Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993 TAG: 9303120010
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEVE KARK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
IF YOU LOOK CLOSE, SPRING'S ALREADY IN BLOOM
I know I'm jumping the gun a bit, but I'll have to admit I've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of spring. It is, after all, only two weeks away.We haven't had much of a winter, so naturally I feel a little guilty about this. My anticipation might be more understandable if we'd had the kind of winter they've had up north. Then I could at least say we've earned it.
But our winter this year hasn't been much. It got colder a few months ago, the leaves fell off the trees, and it rained a whole lot. And although we did have a pretty good snow cover about a week ago, it's already soaked into the ground.
Besides, I don't think anyone really minds late snows anyway. At this time of year they seem more a precursor of spring than they do a persistent blast from a stubborn winter. While November snows put the ground to sleep, March snows awaken it.
Earned or not, spring's coming. We've already seen the first signs out here in the hollow.
The crocuses have been threatening to come up for several weeks now. You can find their green shoots poking through the ground just beneath the leaf cover from last fall. Some have even started to bloom.
My wife found a dwarf iris blooming in the yard recently. Knowing it would freeze overnight, she clipped it and put it in a shot glass of water, where it bloomed for a couple more days above the kitchen sink.
And too, the Coltsfoot has already sprouted along the driveway.
This hardy wildflower is one of my personal favorites because it's usually among the first to bloom. The dime-sized, yellow blossoms are usually unaffected by the cold. As evening approaches and temperatures drop, the little flowers close up for the night, only to reopen in the warming sunlight of the following day.
Two more early bloomers are the eastern redbud and the flowering dogwood. Often blooming at the same time, both are small trees that flower well before leaves begin to appear on the trees around them, providing a conspicuous touch of color against the predominate drabness of early spring in the Appalachian woodlands.
Actually, what we generally consider as the flowers of the dogwood aren't really flowers at all. The white - and sometimes pink - four-petaled "flowers" are really nothing more than modified leaves, called bracts. The flowers themselves are much smaller and can be found clustered at the center of the false flowers.
Early settlers in this region treasured the sturdy wood of this plant and often used it for making weaving shuttles. Indians used the aromatic bark as a remedy for malaria and made red dye from the roots.
The eastern redbud is clearly identifiable by its clusters of purplish-pink flowers, again appearing well before the leaves. These make a colorful addition to any salad, or they can be sauteed lightly in butter.
Most people don't know that this tree is also called the Judas tree. So named, as legend has it, because it was in a middle-eastern variety of this tree that the Biblical traitor Judas hung himself after he told the Romans where to find Christ following the Last Supper. You know the rest of the story.
Apparently, up until that time, the blossoms were white. Afterward, they were forever turned the color of blood as a symbol of Judas' shame.
Neat, huh?
Steve Kark is an instructor at Virginia Tech and a correspondent for the Roanoke Times & World-News. He writes from his home in scenic Rye Hollow, in a remote part of Giles County south of Pearisburg.