Spring Flower Folklore

It's spring. Every day or so a different plant comes into bloom. Exciting times! As you notice them, consider these bits of folklore.

Grape hyacinths (Muscari species) are good luck growing outside, but brought in, cause gloom and depression. 

grape hyacinths

Gazing upon periwinkles (Vinca sp.) restores lost memories. 

Plant Story - Flixweed, Tansy Mustard, Herb Sophia, Descurainia sophia, Weedy Spring Mustard

 As a group, the plants in the mustard or cabbage family, Brassicaceae, are cool weather plants, growing well early in the spring, flowering as the temperatures warm, going to seed in the heat of summer. Familiar mustards are cabbage (Brassica oleracea), broccoli (Brassica oleracea), and mustard itself (mustards are species of Brassica, Rhamphospermum and Sinapsis). These edible mustard family plants were domesticated in Eurasia and they are a small selection of the more than 3,700 species worldwide. North America has 634 native species in the mustard family. It also has more than 100 exotic mustards. 

Flixweed, Descuriania sophia

the plant this blog is about 

Plant Story: Christmas Rose, Lenten Rose, Helleborus

Hellebores, also called the Lenten roses and Christmas roses, Helleborus species, are early spring garden flowers. 

Lenten rose, Helleborus

It is Spring, Some Places

Spring is late on the Front Range of Colorado this year. It is almost mid-March and my yard is under snow. Again. Normally I would have snowdrops and crocuses by now. So a visit to Corvallis and Eugene Oregon was a shocking, wonderful leap forward into spring. I'm posting spring flower pictures for your enjoyment if you are already in spring, for your encouragement if you are not.

a big stand of hellebores (lenten rose, Helleborus)

Plant Story--The Spring Native Wildflower Called Salt and Pepper

 Easily over-looked in the foothills grasslands is salt and pepper, Lomatium orientale. A member of the carrot family, Apiaceae, it has the characteristic flat head of flowers, with each coming off a multiply dividing stem (an umbel (see)). Salt and pepper is named because the white flowers have red anthers, which look dark, like pepper, on the white flower. Or so I'm told. I don't exactly see it, but I know of no other white, early spring umbels with dark dots, and the name salt and pepper is easily remembered, so it works for me. 

salt and pepper, Lomatium orientale

Plant Story--Crocuses, Signs of Spring

My yard's first crocus--and flower--of 2021

Crocuses are one of the very first plants to flower in the spring. I saw one in my neighborhood on February 23, 2021, but then we had 3" of snow. Those plants rebounded with new flowers within a few days but remained the only flowers in my neighborhood. My own yard's first crocus was on March 2 (see above). Spring!

Spring Flowers

Spring is late on the Colorado Front Range this year, cold and snow still coming. Add to that closures due to corona virus concerns and it seems a good time for flower pictures. Here are flowers to anticipate

snowdrops, Galanthus

American Spring Flowers

Rocky Mountain columbine, Aquilegia coerulea

I'm celebrating spring, despite recurring cold rainy days. Last week I posted pictures of classical spring garden flowers and intentionally only used those from Eurasia. Here is a celebration using only North American plants.

Visiting Northern Japan--Sakura (Cherry Blossoms)

Cherry blossoms, Tendo City, Japan

Japan is famous for celebrating spring with cherry blossoms. In mid April we flew from Colorado where we don't have a lot of flowering cherries but where the apples and crabapples were in full bloom.

Apple blossoms, northern Colorado

Tulips and the Tulip Bubble Part 2

This is part two of a pair of postsabout the Tulip Bubble, aka tulipomania, when in the 1630s in Holland the price of a tulip bulb inflated incredibly, and then suddenly dropped. My last post described Holland at that time. The merchant class had lots of money but because of sumptuary laws and Calvinist beliefs, spent it on houses and gardens not jewels and furs.Tulips had been introduced from Turkey after 1550. They were still uncommon and some highly desirable varieties were very rare indeed (link to previous post). The result was a bubble...

