Spring starts way next week, but things have already sprung. Mild weather in February stimulated blooms in the plant world a month early this year – yet one more reminder that weather is a free spirit dancing over all our plans. Nevertheless, here are some of the plants showing up early this year.
There are several varieties of the genus Pycnanthemum known as mountain mints, and one of them lives in patches in the nearby woods. Years ago, I relocated a small clump to a garden bed, and it is usually one of the first plants to wake up in the spring.
Once established, mountain mint is an attractive plant which seems to belong in a wild corner of the garden even if you do not use the leaves. It’s friendly. The leaves are mint-scented and make a hearty tea with bounteous health benefits such as aiding digestion, sending antioxidants streaming through the immune system, soothing cough symptoms, calming your frantic self down, and easing menstrual cramps. And, once established, it returns every spring in a garden near you.
Another early riser which belongs in a garden is Sanguisorba minor, known as burnet or salad burnet. The small, toothed, rounded leaves are dark green and have a slight cucumber taste. The plants can be perennials in our area. The leaves might die back in winter cold, but the base bides its time and starts over with fresh leaves in spring. The young leaves can be added to salads, but they will never be the feature flavor in the mix, just an herby surprise. Legend holds burnet was used as a vulnerary against bubonic plague. I wonder if it worked because I have a plant in my garden if you need one.
I call them wild chives and not because they party all night. They grow in nature in places no one planted them, so that makes them wild. There are also wild onions and wild garlic. Ramps, another wild allium, are around my rocky hillside in the Ozarks, clumps of the smallest member of the allium family. They began sprouting last month. Because of my Mesopotamian roots, I instinctively know these well-behaved chive leaves help to get rid of intestinal worms, soothe insect bites and other sores, and add an oniony taste to your nachos and bean dishes.
Wild chives are also a helpful companion plants in the garden because they smell like onions which some pests and Christian nationalists avoid. Carrots, beets, lettuce, tomatoes welcome their protective stinkiness, but you might want to keep them away from asparagus, peas, beans. They have an interesting flower – different from regular chives – and a propensity to spread themselves around.
Last summer, a kale plant sprouted from seed dropped by a plant which went to seed the previous year. The new kale flourished through the year, but the coldest spell this winter knocked it down. This year’s flush of leaves sprang out of the base mid-February. Since kale is a biennial and the new leaves are technically second-year growth, this plant probably will produce seeds at the end of the season. Since I am a scientist, I will watch closely, take notes in a journal, create a YouTube channel so the world can see this process unfold.
Three pepper plants spent last summer in a large pot on the deck and produced plenty small yellow sweet peppers. When cold weather was upon us, in they came to a sunny window in the living room. All the leaves dropped soon enough, but the plan was to see if the plants would survive and bear peppers again.
In late January, one of them began sprouting new leaves, and now all three have put on new leaves and two of them are even flowering. I don’t know what that means, but, as a scientist, things like this intrigue me. Soon enough, the pot will go back onto the deck and Chapter Two will unfold.
There’s a rhythm to the partnership between seasons and living things. Now there are chives and mints, soon enough it will be silenes, violets and maybe surprises.