Learning the Plants as They Grow: Our Wondrous Spring Buds and Blooms

By Samuel LeGresley, Communications Coordinator

Maple trees are flowing with sugar and Bumblebee queens will soon come out of their long hibernation. But prepare to be amazed, as something remarkable is happening: nothing less than the beauty of spring in the woods! Learn how to profit fully from this period by reading this third installment of our NB Fieldnotes series.

Spring is the time of snowmelt and of evergreen plants poking out of the snow.

Wintergreen, Partridgeberry, and mosses are just a few of the exceptions that prove nature is still alive under there. It is always a treat for the eye to find a red berry sticking out of the brown and moss-green forest floor. Some of these leaves might even be the tiny, aptly-named Twinflower (Linnaea borealis), waiting for the warmer weather to bloom.

But perhaps surprisingly, I find even the perennials that are, in fact, dormant to be just as interesting.

When traveling in the woods, it’s sometimes nice to zigzag away from our usual forest walk to look at the edges of the trail.

At eye-level, you may see the nascent buds of young Maples. You may find the drooping catkins of Alders and those of the Beaked Hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), much shorter than the others in the Birch family and accompanied by the soon-to-be-red-tipped female flowers on the same branch. Or you may even come across the panache of Hobblebush branches, whose ends may just look like the head of a Bull Moose.

Spring buds aren’t always easy to identify for beginners, as they can look pretty inconspicuous. Over the years, I have learned that the best approach for IDing plants is to truly know the species; to track down a specimen or group of them that you particularly like, and to come back every month, week, or even day if you’re so inclined, to find it changed greatly, or ever-so-slightly.

Instead of needing to remember a whole swath of knowledge, you only need to remember that single, individual plant specimen to come back to it later and find a whole new set of features.

The Upcoming “Spring Window”

In May, our precious spring ephemerals open their blooms for all to see. Contrary to what their name might suggest, only their flowers are ephemeral. Some of these plants last for decades, waiting for their time to bloom in the forest’s fleeting sunlight. I call this time the Spring Window.

During this time, you can see magnificent yellow Trout Lilies in Wolastoq’s valley; our painted, red, and nodding Trilliums; Starflower; two kinds of Mayflower (Trailing Arbutus, Epigea repens and Wild Lily-Of-The-Valley, Maianthemum canadense, often bear that common name); and so many more.

This window of time serves a particular purpose. As the temperatures rise, the sun dominates the woods, and there are no leaves in the canopy overhead to overshadow the flowers that need daylight.

Before the dense green vegetation — what I call the “Wall of Green” — begins to appear, the best time to identify the blooms for a lot of our native flowers is in that window of time. It’ll make the plant ID section of your brain more familiar with the plants once you see them in flower. That time is a great opportunity to connect with nature and to journal about what you see.

As you start to see flowers, pull out a book like the Newcomb Guide to Wildflowers, a site like GoBotany, or an app, like Seek or Flora Incognita. Most likely, the app will be able to make a rather confident recommendation, as flowers are much easier to identify with these tools than leaves.

If you go repeatedly to look at the blooms during that spring window, you’ll learn to observe which parts are common to every flower, which are unique to some flowers, and how some plants’ colour and shape can change with time.

Just try not to miss zigzagging along trails during that window; it’s a wondrous time of the year. My favourite month-long period is from mid-May to mid-June for that very reason. All the anticipation finally pays off, and nature gives back the energy that she built up during those long winter months.

Our Plant ID Webinar: Decoding the “Wall of Green”

I have talked about these subjects, and more, in my recent webinar on beginner plant ID. Learn to “Decode the ‘Wall of Green’” by following the YouTube link below.

Asking Questions, Keeping a Journal

If the best way to ID plants is by observing them, then let’s get back to basics with pen and paper!

Throughout the year, pick one or a few of your favourite woodlands. Take any notebook with you and note what you see, along with the location of your chosen specimen(s). If you’re so inclined, you can also add a drawing and write some of the plant’s characteristics.

Come up with some questions, and if you can’t answer them right away, that’s perfectly normal. Even the most basic ones might leave us guessing all our lives.

Here are the (very general) ones I have come up with that you may choose to use as well:

• Where does this plant grow?
  • What is the habitat? What are the conditions? Dry, wet, marshland, floodplain, on deadfall, etc.
• What are the other plants present?
  • Do they interact?
• Who does it attract?
  • Insects, birds, mammals, amphibians?
• Is it native to here?
  • All across North America?
• Is it woody?
  • Herbaceous?
  • Vining?
  • Low-growing?
• When does it flower?
  • When does it fruit?

I’m sure you can come up with more. In his nature journaling approach, John Muir Laws asks us to notice things, ask questions and to think about what it reminds us of. This is a great start to our exploratory journey into nature, and surely not the end of it.

Let’s continue to document nature, as birders and botanists have done for centuries. This certainly doesn’t require a degree; it’s just a matter of going outside, asking those questions we came up, with and unleashing our creativity!