2013 Spring Flowering Phenology Summary

Post date: May 1, 2013 4:03:22 PM

Dear Colleagues,

Here’s our informal report on spring flowering phenology in the Stevens Point area this year.

Through yesterday, we recorded 35 species of plants (both wild and cultivated) in flower through April 30th, versus 252 species in flower last year by that date.

On average, plants have flowered 5-5.5 weeks later than last year (mean, 35 days; median, 38 days).

Click here to view spreadsheet (look at Sheet 1 in particular) summarizing early flowering records in our area from 1973-2013. We make no claims to completeness for data coverage and survey effort for every year, but would say that the 2012 and 2013 surveys are quite comparable in terms of the survey efforts that we put in.

Judziewicz made most 2010, 2012, and 2013 observations, while Bob Freckmann made all 1973-2009 observations and many 2010-2013 observations. These folks also contributed observations: Seth Barthen, Mary Bartkowiak, Alvin Bogdansky, Aaron Fahlstrom, Tracy Feldman, Diane Lueck, Carol Kropidlowski, Angie and Rich Hauer, Rhiannon Kohlmoss, Steve Krause, Noel Martell-Segura, Jeff Morin, and Ron Tschida.

Best,

Emmet Judziewicz and Robert Freckmann

Robert W. Freckmann Herbarium

Department of Biology and Museum of Natural History

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

In the graph below, the Y-axis represents numbers of species, while the X axis represents number of days that species flowered “late” this year (compared with the exceptionally early spring of 2012).