In lieu of public Spring Flower Walks in 2020, we compiled a few resources on a weekly basis so that others could go out on their own and know which harbingers of spring to look out for each week.
One resource we compiled was a series of virtual bouquets (really, just a PDF file) of some of the flowers we saw in Columbia County each week from March 21 to May 30. See “What is Blooming?” below. Columbia County experiences a range of climatic conditions. Therefore, plants of a certain species often started blooming days or even weeks earlier in low-lying and more southern parts of the County than in the northern parts or at higher elevations. Our bouquets attempted to capture a snapshot of the species in bloom anywhere in the County during a particular week. While it is relatively easy to note the first observation of a species in bloom, it is more difficult to determine when a species is done blooming for the season. To make space for newly recorded flowers, we did not include all species in a weekly bouquet that had alrady been featured in the previeous weeks and might have still been in bloom.
In the pdf, the common name under each picture in these weekly “What is blooming?” compilations was hyperlinked to either Go Botany, a website of the Native Plant Trust or, in the case of a few ornamental plants, Plant Finder, a website of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
We invite you to use this resource in subsequent years to help you anticipate when to look for certain spring flowers, and also to compare year-to-year variation in the timing of the unfolding of spring flowers. Please note that the records are in reverse order–early spring is found at the bottom of the page!
What was Blooming in 2020?
