednesday these tiny leaves broke the bud.  I was excited!  Spring was here!

Not today. This morning it’s 17F degrees and it was so cold yesterday that it set a new record.

The wind will swing from the south today and warmer weather is coming this week.  Let the leaves begin.  (Please!)

(photo by Kate St. John)

p.s. Bush honeysuckle is an alien invasive from Asia so its internal clock is out of synch with our seasons.

p.p.s  This morning’s walk in Schenley Park will be brief so we don’t freeze.

The first crocuses bloomed in Pittsburgh last week but the rest of spring is taking its time.  Until today the month of March averaged 3F degrees below normal.  (Yesterday’s brought it up to -2.6.)  With that kind of track record, when will Spring get here?

Two years ago I wrote about the rule of thumb that “Spring moves north 13 miles a day“and showed how to watch it online at Journey North’s Tulip Test Garden.  I even used the rule of thumb to predict that the tulips would bloom at Clarion Area Elementary School’s Test Garden in Clarion, PA on April 20, 2013.

Was I right?  I looked up Clarion’s 2013 Tulip Test Garden results which said the tulips bloomed on April 22.  But … April 22 but was a Monday that year.  Maybe the tulips bloomed on Saturday, April 20 while the children weren’t at school to see them!  (The vagaries of data collection…)

Let’s try it this year.  Click here to read about the Rule of Thumb so you know how I’m doing this.  Then I’ll estimate …

On the 2015 Tulip Test Garden Map Durham, NC’s first tulip bloomed on March 20.  That’s 362 miles or about 28 days south of Clarion Area Elementary School (they’re participating again this year), so Clarion should bloom on April 17.

April 17 feels too early but we’ll see.  By the end of April we’ll know if “Spring moved north 13 miles a day” in 2015.

p.s. A big flock of American robins sang in the dark this morning in my neighborhood.  One more Sign of Spring!

(photo from Wikimedia Commons.  This tulip was photographed by Laslovarga on May 21, 2014 near Burlington, Ontario.)

Ta dah!  We’ve reached a milestone in The Signs of Spring.  It’s time for the crocus report.

Yesterday morning the crocuses at Phipps Conservatory’s outdoor garden were just about to pop open.  The bright sun warmed the mulch and after another hour they had opened halfway.  I can say with confidence that they bloomed on March 18.

Is this late for crocuses?   I checked back through my blog posts, linked below, to collect their blooming history in Pittsburgh’s East End:

• March 11, 2009
• March 11, 2010
• March 14, 2011
• February 28, 2012 (the Hot year!)
• March 18, 2013
• March 22, 2014 (the Polar Vortex year! They bloomed for only one day because the deep freeze returned March 23.)
• and now –> March 18, 2015

So … though this winter has seemed very cold the crocuses are not delayed too, too long.

(photos by Kate St. John)

p.s. They may have bloomed during Monday’s heat but I didn’t walk over to Phipps until yesterday.