RENEWAL

male cones of loblolly pine (p. taeda) from a few years ago…

Bradford pear flower n fruit. SO STINKY. SO ORNERY.

Sperm, I mean, spring, is in the air. Even though the evocative smell of Bradford pear flowers (yes, folks, SPERM…) has thankfully diminished, and we’re mostly done with pine pollen, plenty of other species are hard at work (sorry) reproducing.  It’s reassuring, a rebuttal to current horror and stupidity in the human world. Spring seems a little earlier this year, or maybe time is speeding up…

here are the female flower clusters, pistils wavin’ in the breeze.

hey LADIES! Staminate (male) flowers of morella cerifera.

For as long as I’ve known Morella cerifera (wax myrtle) is dioecious (female/male flowers on separate plants), and that it’s great to have heavy-fruiting females if you want to see lots of birds (especially yellow-rumped warblers), it took a conversation with an especially observant client to take a closer look at the flowers. The staminate (male) flowers are especially, RIDICULOUSLY obvious, but the females are subtle – actually almost impossible to see unless you know what to look for. 

March and early April have already brought so much renewal. Here’s a gallery…

iris cristata (dwarf crested iris)- note wide leaves.

bumblebee on Prunus angustifolia (chickasaw plum)

bright blooms of Symplocos tinctoria (horsesugar, or sweetleaf)

a closer view of the male flowers of morella cerifera (wax myrtle)

“lawn weed” sisyrinchium rosulatum. (blue-eyed grass) – an iris relative.

rhododendrum austrinum ‘millie mac’ – a cultivar of a FL native azalea.

male blueberry bee (white patch on face) on BLUEBERRY!

Podophyllum peltatum (mayapple) doesn’t last long…

palamedes swallowtail – first of the year!

FINALLY! very excited to find the flowers of this Asimina parviflora (dwarf pawpaw)

Rhododendron canescens (piedmont azalea) – this sp. occurs in the coastal plain, too!

amsonia tabernaemontana (wide-leaf blue stars)

iris verna var. verna (coastal plain dwarf iris) – thin leaves!

arisaema triphyllum (jack in the pulpit) in mid-March.

fragaria virginiana (wild strawberry) – tiny and sweet!