Alberta Wanderings

RickR wrote:

So...

Where does the Kootenay Agricultural Society come in?

Perennial Seed Germination Information:

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That's a pretty amazing germination guide.  I've printed it off.   I wonder whose experiences it's based on?  It's too bad they didn't give themselves credit for it!  :)

The season is beginning, albeit slowly and subtly- the native plants here are well aware that spring does not mean an end to freezing, so they begin cautiously- and of course snow remains in many places, and the soil is still frozen in many others, or just thawed recently...

To my surprise, I saw Petasites (likely sagittatus, but we have frigidus v palmatus and many hybrid populations- all of which are so close together that I wonder whether any of our plants are completely one species or another) budding-- only in one area, though I didn't visit any of the other earliest spots- places at the southern edge of woods that will melt relatively earlier and warm up faster; this site has maybe a further advantage: the plants are on the south side of a small raised area, several metres square, probably the remains of a brush pile that has been rotted into the soil over many decades;

many other wetland areas still have knee-deep snow!

I always loved these flowers as one of our very earliest (probably the earliest in my area, edging out Caltha and Viola, though peak bloom of all of them overlap strongly), but photographing them in the last few years, I've come to love the buds as much as anything-- odd little fuzzy wrapped grape clusters!

These plants are only a few inches tall, barely emerging above the water yet, and this water still has snow melting into it only a couple of metres away!

Yes, nice to see some buds :) NO warmth for now, though, after some warmish days, we are supposed to head into cool and wet weather..(I'll post on weather thread...)