What to See This Week

New plants continue to bloom around The Arboretum each week. Flowering dogwoods are a native small tree. Pictured here is a Cherokee Chief flowering dogwood, but naturally occurring pink varieties occur occasionally as well. Dogwoods serve an important role in the calcium cycle of a forest by taking up calcium from deep in the soil and concentrating it in its leaves and other tissues.

Red buckeyes are also blooming right now. They are a near-native species, growing naturally in the southeastern United States. The red, tubular flowers are very attractive to hummingbirds. This is good news as we have had our first ruby-throated hummingbird sighting of the year at The Arboretum over the weekend!

Just south of the Bald-Cypress Swamp is a large patch of blooming eastern shooting star. These unique spring ephemeral wildflowers are not a very common wildflower in Ohio. These flowers don’t produce nectar but still attract native bees with their pollen. They are pollinated through buzz pollination, with bees releasing the pollen from their anthers through vibrations.

Wild geranium is a common spring ephemeral wildflower that can be seen now in the Woodland Garden. They have fairly large flowers of an inch to an inch and a half in diameter and their pinkish purple color makes them almost glow in the dappled light of the forest floor.

Unlike the previous wildflower, Solomon’s seal flowers may be easily overlooked. Not only are the flowers a shade of green, but they also hang below the leaves of the plant. The young shoots of this plant are edible and can be prepared similar to asparagus. Eventually, the flowers develop into dark blue berries beneath the leaves. A beautiful variegated Solomon’s seal can be seen in the Bird Watching Garden.

Another wonderful wildflower currently blooming in both the Bird Watching Garden and the Woodland Garden is eastern red columbine. There are several species of columbine, all with the incredible flower structure seen in the eastern red columbine, but this is the only species native to the eastern United States. It tends to bloom perfectly in time with the return of the migrating ruby-throated hummingbirds who can reach the nectar located deep in the flower’s spurs.

It’s not just the flowers that are colorful this time of year, the male goldfinches have changed a great deal since the winter! Male goldfinches change from an olive color to the brightest, clearest yellow as well as gain a black cap on their head and brighter orange beak. As you can see from this photo, this male is not fully finished molting yet as he looks a little patchy, but he should be soon!

We have only a short time left with our winter sparrows like the white-crowned sparrow pictured here. Although a whole host of songbirds are about to migrate into Ohio or stop by on their way north, other birds that became regulars in the Bird Watching Garden for the last several months will be on their way out soon. White-crowned sparrows like the one pictured will move to their breeding grounds all the way in the tundra!