What to See This Week

As expected, the warm weather has brought on the blooming of many plants across The Arboretum! Pictured here are the male flowers of a red maple. Red maples have separate male and female flowers, often having separate male and female trees although some trees have both flowers. The male flowers are recognized by the long stamens that release pollen. 

The Stumpery is also coming to life this week with the first of the hellebores beginning to bloom. Several other varieties are in bud. Hellebores are famous for their early bloom period.

Every year, the Chinese willow-leaf magnolia is the first to bloom in the Magnolia Collection. When driving towards the collection on the Auto-Tour you can see the white blooms from a distance and smell the flowers in the breeze.

Cornelian-cherry dogwoods add a bright pop of color to a landscape consisting of still fairly muted colors. Just like other early blooming plants, cornelian-cherry dogwood flowers are a great resource for pollinators already beginning to emerge in the warming temperatures.

Give it a couple weeks and the leaf litter-covered forest floor in the Woodland Garden will become green with ramps, or wild leeks! Ramps are a highly sought-after wild edible plant that comes up early in the spring. Just like other spring ephemerals, ramps take advantage of the sunlight that reaches the forest floor before the trees leaf out.

The pools at Rolling Hills Meadow have attracted a group of hooded mergansers. They have been there for several days now so bring some binoculars and see if you can spot them! These striking ducks are well adapted for their diet of fish with their narrow, serrated bills and strong diving abilities.

The Bald-Cypress Swamp is a great spot to experience spring. Look off the boardwalk for the many egg masses left behind by salamanders and frogs. Pictured here is the work of wood frogs as seen off the north end of the boardwalk. Wood frogs will lay their eggs in a communal mass, resulting in hundreds to thousands of eggs laid together by multiple female frogs. 

During the busiest days of the mole salamander migration, the salamanders can sometimes be spotted during the day! This spotted salamander was seen resting on part of the boardwalk. Others were seen making a quick trip to the surface for air. As the breeding activities wrap up, salamanders now wait for an evening rain to migrate out of the Bald-Cypress Swamp and return to the forest where they spend the rest of the year underground.