{"id":7617,"date":"2012-03-24T18:55:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T22:55:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-13T18:20:09","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T22:20:09","slug":"march-madness-natives-vs-non-natives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardern.co.za\/2012\/03\/march-madness-natives-vs-non-natives\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness – Natives vs Non natives fight for survival in the warmest spring ever."},"content":{"rendered":"
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OUR NATIVE ( AND STATE WILDFLOWER FOR MASSACHUSETTS) MAYFLOWER,DESPITE ITS NAME, TYPICALLY BLOOMS IN MARCH – MOST NATIVE PLANTS EMERGE LATER THAN IMPORTED ONES – WHICH IS WHY ONE NOTICES THE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE SPECIES WHEN EARLY SPRING WEATHER FORCED THEM TO JUMP – THEY OBVIOUS CANDIDATES?- FORSYTHIA, MAGNOLIA, APPLES, CRAB. BRADFORD PEARS – THEY’RE ALL A LITTLE STUPID – TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR LOCAL FOREST, AND SEE HOW MANY TREES ARE IN FULL BLOOM VS THOSE AT YOUR SUPERMARKET PARKING LOT.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n \n<\/div>\n \nTAKE A LOOK AT YOUR LOCAL FOREST, AND SEE HOW MANY TREES ARE IN FULL BLOOM VS THOSE AT YOUR SUPERMARKET PARKING LOT.<\/span>It’s easy to pick out the native trees and shrubs from the imported ones. Just take a look at the Bradford Pears at bloom at your local gas station or supermarket parking lot, and then take a glance at your local forest – in most spring’s, the forests remain brown while foundation plantings and nurseries pitch pots of yellow forsythia, flouncy Magnolias and purple rhododendrons – in full bloom. When the seasons merge, and in years like this one, when record-breaking warmth arrives even earlier, these imported species bloom, blindly believing that summer is near, but typically, native species are much later. <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \nWhat concerns many of us gardening types this year, is that across the US, the weather is not only off, it’s record-breakingly off, and not just hot for a day or two, but much warmer than every before in recorded history – and that temperature range is so broad, that it’s not as if the highs are just a couple of degrees warmer, but often more than 20 degree’s warmer. This strange state of our climate is not only forcing imported species to bloom and sprout even earlier, it is tricking the native species to emerge earlier, which is the more concerning issue at hand.<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \nHere in Massachusetts, the temperatures are soaring into the 70’s 80’s for the seventh day in a row. Not unheard of for a day or two in New England, but this is going on for over a week now. So as non-gardeners yap about how they hope this happens every year, those of us who know about such things, are preparing as best we can for the end of the world botanically speaking. Or at least, the end of some plants in our gardens. <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n \nIt can ( and most likely will) happen next week, as temperatures drop back to a more ‘normal’ range in the thirties and forties – our typical seasonal temperature average for today is 38 deg. F. So if you are like the girl who was cashing us out at the register last night at the supermarket, who was “so psyched about this hot weather” you might not care that many plants will be severely damaged over the next month, if the temperatures return to normal. Whatever the cause, be it global warming, or a shift in the tilt of the earth due to earth quakes, or the end of the world, the plants are telling us something – and it’s all a little scary. Ten years ago the temperature dropped in Mid May to 26 degrees, and many native oaks and ash trees were lost. Since this is only late March, anything can happen.<\/div>\n <\/p>\n
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