Cold snaps don't deter the earliest of bloomers

There are a few words particularly appropriate for the end of February. Such as: Good riddance.

A gardener is happy to put the month behind him. It is full of push-me-pull-you, yin-yang, positive-negative energy. I am picking tete-a-tete daffodils for the table one day and scraping ice off the windshield the next.

Despite dips into the subfreezing, the signs of spring are splashed about town. The delicate petals of Japanese apricot are feathering the branches with delicate shell pink, white or red petals. They may be single or double flowered, weeping or upright. The flowering apricot is among our earliest flowering trees and still not used very extensively here, though there are said to be 300 cultivars in Japan. The late J.C. Raulston was responsible for the introduction of many of them to this country, and the arboretum that bears his name at N.C. State University has the country's most extensive collection.

The air on humid cool days is redolent with the sweet, slightly lemon scent of blooming daphne. A native of China, daphne is one of those plants on whom even the best efforts may fail, but every effort is worth the trouble. Many reasons have been ventured for its fickleness, but the only thing that works is to give it that magical soil we hear so much about - moist yet well drained.

Mine was grown from a cutting supplied by a friend and has expanded over time from its original 4-inch pot to coffee-table size. It is one of my treasures, and this year is beginning to look a bit out of sorts though it is blooming its head off. I am hoping its signs of ill health indicate that it is suffering a little winter damage and not giving up the ghost in mid-glory as daphne is wont to do.

If you take away the lemony undertone from the scent of daphne, you have a fair description of the fragrance of its relative, edgeworthia. This gnarled little shrub decorates its naked branch tips with clusters of pendulous flowers that start about a week or two after the daphne does. The exterior of edgeworthia's flowers are silvery white, and because they hang downward, you'd never know that their interior is a brilliant, clear yellow, unless you got under them.

After flowering, edgeworthia will clothe itself in large tropical looking leaves, not what you might expect from this curious winter bloomer.

Winter honeysuckle is in bloom too. It is not much to look at, an assembly of twiggy sticks and olive-green leaves dotted with small white oddly shaped flowers. The scent is liable to find your nose before the flowers catch your eye. If you sucked on honeysuckle as a kid you will recognize the flower once you find it, though it is a quarter of the size. This is the winter honeysuckle's finest hour, because it has nothing ornamental to offer, other than its fragrance. In truth, it is a bit on the weedy side, taking up in school lots and shady roadsides and little neglected corners of the yard (like mine). I have grown fond of it, since I've moved south though, its heavenly scent opposing its sickly appearance. I can empathize with anything this anxious for spring.

Down at ground level things are going on too. Besides those tiny daffodils that I mentioned earlier, there are the butterfly-like blossoms of the little cyclamen known as coum. If you know the florist cyclamen that is a popular Valentine gift plant, this is much the same only severely miniaturized.

Each of the rosy pink petals is about half the size of a dime and exquisitely turned and flared with a deep plum purple. They also come in white and pink. My one measly plant is doing its best to put on a show. Each flower stem crawls about the ground until it is clear of the rounded, heart-shaped leaves and then takes an abrupt turn skyward so that a plucked stem makes an "L" shape.

All this crouching, kneeling and bending in search of the earliest blossoms is a reminder that there will be much more of the same in our near future, better get those bones limbered.

Sure there will be melted magnolias and frost-fried cherries. It's not spring yet, and plenty of flowers out there lack the cold hardy constitution of the aforementioned.

The calendar says winter ends on March 20, but what these plants tell us is the tide has turned, we are on our way to spring.

Don't look back.