Those amazing wild plants
… and their amazing survival of the snow
I saved some of my snow photos to post as part of another story, the story of the plants that ended up under the snow:
27 February:
This is shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris). It should normally emerge in spring, but with the mild winter we had until the big snow fell, I saw some of these plants in bloom as early as late January - very small ones and not in their best shape, bust still persisting. The ones in this photo were bigger and greener.
A closer look:
Can you see the seed pods? :)
Still the same day, next to the freshly cleared sidewalk I’m not sure what to call this in English, common mallow? The Latin is Malva sylvestris.
28 February - not exactly the same Malva plants, but somewhere in the same area, along with the ever-present wild grass:
2 March, when the snow was already melting:
A closer look at the branch protruding from the snow:
4 March:
To my surprise, when the Malva plants appeared from under the snow, I saw that they were already in bloom; I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed that before the snow. Some of the flowers were a little damaged from the snow (I don’t know if it was just their petals) while the more sheltered ones looked just fine:
Some bonus Erodium cicutarium, which seems to have too many common names in English. Plenty of these plants also emerged from under the snow already in bloom, with no visible damage:
11 March: just a random dandelion seedhead. I don’t know how advanced it was when the snow fell on it.
12 March: another Malva plant, now back to its best shape.
16 March: I specially tried to photograph the damage to some of its leaves. I don’t know if it came from the snow or the frosts earlier or something else, but it seems to have happened to a lot of those plants:
A closer look at its flowers:
And closer look at the bonus dandelion:
I saved some of my snow photos to post as part of another story, the story of the plants that ended up under the snow:
27 February:
This is shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris). It should normally emerge in spring, but with the mild winter we had until the big snow fell, I saw some of these plants in bloom as early as late January - very small ones and not in their best shape, bust still persisting. The ones in this photo were bigger and greener.
A closer look:
Can you see the seed pods? :)
Still the same day, next to the freshly cleared sidewalk I’m not sure what to call this in English, common mallow? The Latin is Malva sylvestris.
28 February - not exactly the same Malva plants, but somewhere in the same area, along with the ever-present wild grass:
2 March, when the snow was already melting:
A closer look at the branch protruding from the snow:
4 March:
To my surprise, when the Malva plants appeared from under the snow, I saw that they were already in bloom; I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed that before the snow. Some of the flowers were a little damaged from the snow (I don’t know if it was just their petals) while the more sheltered ones looked just fine:
Some bonus Erodium cicutarium, which seems to have too many common names in English. Plenty of these plants also emerged from under the snow already in bloom, with no visible damage:
11 March: just a random dandelion seedhead. I don’t know how advanced it was when the snow fell on it.
12 March: another Malva plant, now back to its best shape.
16 March: I specially tried to photograph the damage to some of its leaves. I don’t know if it came from the snow or the frosts earlier or something else, but it seems to have happened to a lot of those plants:
A closer look at its flowers:
And closer look at the bonus dandelion: