Spring, where life begins
Last week, once again, went into the weather books as a mild one and another winter season ended up much warmer than normal. Across the land, the mild weather is allowing nature to get ready early for its spring rebirth. Already a few plants are beginning to show and leaves on some trees are anxious to begin their journey.
Millions of seeds that fell to the ground last fall or perhaps even a year or two earlier are feeling the excitement of the possibility. The coconut, a big seed that has just journeyed across the ocean and is feeling that same possibility as it sits on an island awaiting its destiny. Seeds know how to wait. A cherry seed can wait for a hundred years. Every seed waiting is already alive. Every acorn lying on the ground or hidden under some winter leaves is just as alive as the 200 year old tree above it. The seed is waiting to begin life while the tree is waiting to die.
For every tree that we see in the woods, there are hundreds more unseen in the ground as seeds waiting for their chance to be a tree. Each of these seeds has an embryo with a working blueprint for a real plant with a root and shoot already formed and ready to start its journey.
No risk is more terrifying than that taken by the first root. It will find water but its first job is to anchor itself and forever end its mobile phase. Once the first root is established, the plant will never again enjoy any hope of relocating to a place less cold. Less dry, or less dangerous. It will face frost, drought and the jaws of animals without the possibility of flight. The tiny seed and now the plant has only one chance to guess what the future holds for the patch of earth where it sits. Now settled, it will assess the light and humidity of the moment, refer to its programming and take the plunge.
The new root grows down before the shoot grows up. Rooting exhausts the very last bit of energy of the seed. The gamble is everything and loosing means death, but if it wins, it is very big. The odds are enormous perhaps a million to one. The journey begins and finding water and sun allows it to grow into a small twig, then a small tree and eventually to the tree that you marvel at as you hike through the woods looking at its fall color and listening to the acorns drop as the squirrels scamper on the branches above.
Spring seems to be arriving earlier in recent years most likely a side effect and perhaps a benefit of the changing climate. This past winter all 48 states were warmer than average. There is a downside to this early warming in that a late cold snap can damage or kill tender vegetation that got an early start.
You are probably seeing the early signs of the unfolding of spring. In the coming days, it will be everywhere.