Under Maple Flowers

     Red maple trees, both wild and planted, have a charming, dark-red blush among their twigs by the end of March in southeastern Pennsylvania.  That beautiful, interesting red is from the innumerable buds that are swelling and will soon burst into flowers, creating their own brand of beauty on short-grass lawns and in the canopies of wooded bottomlands.  And for a couple of weeks in April, those red blossoms partly shade a few kinds of blooms and creatures living under them.
     Scilla, Veronicas and purple dead nettles, all common, flowering plants native to Eurasia, also bloom from late March into April on lawns in this area, many of them under red maple blossoms.  Scilla grows from bulbs planted on lawns and in flower beds and has pleasing, sky-blue blooms.  Patches of Veronica have tiny, pale-blue flowers and carpets of dead nettle have pink ones.  Both those alien plants sprout on lawns without help from us.  In fact, many people consider them to be weeds and try to eradicate them.  To me, however, Scilla, Veronicas and dead nettles growing among grass and adding beauty to lawns are as much lovely wild flowers as native wildflowers growing and blooming on forest floors.     
     And when red maples start blooming, obvious groups of handsome American robins and iridescent purple grackles are already moving across short-grass lawns, many of them under attractive red maple flowers, in quest of earthworms and other invertebrates to eat, adding more beauty and intrigue to flower-dappled lawns into April.  Some of those robins and grackles will stay on lawns to raise young, the robins in the relative safety of deciduous shrubbery and sapling trees and the grackles in half-grown coniferous trees that have densely-layered limbs of needles that offer great shelter.  By rearing offspring in different niches, robins and grackles reduce competition between them for nesting sites and both species can hatch young in the same lawns.
     Wild red maples mostly inhabit wooded bottomlands that always have moist soil.  The lovely blooms of those maples in the canopies shadow flowering plants and animals that live on the damp floors of bottomland woods, including native trout lilies, alien lesser celandine and grape hyacinth from Eurasia, and native spring peeper frogs and American toads.    
     Large patches of lesser celandines and trout lilies have yellow flowers that brighten woodland floors along streams and wetlands.  And grape hyacinths have purple blooms which offer lovely contrasts to the yellow blossoms among lush, green plants on the damp ground.
     Spring peepers are a kind of small tree frog.  Males of this species peep loudly in ponds and swamps in bottomland woods on warm nights and rainy days from the latter part of March through April.  Male American toads trill musically from early April to the third week of that month in those same pools that peepers peep in, often both those tailless amphibians calling at once.  That peeping and trilling by male peepers and toads, with throats bulging out to amplify their calls, attract females of their respective kinds to mates for spawning eggs in water, often under the lovely roof of red maple blossoms.    
     The peeping and trilling of male peepers and toads, in unison, at dusk and into the night, create ethereal choruses reminescent of the long ago age of amphibians.  I often sat in the dark by a woodland pool or wetland and imagined myself in that distant time when amphibians ruled the land.
     Red maple blossoms, and the flowers, birds and calling amphibians living under them, add beauty and intrigue to lawns and wooded bottomlands.  And they help indicate spring arrived!