No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.

~Proverb from Guinea

It has been a busy couple of weeks, both at the office, and in the Garden outside. Temperatures have swung widely – 60+ degrees a couple of days ago, a nice fire in the fireplace last night, a pretty typical February in North Carolina. But the natural world has its own schedule, its own to-do list. It starts start slowly, and then erupts – it is the arrival of spring. One of the first signs is an auditory one. On one of the warm mornings last week, I noticed birds starting to sing (especially the Northern cardinals, Carolina wrens, and Eastern bluebirds).

Early saxifrage in bloom at the NC Botanical Garden (click photos to enlarge)

The first wildflowers of the season make a quieter appearance. Early saxifrage, Micranthes virginiensis, is easy to miss when walking the paths at the Garden, my mind full of things to check off my to-do list. Luckily, someone alerted me to the first flowers, but I still had to look hard to find them. The generic name means small flower. an appropriate name for a a plant with tiny white flowers less than 1/2 inch across. Ironically, the common name, saxifrage, bestows a more powerful status to these tiny plants. It means stone breaker. Many species of saxifrage are plants of rock outcrops, with the tiny plants often nestled in soil deposits of the cracks and crevices of boulders. People once believed these plants to be responsible for the splits in the rocks where they grew.

The first spotted salamander egg masses of the season

Some early spring amphibians are also on the move as the days lengthen. The first spotted salamander egg masses appeared in the pools at the Garden and in my home woods last week. Not a huge run of salamanders as yet, but a sure sign that warmer weather is on the way.

Upland chorus frogs in amplexus

While salamanders and saxifrage can appear without fanfare, the frogs of spring can’t be missed. Last week, we heard the first trills of our earliest frog breeder, the upland chorus frog. Instead of the vernal pool, their favorite dating hot spot last year, they were calling from the artificial “stream” at the back of the herb garden. This species is normally quite shy, and will quickly cease calling as you approach their breeding habitat, disappearing beneath the leaf litter or vegetation in the shallows. But at this location, the water is contained within concrete stream banks with little leaf debris, making it harder for these cryptic callers to vanish. You can usually locate one by a slight ripple in the water when they duck under the surface. Indeed, they all quit calling as I walked over, so I scanned the water’s edge, and found a pair in amplexus (the mating position of frogs and toads, in which the male clasps the female about the back and fertilizes the eggs externally as she deposits them). Unfortunately, I only had my macro lens with me, but I eased closer anyway, hoping to get at least one image. To my surprise, I was able to creep up, kneel down and get a close-up portrait without disturbing them The next evening I could hear more calling as I walked to my car. Then, two nights ago, the first spring peepers of the season were calling in the vernal pool in the woods next to the parking lot. It is coming…the eternal march of the seasons is quickening its pace. Get ready, the great greening of the landscape is not far off.