Native flowers for early spring

The flowers that I think of as my spring bulbs are emerging early this year, so much so that it’s worrisome. I’m afraid their blooms will be prematurely cut down by a March snowstorm. 

Crocuses flowering earlier than usual

It’s always heartening to see these first snowdrops and crocuses. They signal that spring is on the way, and they’re important to the first pollinators circulating during these early weeks. I haven’t seen any bees on the crocuses yet, but I’m expecting them soon.

    As lovely as these flowers are, they’re imports. Are there native options?

    Research into what are generally called bulbs always bumps up against botanical correctness. Plants that grow from underground storage organs can correctly be called geophytes, and true bulbs are only one of their adaptations. Others are corms, tubers and rhizomes. Bulbs, as exemplified by onions, are made up of layers of embryonic leaves separated by membranes. 

The layers of an onion are future leaves-photo Amada44

A corm is an upright thickened underground stem, whereas a rhizome is a thickened horizontal underground stem. A tuber such as a potato develops at the tip of a rhizome.

Bearded iris rhizome, Book of Gardening 1900

    Terminology aside, the native range of many of my early bloomers is eastern Europe or western Russia. I’d like to grow more native spring-blooming geophytes, not just imports from the Caucasus.

    While I practice social distancing, I’ve had time to review the early-spring-flowering natives on my plant list. Instead of bulbs, I’ve regarded these geophytes as spring ephemerals. They’re woodland plants adapted to bloom and produce foliage in earliest spring before shade from the tree canopy sets in, then drop their leaves and draw on stored energy to survive the summer.

    Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) and Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) both grow from rhizomes and flower early and beautifully in my yard.

Bloodroot's early spring flowers

 They’re both happy in their shady locations and forming expanding colonies. 

Virginia bluebells about to open

White trillium (Trillium grandiflorum), another native, also grows from rhizomes. I’ve tried to establish this plant over the years with little success. At present, just one is hanging on along the back fence. We’ll see how it’ll respond to increased sunlight from the switch from a stockade fence to chain-link.

White trillium-photo СССР

    I planted large camas (Camassia leichtlinii), a true bulb, because it tolerates shade. This camas is native to western North America, but there’s another called wild hyacinth (Camassia scilloides) that grows in the East too, looks pretty, and blooms in April and May. Worth a try.

Wild hyacinth-photo Tom Potterfield

    I’m delighted with the yellow trout-lilies (Erythronium americanum), also eastern natives, true bulbs that seem to have established themselves in light shade next to the bird bath and flower in early spring. 

Yellow trout-lily

I could branch out to another native in the genus, white dog-tooth violet (E. albidum).

White dog-tooth violet

    I love white bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis ‘Alba’), a tuber former that’s spread around the garden by self-seeding and blooms in May. It’s not a native, but it has native cousins including fringed bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia), Dutchman’s breeches (D. cucullaria), and squirrel corn (D. canadensis) that also flower in early spring in shady woodlands. More shopping opportunities.

Dutchman's breeches-photo Tom Potterfield

So melt, already!

Thank goodness the latest nor’easter missed Massachusetts. There’s still snow on the ground, though. I’m itching to get outside and start spring gardening, but this snow is holding me up.

Snow still hanging around earlier this week

    Kevin Newman and his arborist team came by Wednesday to prune broken branches out of a white pine near the house. They’re working flat out after three storms this month that have brought down trees and countless limbs. Luckily they managed to squeeze in my small job at the end of the day. They ran the pine branches through the chipper and left a big pile of wood chips in the driveway, as I’d requested. 

Wood chips!

This should be just the right time for spreading those chips on paths and around trees and shrubs as mulch. But I can’t do it until the snow melts and the ground dries out a bit. I don’t want to compact the wet soil by tramping over it with a wheelbarrow.

    It’s also the right time to prune shrubs before the leaves show. 

Without leaves you can see what you're pruning

I did some pruning during a warm spell in February and filled up the garage with yard waste bags. I have new tools I’m dying to try, ratchet pruners and loppers. My wrist fracture has healed, but my grip strength hasn’t returned yet. These tools should allow me to make pruning cuts with less effort, if only I can get out there and try them. 

Adaptive pruning tools require less strength

    It’s traditional to plant peas around St. Patrick’s Day. I’d like to get the seeds into the ground by early April. They enjoy cool weather, as do lettuce and arugula. I want to sow a first row of greens soon. Let’s hope the snow on the vegetable bed melts within a couple of weeks.

    Last fall I optimistically planted a lot of spring-blooming bulbs in one large pot. I’d read you could set several levels of bulbs in the same container. There’s a layer of tulip bulbs at the bottom, with daffodils in the next layer and grape hyacinths above them. The pot has been in the cool basement, covered with wire screening to keep out hungry mice with a taste for tulip bulbs. Now hopeful sprouts are pushing at the screen. 

Potted bulbs need to get outside

I should be moving the pot outdoors, but I’m afraid the weather is too cold. I may have to move it inside and out as the temperature fluctuates. To bloom well, the plants should be outdoors.

    And what about all the seedlings that are sprouting under lights? Eventually I’ll need to move them too outside to get them used to sunlight. Will spring have arrived by then?

Borage and basil will need to move outside

    Outdoors the stalwart snowdrops and witch hazel flowers keep blooming. They have proteins in their cells that act as antifreeze. When the snow melts, the still-fresh flowers emerge unharmed. I wish snow had as little effect on me. 

Snowdrops unfazed by a foot of snow last week

 

Plant power

We usually notice the power of nature in big, dramatic phenomena—waterfalls, ocean tides, shifting tectonic plates. But very small plants do things that I think are just as awe-inspiring.

    At this time of year, I’m surrounded by evidence of the amazing strength of growing plant tissue. For example, there’s the sight of growing tips of new spring sprouts, so soft and tender to our touch, pushing their way through rigid barriers like the oak leaves lying on my garden soil.

These daffodil tips grew through tough oak leaves

    How can this be? The dried oak leaves are quite resistant to tearing or punching through. But we know that growing plants are powerful enough to split rocks.

This fern widens fissures in the rock

    On Wayne’s Word, an online natural history textbook created by botanist Wayne P. Armstrong, I read:

"One of the main factors that initiates the rock-splitting scenario is imbibition--the remarkable process by which water molecules move into a porous, colloidal material and cause it to swell." Wayne explains that electrical charges carried by the oxygen and hydrogen atoms in water are attracted to charged components of large molecules inside plant cells, such as cellulose, starch and lignin (the polymer that strengthens and hardens plant cell walls): “Like tiny magnets, the water molecules permeate these polymers, adhering to the charged surfaces as well as cohering to the positive and negative ends of adjacent water molecules. This influx of water molecules and chemical bonding . . . causes the cell wall and its contents to swell several times its original size.”

    Wayne goes on to explain that water swelling a seed before germination can exert hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch in order to split the seed coat of a hard nut like a walnut. So pushing through an oak leaf that’s frozen in place may be little challenge for a growing crocus or daffodil tip.

    It’s interesting to think about the power that small and unassuming plants can exert.  An acorn germinating in a crevice in a rock can ultimately split the rock.  Roots not only buckle sidewalks, they push their way into the joints in pipes—as I was reminded again last spring when sewer water backed up into our basement drains.

Norway maple roots defeating granite curb on my block

    In case we gardeners get the idea that we run the show, the slow power of those little shoots and roots reminds us that bigger forces are at work, gradually and inexorably. You don’t have to go to the seashore or the mountains to be awed by nature’s power.