flowers, big and small

The Big-leaf Magnolia, said to have the biggest leaf of any plant in North America, also must have one of the biggest flowers. It's blooming right now with upstanding white blossoms that emerge in a sort of columnar form and then, as the petals spread, open up in a kind of messy flop (see attached photos) . We have a surprising stand of these small trees which seems to do quite well in an open woodland. It is native in the south so our stand is some kind of garden escape but it seems to be self-propagating. Oddly enough it is considered to be threatened in much of its native habitat while it flourishes in our little colony of a dozen trees or so. Another feature of this oddity is that, like all magnolias, it is a living fossil having evolved before most other flowering plants and even before the bees and other creatures that pollinate flowering plants; apparently it takes crawling bugs to creep inside the flowers and fertilize the plants so that they produce the pineapple-like cones which contain the seeds that ensure its future. Eileen Schwinn calls it a Jurassic Park plant.

If the Big-leaf Magnolia is a kind of vegetative dinosaur, what are the tiny flowering plants that have been sprouting all this spring. There's a blue flower (a Forget-me-not? a Speedwell?), a yellow one (some kind of miniature clover) and several white ones (one is a Chickweed). To really identify them as to exact species, I would need a magnifying glass.

In the meanwhile, there's a lot of other flower action, big and small. The Periwinkles have come and gone but their close neighbor, Lily-of-the-Valley, is still blooming (but winding down). Although you'd hardly notice, the Catbriar has inconspicuous greenish bell-like flowers. Much more obvious are the Black Cherry and Multiflora Rose just coming in. Also Blue Toadflax as well as Wisteria, Spiderwort and other introduced and basically garden plants.

On the avian front, the outstanding moment was provided by a calling (singing?) Yelow-billed Cuckoo -- not the steady coo (which can be confused with the Black-billed), but the gulping call which slows up at the end; both the gulping tone and the ritardando are distinctively Yellow-billed.

Great Crested Flycatcher was back but no sign of yesterday's Phoebe. These two flycatchers seem to appear on alternate days. Ditto the Yellowthroat and Yellow Warbler at the head of the marsh; today it was Yellow's turn but no sight or sound of the Yellowthroat.

Eric Salzman