If you’re out and about, and live around here or north of here, you might start looking for a couple of white flowering species.

Here is giant, or star chickweed, Stellaria pubera, a more flamboyant relative of the much more common alien chickweed, S. meadia, that infests gardens and plantings about now. This year the giant chickweed flowering is in unusual profusion:





I’ve observed the flowering of this plant since I first took notice of it in 2007. Nothing out of the ordinary except perhaps for an early flowering last year.

7 Apr 2007, 11 Apr 2008, 30 Mar 2009, 13 Apr 2010

I was very excited three years ago to discover silverbells, Halesia tetraptera, flowering along Goulding Creek. Last year I discovered massive colonies farther downstream on the new property, and more than likely that’s where you’ll find them. I noted that the population extends halfway up the slope, invading much drier woods. For some reason I never mentioned them in 2008.



4 Apr 2007, not mentioned 2008, 7 Apr 2009, 13 Apr 2010

Coming up:

I’ve been keeping an eye out for these Goulding Creek fish, in their mating mode. Haven’t seen
yellowfin shiners Apr 11 2008, identified here, as yet.

Last year I found a single emergence of eastern blue star, Apr 6 2009, and I’ve scouted the area several times in the last week or so, but still haven’t seen them.

Last year there were a lot of rat snakes, Apr 5 2009.

Coming up, pipevine swallowtail caterpillars, April 30 2006, on their favorite food, pipevines, Aristolochia macrophylla aka A. durior, in flower at about the end of April.

By now I should have seen box turtles, but haven’t spotted any yet. It could be the dry weather of the last few weeks that has them prowling about only in the very early morning when I haven’t been walking around.

And of course there are tulip poplars, Liriodendron tulipifera, and flowering was observed May 20 2008. That’s *way* after the early May flowering I mentioned yesterday, and though I’ve referred to tulip poplars *many* times, I’ve seldom taken the trouble to observe flowers of this tree. They’re way up in the air, a hundred feet up, and outside of casual notice. The honeybees will know it though - they’re the major food source around here and will constitute the bulk of any honey produced before real summer. After that, there is no real major contributor to honey - a whole lot of things, but no single plant adds so enormously.