Spring Wildflowers and Woodland Awakenings

by Becky Nystrom

Springtime in the woodlands of Western New York is a treasured time of rebirth, resilience, and revelation, progressing reliably amidst the late season snows, dreary gray days, and chilly rains as winter inevitably loses its frosty grip. There is faithfulness in this springtime story, offering a reassuring reminder of the power of light and warmth, and Earth’s ancient certain spin around the Sun. Our region’s botanical awakening critically depends upon changes in photoperiod, as our world unfailingly swings around our star. Beginning with the winter solstice and cued by the incremental shortening of nighttime hours (rather than increasing daylength) and hastened by rising temperatures and abundant rains, the vernal awakening of the green ones is assured. As soils warm and showers come, microscopic bacteria, fungi, and other tiny creatures become active, working rapidly to decompose the remains of last year’s autumn leaves and leftovers. Nutrients made available by these essential little recyclers, in turn, are readily absorbed by plant roots and their mycorrhizal helpers, and incorporated into buds, blooms, and tender green bursts and bundles of new life.

Among the earliest to flower is the familiar skunk cabbage, whose emerging purply-green hooded flower clusters and unfurling bright-green leaves melt their way through frozen wetland soils and snow to create a most welcome “warming hut” (up to 70º F!) for early spring pollinators including tiny wild bees, beetles, and flies, along with spiders, ants, and other little creatures. Vibrant dandelion-like yellow blossoms of coltsfoot and early violets splash color along sunnier trailsides and clearings. Within deeper rich woodlands, fragrant trailing arbutus (photo below) might rarely be found, along with the luminous white blossoms and scallop-ruffled leaves of bloodroot, and the exquisite, shimmery whites, violets, and pale pinks of sweet hairy-stemmed hepatica (photo above). More commonly encountered are pink-striped and petite spring-beauties (photo below), which bloom in abundance in sun-speckled clearings from early April on. Soon to follow in wet meadows and marshes are bright yellow marsh-marigolds, or cowslips, one of the larger native members of the buttercup family. Speckle-leaved trout lilies and trillium (photos below), wild ginger and goldthread, Solomon’s seal and starflowers, May-apple (photo below) and foamflower…all reveal themselves in an unfolding woodland pageantry of ephemeral beauty and hue, each in its appointed, but fleeting, time.

And time is short, for these earth-hugging native wildflowers must mature and reproduce quickly before the trees fully leaf out and block the sun’s life-sustaining and growth-fueling solar power. Bloom time must also be in synchrony with early-emerging pollinator-partners such as honeybees, bumblebees, beetles, syrphid flies, gnats, and thrips, crucial little go-betweens enticed by floral rewards such as nectar, pollen, oils, waxes, and warmth.

High overhead but often unnoticed, the trees of the forest are also abloom with fleeting spring blossoms. Maple, beech, birch, aspen, oak, willow, and many other trees are in reality big, woody, wind-pollinated wildflowers! Bearing thousands of tiny, inconspicuous flowers in pastels of pinks, greens, creams, and yellows, many trees in our area produce massive amounts of dust-sized, life-giving pollen in late March, April, and early May. They, too, must set their pollen aloft before leaves unfurl and block the breeze, ensuring that pollination is unencumbered and efficient.

For floral reproduction to be successful, both in the woody canopy and in the fragile spring ephemerals below, the pollen, which will deliver sperm, must find its way onto its species’ sticky female flower parts, so that waiting eggs may be fertilized, and diminutive seed-borne embryonic plants may develop within the berries, nuts, samaras, capsules, and other fruits of the forest. Intricate in design and breathtakingly beautiful, whether high above or dwelling upon the good earth, each woodland bloom is fully functional, and holds a special hope and promise for us all... for if pollination and fertilization succeed, seed and fruit development will follow, ensuring new life in the forest for generations of spring-times to come!

Becky Nystrom is Professor of Biology, SUNY Jamestown Community College (Retired), Co-Founder and Board Chair of the Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy, Life Member of the Bird, Tree, and Garden Club, and lover of everything botanical