The pollen load on my windshield has tapered off slightly, only to be replaced by the progeny of all those little male gametophytes: seeds. Sunday afternoon all the silver maples dropped their seeds, as did the local elms. I've never encountered such a shower. Two shirts which had fallen off the clothes rack had 14 and 18 seeds on them. Millions of maple helicopters pooled on the slow side of the river to take their turn washing down the riffle in a constant stream of reproduction. Yesterday morning the maintenance man was out leaf blowing the seeds off the courthouse sidewalks. The college lawn looked "forked" with seeds. And the more fruitful box elders haven't even ripened yet.
I'm adding a "phenology" tag to some posts, as I realize I want to be one of those citizen scientists who can say with authority, "the finches are early this year," or "it was a great year for the maples," and actually have written observations to back me up.
Despite the unusually large quantities of ice and snow, it was not a particularly hard winter: my rosemary overwintered outside and my butterfly bushes did not die back at all. Our last snow was at the end of February. It was April 7 in 2009.
All of the hollies are half yellow. Do they lose their leaves in the spring? What sort of an adaptation is that?
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I also like the idea of knowing my phenology, but I fear I'll never be a good keeper of such records. I'm not very good at recordkeeping even when there are grave consequences to worry about, let alone when any consequences would be fairly intangible and felt only by me.
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