What fate for early blooms in mild winter?
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NEW YORK -- At the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, an experimental plot was in full flower on a recent February afternoon, as the thermometer edged toward 60.
The Japanese camellias, which typically bloom in early spring, have displayed their rose-hued flowers continuously since December. Honeybees, a rarity before late March, were nursing the tiny pink clusters on a Dawn viburnum, while the Adonis amurensis, a ground-hugging spring ephemeral, was a profusion of yellow.
"This is the earliest I've seen all of these things in flower," said Todd Forrest, the garden's vice president for horticulture and living collections. "The ground isn't even frozen. That's shocking."
The horticulturalists in the Bronx call it the global-warming garden, and in a winter notable for its consistent mildness, it is hardly unusual. From the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park to the Chicago Botanic Garden, flowering bulbs and other plants are bursting out two to four weeks ahead of schedule. Snowdrops are up; daffodils, crocuses and hellebores are already in flower; trailing phlox has opened; and, farther afield, even magnolia trees are starting to bloom on the National Mall in Washington.
Complaining about balmy winter days and an early display of color might seem churlish, but the early run of warm weather is not without its downside.
For one thing, if there is a cold snap, plants and trees are vulnerable to damaged blossoms and, potentially, a falloff in seed production. With the ground still soft in many places and no snow cover, squirrels -- already suffering from the acorn shortage last fall -- have been digging up bulbs. Populations of insect pests, normally kept in check by freezing temperatures, are expected to grow this year.
And when spring finally does arrive a month from now -- according to the calendar anyway -- the show might be ho-hum. "You'll see a long, gradual kind of spring," said Maria Hernandez, director of horticulture for the Central Park Conservancy. "But it won't be the pizazz that we had last spring."
First Published February 27, 2012 12:00 am
