April 14 2021 - In the Phenology of the early to mid -April botanical world on Long Island, the plant kingdom is already bursting in vibrant blossom. Jot down notes, date everything, & observe. There's so much wonder and magic in Springtime. Weather has been behaving like Mother Earth is in menopause. We're had unseasonably warm days near 70 in April, but weather will become frigid around April 15 - 17th 2021. This may affect fruiting trees if the petals fall off due to frost if we get snow on the weekend.

Acer rubrum - these are the flowers in April that produce fruits. The red maple or swamp maple grows in acidic, loamy, moist, rich, sandy, silty loam, well-drained and clay soils. It prefers wet soil conditions but has slight drought tolerance. The fruits (samaras) provide food for squirrels and many other rodents. Rabbits and deer eat the tender shoots and leaves of red maples. Native mason bees thrive on Spring season's first flowers like red maple, and its pollen is important food for emerging insects. Mason bees are among spring's earliest insects, making them important helpers in the red maple's pollination process.

Yoshino flowering cherry tree. One of the earliest flowering trees on Long Island.

The Yoshino cherry aka Japanese flowering cherry is revered  at National and International Cherry Blossom Festivals. In mid April on Long Island it has a vibrant display of white-pink blossoms and faint almond fragrance. In the summer, this tree sports an oriental branching pattern, has glossy bark, and dark-green leaves. Located by the old Grumman's Corp in Great River. 

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Spring is a time of nature's uncurling. No plants better exemplify this awakening than the ferns, which send up their fiddleheads from buds that lie just beneath the soil surface.  

Fiddleheads or fiddlehead greens are the furled fronds of a young fern, harvested for use as a vegetable. Left on the plant, each fiddlehead would unroll into a new frond (circinate vernation).  The fiddleheads eaten on Long Island are from the ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris). Other ferns can be toxic, so never forage without an experienced guide.

 It's also important to harvest just a few fiddleheads in a cluster or the fern could die. Lucky for fiddlehead fans, ostrich ferns are fairly common, especially in temperate woodland areas and near streams on the island. 

They grow in dense clumps. Ferns of the class Polypodiopsida typically possess a rhizome (horizontal stem) that grows partially underground; the deeply divided fronds (leaves) and the roots grow out of the rhizome. located in Great River on April 14 2021. 

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                        Snake's Head Fritillary - Fritillaria mileagris - Liliaceae 

Snake's head fritillary is a woodland bulb grows as a multicolored mix of pure white and white-checkered reddish-purple nodding bells. Fritillaria meleagris is also commonly known as Guinea Hen Flower, frog-cup, flower, guinea flower, Lazarus Bell, Chequered Lily, Chequered Daffodil, Drooping Tulip.

Snakes Head Fritillary is poisonous, containing Imperialine, Tulipalin A and Tuliposide A. Ingestion of the plant can lead to gastrointestinal tract disturbances and can adversely affect kidney function, inducing vomiting, spasms, hyptension and finally cardiac arrest.

Located by the brackish waters of the Connequot River on April 14 2021. 

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 Let's not forget the star of mid-April on Long Island, the beloved daffodils. 

A poem by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.