{"id":145,"date":"2012-03-06T13:08:48","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T18:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/?p=145"},"modified":"2012-03-06T13:08:48","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T18:08:48","slug":"harbinger-of-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/2012\/03\/06\/harbinger-of-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Harbinger-of-spring"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Flowers of harbinger-of-spring<\/p><\/div>\n

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Harbinger-of-spring (Erigenia bulbosa<\/em>), aptly named, is one of our first native woodland spring wildflowers to bloom.\u00a0 This tiny member of the carrot family can sometimes be found peeking above last year\u2019s dried tree leaves through the snow in February.\u00a0 I saw it blooming last Friday on the Butler campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Nick Harby with Purdue University\u2019s Kriebel Herbarium snapped this photo about a year ago near the entrance to Butler\u2019s Holcomb Gardens.\u00a0 Plants are blooming there now at the base of the giant beech tree about 30 feet past the entrance gate on the left, just off the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Harbinger-of-spring in beech tree roots shot by Nick Harby<\/p><\/div>\n

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Some refer to the plant as salt-and-pepper due the blackish (more a dark purple it seemsto me) and white color pattern on the flowers.\u00a0 Leaves come later.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Flowers of harbinger-of-spring<\/p><\/div>\n

Early blooming plants have a strategy to get growing quickly in the spring.\u00a0 Last time I wrote about the winter annual called whitlow grass.\u00a0 It overwinters as a rosette of leaves that stay evergreen.\u00a0 It can quickly send up a flowering stalk with just a few winter days.\u00a0 Most early spring wildflowers have underground storage structures to provide energy to jump-start flowering without the need of current photosynthesis.\u00a0 They are just like crocuses, tulips, and daffodils in this regard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Harbinger-of-spring\u2019s tubers can be seen in this sheet from the Friesner Herbarium.<\/p><\/div>\n

Another early flowerer, skunk cabbage, actually gives off heat to melt snow to allow the flowers to get serviced by pollinators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Harbinger-of-spring (Erigenia bulbosa), aptly named, is one of our first native woodland spring wildflowers to bloom.\u00a0 This tiny member of the carrot family can sometimes be found peeking above last year\u2019s dried tree leaves through the snow in February.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}