Looking over social media posts this time of year, it doesn’t take long to find memes joking about the weather reverting back to winter like conditions and the uncertainty of spring weather. However just looking around, non native spring bulbs like daffodils, crocus, and scilla are all up and flowering. But most of the native spring flowers still aren’t there yet. Well here’s some native spring flower buds that are getting closer. These pics are of flowering buds of nannyberry, and the spring ephemeral Virginia bluebells and spring beauty.
Despite overnight temps in the 20s and the occasional dusting of snow, many spring plants are coming up here. The ones I have pictured here are eastern columbine, Jacobs ladder, woodland phlox, and marsh marigold. We have the columbine and Jacobs ladder for sale on our site and Etsy shop, but many woodland native plants can be challenging to reproduce. Few are producers of very many seeds. Plus these seeds can be finicky to germinate Many work better putting them in a soil tray outside all winter rather than the usual stratification/ planting methods. Others require a double dormancy, which means unless you use some creative trickery, you won’t get seedlings for two years and then some of these take another 3 years before they bloom. Talk about being in it for the long haul! We have tried for several years to get seedling from various woodland natives with mixed results. One that we have attempted are wild leeks (allium tricoccum). Also known as ramps, they are popular with foragers and even in some restaurants. In some places, over harvesting and unwise collection methods have led to their decline. They really green up a woodland in spring. Their foliage dies down in mid summer. But in late summer stalks will appear and produce clusters of small shiny black seeds. (Look very similar to nodding and prairie onion seeds) Their seeds need a double dormancy. After almost giving up on them, today I saw a tub that I had put seeds in two years ago now has little sprouts all over. You can see in one of the pics. Pretty exciting! So hopefully we will be able to add these guys to our plant list soon.
Last year I started some lead plant seedlings and time got away from me and I never got them transplanted. They sat out all winter. As the weather warmed up a bit, I was working on transplanting them yesterday. Lead plant is a wonderful hardy prairie type plant with beautiful purple flowers in summer (right around the 4th of July here). Lead plant grows in many ways like a shrub. It doesn’t die back to the ground and new growth will come from the woody stem. It is a slow grower, often taking a few years before it flowers. However, it starts right away developing an extensive root system. Early settlers sometimes called it “Devils shoestrings” due to how deep and tough it’s roots were to clear for farmland. In the pic you can see the woody growth above my thumb. Look how much more the roots have developed than that little stem! We sell small starter plants. The reason I show this is that one of the common mistakes people make when growing them is thinking they need to baby them and put them into a pot “till they get bigger”. We think they are better off in the ground. These and most other native plants, particularly the slow growing ones, need room to develop roots and are better off in the ground where they can develop deep roots. The best thing you can do for a new, slow growing plant like lead plant (and many others) is to plant it in the ground and keep faster growing competitive weeds and other plants away so it can develop those roots. Flowers and size will come with time, but roots are the most important part.
Well, most of the snow has melted here in SW Michigan, except where plows piled it up or drifting occurred. That’ll be a bit longer. Native plants species will come up at various times in the spring and some should start coming up soon. But some have already been green all winter. Plants like many goldenrods, blue lobelia, penstemons, sneezeweed, and others have had green growth all winter long. Even when it was 0F and the ground was frozen. These two images are cardinal flower and showy penstemon. The growth you see here they actually grew in late summer/ fall. Soon the will start sending out new growth for a new season and these leaves will die off.
It’s fun to enjoy other nature in winter too. Went and visited a friend in Feb who is a guide in northern Minnesota. Had fun enjoying watching boreal wildlife and catching fish in -26F weather!
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Most native plant seeds need stratification to germinate. Stratification is basically an overwintering/ cooling period. Different species may need different types of stratification time periods or methods, but many can just be moistened and refrigerated. They can require differing lengths of refrigeration time with some taking 120 days and others a couple weeks, but for many of the ones we grow it usually falls under 30 or 60 days. Here in Michigan we usually start our earliest seed growing in March, so January is a good time of year to get the 60 day ones ready. You will find differing methods of doing this but for tiny seeds, like downy wood mint or cardinal flower, we mix them with moistened white sand in a sealable bag. For larger seeds like compass plant or ones we collect with “fluff” on them like goldenrod we moisten them on their own with no added filler. Then in the fridge they go till planting time. Here’s some bags of seeds ready to go in the fridge.
We enjoy what we do and take pride in the plants we produce, so it is always fun to see and share projects that are shared with us by people who used us to get their plants. Big bluestem grass is a tall beautiful hardy native grass that can really add a lot of interest to a new bed.
Our input was featured in the Redfin blog about tips to create a butterfly garden.
Check it out:
Great Spangled Fritillary on orange milkweed
Many people are familiar with monarchs and their migration, but most butterflies have their own unique life cycle. One is the beautiful Great spangled fritillary (speyeria cybele) They emerge from their chrysalis from late June to early July. Males will be seen searching for females. They will often be seen nectaring on milkweed flowers that are blooming at this time like common and orange milkweed. After they mate, males will die off and the females will go into a semi dormant like state, a summer nap if you will, and seldom be seen. Then in late summer early fall, they will start being seen again when they will start laying eggs.
Butterflies overwinter in different ways. One of my favorites is the viceroy (the red spotted purple and the white admiral are identical). Viceroys overwinter as a little caterpillar in a half cocoon like contraption they build called a hibernacula. They eat most of a leaf and then build an open-ended silk structure within which they spend the winter. They secure the leaf to the stem to make sure they don’t fall to the ground like other leaves. In spring, when leaves come back out they come back out and resume eating. Looking for these hibernacula in winter can be a fun way to beat cabin fever. We had an ice storm yesterday, so I thought it would be fun to take a pic of a viceroy hibernacula coated in ice. In another month and a half or so, the little caterpillar will be back out and start eating again. (if you look close you can see the little threads the caterpillar used to make sure it stays attached to the stem)
