Monday, April 2, 2012

What's Blooming on Campus?

Happy Monday everyone! So since the unseasonably warm weather has brought out some spring flowers early, I thought I'd do a post on the early bloomers. We had temperatures here in the mid 70s in the middle of March so all the spring plants took off way earlier than normal. Now we're back down to mid-50s/60s weather, but the plants are still going strong.

The plants I see blooming the most all over campus are the adorable little Scilla flowers.


This particular scilla is Scilla siberica which reproduces and spreads through seed, often producing large colonies that will blanket forest floors or meadows in early spring. They grow best during this time because they like lots of moisture and the melting snow makes the soil almost constantly wet; the perfect conditions for these little plants.

A carpet of blue in the woods on the St. Paul campus. 

There's also a bunch of magnolia trees blooming along the sidewalks on the main campus. I think they're Lily Magnolia (Magnolia liliiflora) but I could be wrong, so feel free to correct me. 


These beauties have been gracing the campus sidewalks for a few weeks and, sadly, are starting to drop their petals. The picture above was taken last week. 
Hopefully once we get further into April, the tulips plants that have been cropping up everywhere will start to flower and I can get some pictures of those up. 

Coming up this week I'll hopefully have two big updates. Thursday I'll have an update one what's going on in my Horticulture Lab. And then, this weekend, I'll hopefully (if I convince my family to go) be making a trip to the Como Zoo Conservatory. They have their Easter flower show going on right now, so if that happens I'll have a huge post of pictures for you all to enjoy for Easter.

4 comments:

  1. Abby, I love Siberian squill, and that carpet of them running through the woods is beautiful. Maybe someday I can create an effect like that on my own property. -Jean

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  2. Spring blooms are so cheerful! I love dainty clear blue Scilla siberica. But be sure you want them when you plant them - I saw a suburban lawn overrun with them this spring.

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  3. What a lovely bunch of blooms. I don't remember my colleges looking so pretty...our temps dipped from the 80s to the 40s and several freezes/frosts...plants are not happy now!

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    1. Yeah, I consider myself lucky with how pretty my campus is. The agricultural campus really has it good because they're not as close to the metro area as the main campus is, so they have lots of trees and little patches of woods for the wildflowers like the Scilla to grow in. And all the plant-related departments really take good care of the gardens over there.

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