Quietly and unexpectedly, spring has already arrived! When I was walking around the Earlham Park yesterday, I was surprised to find all these beautiful flowers carpeting the field! Spring has come!! It brings liveliness and new hopes to the world! (Coincidentally today is the first day of the Chinese New Year which in the Chinese language also means “spring festival”.)

Snowdrop (the white flowers in the pictures above) often forms impressive carpets of white in the landscape, and is one of first signs of the end of winter. It falls within the species of Galanthus which have bulbs, linear leaves, and erect flowering stalks, destitute of leaves but bearing at the top a solitary pendulous bell-shaped flower.

Winter Aconite (the yellow flowers in the pictures above) belongs to the genus of Eranthis. The flowers are yellow and among the first to appear in spring (even before snow is gone), though later where winter snowpack persists, they are frost-tolerant and readily survive fresh snow cover unharmed. The leaves only expand fully when the flowers are nearly finished. They exhibit aestivation (spending a summer inactive and insulated against heat), growing on forest floors and using the sunshine available below the canopy of deciduous trees before their leaves come out; their leaves die off when the shade from tree canopies becomes dense, or, in dry areas, when summer drought reduces water availability. All parts of the plants are poisonous, though the very acrid taste makes poisoning a low risk.