April's Golden Flowers

     I am writing this in celebration of the lush greenness of plants and multitudes of beautiful, golden flowers I saw this warm, sunny morning, April 27, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland when I was out on a few errands!  Lesser celandines in bottomland woods along creeks, dandelions most everywhere in meadows, lawns and roadsides, field mustards in some fields and roadside ditches, celandine along roadsides and buttercups in pastures and along roadsides were cheering to see!  And, although these plants are originally from Eurasia, their blooms lift many a human spirit weary of the trials and perils of winter.  These plants, by the way, also provide nectar and pollen for a variety of pollinating insects and seeds for mice and small birds.
     Yellow and green carpets of lesser celandine plants, hugging the moist ground of floodplains, have been in bloom since early April this year and are still blooming.  Those rugs of lesser celandines are made the more lovely by the purple-blue of blue violet and grape hyacinth flowers poking up among them.  And patches of lesser celandines help hold down the soil of bottomlands along waterways.
     Dandelions have been in bloom most of this April and still are, though many of their older blossoms have been pollinated and are now seed heads.  Seed heads appear to be fluffy, white globes on top of tall stems, which get the seeds above surrounding vegetation so the seeds can blow away in the wind and colonize other plots of ground.  Each bit of fluff acts as a parachute, carrying its seed cargo away. 
     Many dandelion seeds, however, are eaten by mice and such pretty birds as northern cardinals, American goldfinches, house finches, indigo buntings, chipping sparrows, song sparrows and others.  Those birds add their beauties to that of the dandelions. 
     Cottontail rabbits, wood chucks and white-tailed deer eat the leaves, stems and flowers of dandelions.  I have seen many rabbits sucking up dandelion flower stems as they chew it, much like we suck up strands of spaghetti.
     Patches of dandelion flowers and seed heads are the more lovely because of the pale-blue clumps of many Veronica blooms and the purple-blue blossoms of blue violets and grape hyacinths in them. 
     Field mustards stand up to three feet tall and appear bushy.  Each plant has many small, light-yellow blooms, each with four petals, on several flower stems per plant.  Field mice, horned larks and sparrows feed on the seeds of field mustards, where those plants don't get plowed under.  Field mustard begins to bloom around the second week in April.  
     Celandine is another bushy plant, but only two feet high.  This species has larger yellow blooms, of four petals each, than does the mustards and only begins to flower during the second half of April.        
     This is the earliest I ever saw buttercups blooming!  I remember buttercups blossoming about the second week in May, but they are already blooming for this year.  Every year, lesser celandines, dandelions and buttercups are, by far, the most abundant of yellow flowers in April and into May, but their abundant flowers have never been so bunched to bloom at the same time as this year, making them even more spectacular!   And, happily, when dandelions and buttercups reach their peak of flowering, whole lawns and meadows, respectively, are golden with their multitudes of blooms!  And those vast carpets of golden buttercup flowers, like those of dandelions, are made even prettier by the contrast of the Veronica, blue violet and grape hyacinth flowers in them.
     Buttercup flowers are shaped like tiny, golden cups.  And they are the color of butter, hence their name. 
     The flowers of these alien plants are attractive and cheering during April and into May.  And, although some people don't like them because they spread and perhaps take growing space from native plants, they are all here in North America to stay.  We might as well learn to enjoy their golden beauties.  And they help control soil erosion, produce oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis, and provide food for certain kinds of wildlife.  They are a major, beautiful part of North American landscapes because they adapted to human-made activities and habitats.