Spring has
arrived officially in the Northern Rockies.
The arrival is marked by the emergence of glacier lilies at my
cabin. They are the first wildflowers to
bloom. The lilies appear immediately following
the receding of winter’s deep snows.
Glacier lilies
are also among the most prolific of the wildflowers near my cabin. Yesterday, walking there, I encountered a few
hundred of them. Within a week there
will be thousands upon thousands.
The creek near
the cabin is also swollen and three temporary, snowmelt springs are flouncing
down through the forest understory on my property.
Where the creek lashes
down through my meadow, it is attended by pussy willows. The willows like to keep their feet wet. Pussy willows wake even earlier than the lilies. I saw fuzzy little “kitten paws” developing
on the branches of the pussy willows two weeks ago—even though the willows were
still standing there in a foot of winters remaining snowpack. The paws are the early stage of the pussy willow
flower. The paws have, by now, exploded into
full fuzz-ball flowering mode. Because
they emerge so early (by Rocky Mountain Standards) the willows don’t rely on pollinators. The warming wind is part of their sexual
cycle.
Glacier Lilies
—Mitchell Hegman
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