Some time back Ms. Phactor planted a bag of mixed tulips, species tulips. One species has done quite well and it is very cheerful, it is either Tulipa tarda (the late tulip?) or T. urumiensis (and they might be taxonomic synonyms), but TPP doesn't know tulip taxonomy very well. The flowers only open when the sun is shining.
OK we just celebrated peak blue, but some of the early flowering shrubs are making things pink. The earliest flowering Magnolia in my collection is a hybrid (M. x loebneri); it looks a lot like a star Magnolia and that is one the two parent species. The flowers are quite pink with fewer tepals and no smell at all. The plant grows like a star Magnolia too.
It's actually a Friday and TPP is posting a new blog. Is this possible? March was pretty warm, so now April is compensating by being rather cold. This FFF is a really nice shrub for early spring color so as you want pink. This is a very tough plant, tolerant of midwestern soils, and it flowers at a very small size, but seldom does it grow much more than 4-5' tall. Yet you seldom see this azalea for sale in a nursery, but it is widely available in catalogues. It handles spring frosts very well even after the buds begin to show color. The plant shown handled 23 F without any damage. However it is apparently tasty to shrub nibbling bunnies; so mine are caged. Also oaks don't like it and even if it gets severely damaged by falling oak limbs it grows back pretty fast. This is the Korean Azalea (R. mucronulatum) and the most common variety is 'Cornell pink'. These shrubs do nicely in the middle of mixed hedge-row beds, and TPP highly recommends it.
Here is another harbinger of spring. The Phactors have many dozens of bulbs in our gardens, many of them varieties of Narcissus, and most of these are fairly good at needing fairly little attention. Some have the yellow perianth and corona that we would call "daffodils", but others are more exotic with orange colored flower parts that are not necessarily in evenly spaced whorls.
Nothing quite says spring more than crocus. They just barely peak above ground and up shoots a flower. For whatever reason the earliest crocus are always gold colored. This makes them extra showy, except bees can't see this color like they can the white, striped, or lavender colored flowers. This clump of volunteers decided to grow under European beech tree. It's a nice contrast the splash of color among the leaves and against the bark. It flowered earlier than the FFF snow trillium but it isn't a native wild flower.
Spring has sprung but winter isn't over yet. Signs of spring: earliet bulbs in flower like snow drops and winter aconite open in sunny places, mallard ducks return to lily pond like clock work (Mar 1st), and of course the FFF in flower, two varieties of witch hazel, Arnold's promise and DIane (orange-reddish frs). Very, very cheerful.
Yep! It was Charles' birthday. And Abe Lincoln's and my kid sister too. So pretty easy to remember. In times past we've had cake in the Herbarium but cake and a viral pandemic don't mix well. And TPP gets out all the Darwin books he owns just so students can see them. Heck, it's getting so faculty don't own such things as books either. Sadly books and journals used to be a measure of how good you were as a scholar. Once a month a visit to a big library would help keep in touch with the literature and you would solicit reprint copies of really good papers by sending a postcard. You would buy reprint copies to give away, now you just download a pdf copy. As a graduate student at least you got mail with reprints. Of course Charles wrote books, not a 8-10 page journal research article. Well Happy Birthday anyways, Chalres, you would not like how some things have changed.
