March 10, 2023
Bloom Report: March 10, 2023
The landscape of The Morton Arboretum is slowly awakening from its winter slumber. Spring-blooming witch-hazels have been popping for almost three weeks. These small trees with their yellow and red flowers can be seen in the Ground Cover Garden and near the Visitor Center (Parking Lot 1), and especially in Witch-Hazel Dell north of Lake Marmo (Parking Lot 27).
More subtle flowers can be seen on hazelnuts, with their fuzzy catkins. See an American hazelnut in the Midwest Collection (Parking Lot 2) and Farge’s hazelnut (which has dark brown catkins) in the China collection (Parking Lot 17).
There are early flowers to be seen: Hellebores, including Christmas-rose and Lenten-rose, are beginning to bloom in the Ground Cover Garden and in front of the Plant Clinic (Parking Lot 1). Snowdrops, low plants with dangling white flowers, are in full bloom in many places around the Arboretum, including in the Fragrance Garden (Parking Lot 21) and by the road approaching Lake Marmo (near Parking Lot 27). North of the Fragrance Garden is a small patch of winter aconite, with small bright yellow buttercup-like flowers in full bloom.
The first blue Siberian squill flowers and purple periwinkle flowers are peeking out in the Ground Cover Garden and near the Thornhill Education Center (Parking Lot 21).
One of the reliable harbingers of spring is skunk cabbage, an interesting native plant that is blooming along Willoway Brook, west of Lake Marmo and south of the Lake Marmo dam (Parking Lot 28). It has meat-red, fleshy, teardrop-shaped flowers about 4 inches tall with a highly distinctive aroma.
