Forcing taxonomy

Things are slowly greening up, but my taxonomy class needs more flowering specimens.  So TPP will have to resort to more forcing, that is, bringing nearly in flower specimens into the glasshouse to hurry them along.  And no, not the other kind of forcing where as a colleague of mine used to say, "I'll teach them (fill-in-the-blank) even if I have to tear their heads off and pour it in."  Actually with new learning technologies, microchips can be implanted thus eliminating the necessity of re-attaching the heads. Has anyone ever forced fragrant sumac into flower? No? And who would do so?  Well, we'll see how that goes.  Spicebush looks very close so forcing should work.  Elms are cooperating, but none are close by. Hepatica in my gardens is showing flower buds, but out in nature it'll still be one or two weeks from flowering. Hellebore flowers are opening so that will help. An example of TPP's desperation is checking out dandelions and mustardy weeds on the south sides of buildings to see how the buds are developing. Come on!  Come on! Imagine the thrill to find a star magnolia growing in a protected courtyard that is almost in flower! 

Forcing some spring

It's definitely a late spring here in the upper midwest of the USA.  There isn't much you can do about it, but this may help.  Try forcing some flowering shrubs into bloom.  This time of year it's pretty easy to do because the buds have begun to swell and they're just waiting for a bit of warm weather.  In particular shrubs like forsythia are really, really easy to force into bloom.  Just prune off a few long branches that you probably needed to prune anyways, particularly if you're a terrible poodler of shrubs.  Put them into a big vase and it'll take about a week at household temperatures to get the buds to open.  Other shrubs might take longer, but this will help you get spring going a bit sooner.