Blooming in December on the East End
It’s 10:56 Monday night and the temperature outside my window reads 54.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Last night at this time it was 33.3 degrees, but never dipped further. That’s the coldest it’s been here in Noyac on the north edge of the moraine since last March. What’s happening?
Well, we all know about the phenomenon of global warming. It’s happened several times over the earth, but each time many millions of years apart. More than 100 million years ago, tropical plants, e.g., cycads, grew in Canada and the northern United States. In the past, every time the earth got hot, something happened to cool it down, often to the point of creating massive glaciers that moved south all the way to middle America. This time, however, we have so tinkered with things that we cannot be sure that such a cool-down will follow.
Then there is the El Nino phenomenon, which is somewhat periodic. Until 1967-68, when I experienced it along the California coast, it was not a big deal; now it is, because it is affecting not only the climate of the West Coast in a major way but the climate of the southern and central United States, and to a lesser degree the climate here in the East.
Whether or not our current record warming has something to do with El Nino remains to be seen. But this December warmth is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Plants that shouldn’t flower until next spring or summer are flowering now. Vicki Bustamante has been afield checking on them. The first to catch her eye was a thistle, an Old World species that generally doesn’t flower until May or June. It is one of the biennial plants that start out as a ground-hugging rosette of leaves shortly after the parent has flowered and fruited, then springs up in the next year and flowers itself, after which it perishes.
I was at my mother-in-law’s, Grace Miglioratti’s, funeral at St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Sag Harbor, while outside the side entrance roses and geraniums were blooming. A few cultivars like the autumn-blooming cherry do flower twice a year, in spring and fall, but December is a bit late for the fall bloom. Then again, we’ve all read about Washington, D.C.’s famous cherry blossoms, such an important draw for tourists in the spring. They have been flowering again as of late November and early December.
Other herbaceous plants and shrubs that have been seen flowering lately are yarrow, the weed common groundsel, mints, self-heal, vinca, and dandIt’s 10:56 Monday night and the temperature outside my window reads 54.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Last night at this time it was 33.3 degrees, but never dipped further. That’s the coldest it’s been here in Noyac on the north edge of the moraine since last March. What’s happening?
Well, we all know about the phenomenon of global warming. It’s happened several times over the earth, but each time many millions of years apart. More than 100 million years ago, tropical plants, e.g., cycads, grew in Canada and the northern United States. In the past, every time the earth got hot, something happened to cool it down, often to the point of creating massive glaciers that moved south all the way to middle America. This time, however, we have so tinkered with things that we cannot be sure that such a cool-down will follow.
Then there is the El Nino phenomenon, which is somewhat periodic. Until 1967-68, when I experienced it along the California coast, it was not a big deal; now it is, because it is affecting not only the climate of the West Coast in a major way but the climate of the southern and central United States, and to a lesser degree the climate here in the East.
Whether or not our current record warming has something to do with El Nino remains to be seen. But this December warmth is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Plants that shouldn’t flower until next spring or summer are flowering now. Vicki Bustamante has been afield checking on them. The first to catch her eye was a thistle, an Old World species that generally doesn’t flower until May or June. It is one of the biennial plants that start out as a ground-hugging rosette of leaves shortly after the parent has flowered and fruited, then springs up in the next year and flowers itself, after which it perishes.
I was at my mother-in-law’s, Grace Miglioratti’s, funeral at St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Sag Harbor, while outside the side entrance roses and geraniums were blooming. A few cultivars like the autumn-blooming cherry do flower twice a year, in spring and fall, but December is a bit late for the fall bloom. Then again, we’ve all read about Washington, D.C.’s famous cherry blossoms, such an important draw for tourists in the spring. They have been flowering again as of late November and early December.
Other herbaceous plants and shrubs that have been seen flowering lately are yarrow, the weed common groundsel, mints, self-heal, vinca, and dandelions. On the side of Deerfield Road in Water Mill last Thursday, a forsythia was sporting its yellow blossoms. All these named bloomers are probably the tip of the iceberg, and by Christmas Day we shall probably have observed a great many more species flowering.
What does all this amount to? Is it more than a one-time chance event or does it have a deeper and, perhaps, longer-term meaning? We know that the South and West have oak trees that are evergreen. Will some of those take up roots here or will some of our oaks stop losing their leaves altogether and become semi-evergreens or true evergreens?
Not counting the conifers, we already have a few semi-evergreens that hold onto the leaves well into the winter, such as bayberry and several privet varieties. Unlike tropical rain forests, where evergreen broadleaved trees and shrubs dominate, we have only a few non-conifer wood evergreens, namely mountain laurel and American holly, but also a few evergreen subshrubs such as bearberry, spotted wintergreen, checkerberry, trailing arbutus, and pipsissewa.
Depending upon the degree of wetness accompanying the global warming, the vegetation on the South Fork could in the next millennium end up becoming lush and largely evergreen or low heathlands, savannahs, and grasslands, such as existed in Montauk when it was regularly burned over prior to the 1960s and Hither Woods when it was first lumbered and then used for grazing. By now the woods have almost completely reverted to a covering of oaks, beeches, hickories, sassafras, and other hardwoods, including the evergreens, holly and mountain laurel.
We think things are static, constant, and never-wavering as we pass from youth to adulthood, then into old age, but in reality every plant community is continually changing along with the climate. Other than the redwoods, bristlecone pines, and a few other trees that live for thousands of years, most perennial plants have discrete lifetimes that rarely exceed a few hundred years.
The absence of winter, if it should actually happen, will no doubt hasten those future changes to the vegetation that the climate has in store for us. As Bob Dylan once twanged, “Something is happening here and you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?”
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Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].