Spring into Fall

“Isn’t this a little unusual?” he asked me.

In Yarmouth, I noticed a few weigela blooms while walking to work and a friend told me about a woman she had seen that morning who had a bouquet of mayflowers on her desk. ‘Oddities’ like these have actually been reported over many autumns in different parts of North America.

For example, an article from the October 1991 New York Times archives describes magnolias blooming in September at the New York Botanical Garden and rhododendrons out in Washington. At Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, Frances Tenenbaum, an editor at Houghton Mifflin, was raking up oak leaves in her yard and picking lilacs in early October. Scientists were debating the greenhouse effect versus the natural variability of the climate system at that time.

Nowadays it’s been pretty well established that global warming is behind these occurrences.

The southern tip of Nova Scotia appears to have more out-of-season blooms than other areas this year.

Nova Scotia PlantWatch coordinator Melanie Priesnitz says botanists in the Valley have not noticed as many late or early blooms in Kings County as they did last year however there were a few reports of mint and dandelion in bloom and many of the late bloomers such as tansy and asters are still flowering.

The plants at the Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens, where Priesnitz is conservation horticulturist, appear to be shutting down on schedule this year despite some unseasonably warm temperatures she added. “We have had some unusually warm days but we've also had many cold days and cold nights. It's also been a very dry fall; most plants need more than just temperature to trigger them so I wonder if the late or early blooms that we saw last year were as a result of a combination of rain and warm weather?” she said.

Botanists are continuing to monitor how the plants are being affected by the changing climate.

Priesnitz prefers to look at the positive side of global warming. “I will embrace the opportunity to be gardening in my t-shirt on the first day of November!” she said.