Not just crocuses

[ellarien]

These flowers on bare twigs (willow?) are tiny, but exquisite. There was some kind of small brown bird -- not a sparrow -- hopping around in the branches, too.

They're working on the long-neglected rock garden at Whirlow Brook Park; the rockery has been cleaned out and planted with new shrubs. It's not very attractive at the moment, but it should be an improvement once it settles in. On the other hand, the lovely red maple by the (badly silted-up) lily pond looks awfully dead. The Mexican skunk cabbage is just starting to sprout, making splashes of yellow-green as bright and unnatural-looking as neon plastic.

Comments

[redbird]

I'm not sure what those are, but the willows around here have very different flowers, long skinny things called catkins.

[ellarien]

We have catkins around here too, though I don't particularly associate them with willow. (In fact, I photographed some this afternoon.) I'm not doing very well at identifying things at the moment -- too long in a completely different ecosystem. And this was in a park -- the sort that started life as the grounds of a big house -- so it could have been anything. Anything hardy enough to withstand at least twenty years of neglect in the local climate, anyway.

[gwyneira]

It might be forsythia, which blooms like that on bare branches before it leafs out.

[ellarien]

Could be, though most of the forsythia around here has rather bigger flowers than that. These were seriously tiny.

[ellarien]

My gardening friend on Facebook suggests Cornus mas, or Cornelian cherry to North Americans.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

definitely not willow.

Forsythia? Witch hazel? Both are early bloomers with small yellow flowers that we don't grow much in California so I have seen them so rarely as to not be able to recognize them.

[ellarien]

There's plenty of forsythia around here, and it is blooming now, but that has much bigger flowers as a rule. Witch hazel I'm not so familiar with, but I thought the flowers were more tassel-like, and also a bit earlier.

I should post the picture to Facebook and see if my gardener friend can identify it.

[ellarien]

Gardening friend's best guess is Cornus mas, a kind of dogwood known in North America as Cornelian Cherry. That looks plausible to me, comparing with the drawing.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I was about to say I'd never heard of a yellow dogwood but when I started to google it one of the first suggestions -- not even results -- was one called "golden glory," which brings yellow flowers to mind, certainly.

Learn something every day.