Plant Story--the Merry Periwinkle, Vinca

Periwinkle is an early spring flower that doesn't get much notice. But it has long colorful history.

The name periwinkle is an old English name for a group of plants native to Europe and the Middle East in the genus Vinca. The name periwinkle has been applied to a number of other plants, particularly related plants from the tropics with similarly-shaped flowers (Catharanthus). Periwinkle is also the name of a common seashell (Littorina littorea) and its relatives photos. I'll talk about the two species of perennial, creeping blue-flowered plants, Vinca major and Vinca minor, commonly planted all across the United States and much of Canada. You can find ornamental forms of periwinkle with variegated leaves and with flowers shading from deep blue-purple to white. Vinca minor, the common periwinkle is a little smaller but more winter-hardy than the greater periwinkle, V. major. They are members of the dogbane family Apocynaceae.

Plant Story--Everybody Loves Narcissus and Daffodils

Daffodils!

The English called them daffodowndillies 400 years ago. The scientific name is Narcissus. Narcissus, daffodils, jonquils and paperwhites and whatever other names you know, they are all closely related.  

They have been cultivated for hundreds of years, leading to diverse varieties and color forms now found all over the world.

Did you know they are poisonous?

Visiting Portland, Oregon--Gardens in the Rain

Portland: Flowering trees, but note the gray sky.

We went to Portland, Oregon for just a weekend in the middle of March, 2016. Oh! the contrast with northern Colorado. Northern Colorado has had mild early spring weather, but the dominant color is the brown of the plains and the bluegray sky.

Colorado, with a snowstorm coming. 

Plant Photo Album--Flowers of Early Spring

Spring flowers! All over the northern hemisphere, the weather is warming and we look forward to enjoying the first flowers.

What flower means spring to you?

In central North America where I live, the first native to flower is pasqueflower, Anemone patens.

pasqueflower, Anemone patens

Of course, native plants are mostly confined to reserves these days.

Flowers in Colorado in January--Is it Spring?

In northern Colorado, at 5000' elevation, the last week of January 2015, I found plants in bloom!

We had daily highs above freezing, some days up into the 60's, some nights above freezing all night. In a search for "plant records" I have a quirky goal of finding plants flowering in every month of the year. So I went out looking for flowers on January 29. Some species do not need many days above freezing to launch their buds.

Erodium cicutarium, redstem filaree, Jan. 29, 2015

And I found [drum roll]: Erodium cicutarium, redstem filaree! Also called redstem storksbill and common stork's bill (geranium family, Geraniaceae), it is from the Mediterranean region of Europe and was introduced to North America by the 1800s. It is now very widespread (every state but Florida and all the Canadian provinces that border on the U.S. (see USDA map)).

But it is January, the depths of winter in the northern United States. How can plants be flowering?


Global warming?  Maybe. All over the world they are recording earlier and earlier warm temperatures.

However, I want to think about how plants respond to unseasonable weather.

Plant Story -- Reasons to Like Primroses, Primula

primrose, Primula eliator
from my yard

I’ve been trying for years to grow primroses, genus Primula. Last year I stuck three sad little plants, rescued from the nursery’s end-of-the-season stock, into my yard and ooh, this spring all three are alive and flowering!

What is special about primroses?

They are pretty!

Also, I associate them with the literature set in England I read as a child. Primroses grew in the well-tended gardens of the ladies in quaint English villages. 

In addition, primroses were the usual example of a curious plant reproductive system, studied by Charles Darwin himself and carefully described to us by my professor at Berkeley, Herbert Baker, an Englishman with a fondness for them.

Visiting Tierra del Fuego -- the end of the Pan American Highway

spring wildflower, perhaps
Caltha sagittata
buttercup family, Ranunculaceae

On a sunny day in November, 2008, I visited Tierra del Fuego National Park, near Ushuaia in southernmost Argentina. Although we arrived in Ushuaia to cold snowy conditions, it was spring and in the open areas weeds and spring wildflowers were flowering.

spring flowers, Tierra del Fuego

dandelions, Taraxacum officinale
Tierra del Fuego