Garden flowering log - one to go!

Today is decidedly fall, cool, sunny, breezy, beautiful.  The garden flowering is just about done, in fact there is exactly one species left to go, the monk's hood.  When that finally flowers, and the buds are just about ready, the gardening log will be at 292 plants that flowered in our gardens this year.  This is not exactly a species list because some distinct varieties have very different flowering seasons, but generally different varieties that flower in the same season don't count.  Annuals don't count.  Tropical plants outside for the summer don't count. Ferns and gymnosperms don't flower, and so don't appear on the list even if they cone, but they are quite a list too.  Of course some plants were new to the garden, or new to flower, but then there are others that didn't flower this year at all.  TPP has not yet checked this list against past years' lists so something might have gotten missed, but doubtful the 300 plants in flower barrier will be broken.  Perhaps with all the new woodland plants added this year the total will make it in 2014. This years season was pretty long having started on February 21st (witch hazel) and here we are 8 months later waiting for monk's hood.  Wow! Only 4 months until it starts all over again!  2013 is the longest flowering season since the record keeping began.

2012 Garden Log

This is the 3d year TPP has kept a garden flowering log for all perennials.  Rather than bore everyone with a month by month run down, this year only the year end summary will be foisted upon you.  Here's the summary data.  Flowering in 2012 started on Feb. 18th (snowdrops, witchhazel), an unusually early spring in comparison to 2011 (Mar. 11) and 2020 (Mar. 1).  2012 also extended the flowering season until Oct. 28th when a black snakeroot finally flowered a few days after the monk's hood (Oct. 25th).  Last year the last flowering was Oct. 21st, the monk's hood,.just 4 days earlier.  In 2010 our gardens had 275 different perennials flower.  In 2011 there were 293 different perennials that flowered (and we group many varieties based on their seasons, so this is closer to species than varieties.).  In 2012 in spite of the heat and drought in June and July, 283 perennials flowered, but that includes 17 new perennials, so there werequite  a few no-shows and a couple of deaths.  The increase from 2011 to 2012 was largely due to new plantings and some woody plants coming of reproductive age.  If plants recover next year, the number of flowering perennials may break the 300 barrier.  Winter now seems constrained to a little less than three months: December, January, and early February.  Today was a lovely November day, with a high of about 54 F, and the petunias in the window boxes are still flowering although we have had a few real freezing nights.  Having planted quite a number of new trees and shrubs to landscape the rennovated lily pond. The Phactors had little choice but to water or lose these new plants, not without some significant cost.  Fortunately the water situation was such that watering was possible.  All of these newbies look like they will survive, but a dwarf mountain laurel has us worried.  In general flowering was not as poor as might be expected considering the severity of the summer.  A very early and quite warm spring pushed some spring perennials though flowering very quickly: bloodroot emerged, flowered, and way done in just 3 days.  More analysis will have to wait until the data is entered into the data base and analyzed in more detail.

Global warming is messing with me

April here in Lincolnland has been a warm one, in fact apparently the warmest since records have been kept. The average temperature for the month was 6.2 degrees above normal, but it's hard to know what that means because while you can average the weather here in the great midwest, you never get average weather. It's either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too windy or deadly still, and then somebody averages these numbers, but the averages are not normal.
After you have taught plant taxonomy and plant identification for a number of years, experience tells you when, where, and what will be in bloom, but this year such a warm April has pushed the flowering season for many things so far forward that some of my favorite subjects to use as unknown specimens for students to identify have come and gone already. Finding enough good replacements is a pain, so now this climate change thing is getting personal. Unfortunately climate change is also going to get personal with agriculture, and we're all down stream in some sense.