Looking out the window

I recently had the opportunity to drive 1500 miles from south-to-north. This is a verbal description of what I noticed.

West of Miami: Bald Cypress and Long Leaf Pine.

Tampa: Elderberry (blooming), Sweet Gum showed up

Dade City: Sycamore?

Rolled down the window, honked the horn and hollared "Hello Annie!"

Ocala: Magnolia blooming, Mimosa (Albezia, not the drink), Mulberry trees

Gainesville: Red Cedar

Georgia: Long Leaf Pine gave way to Loblolly Pine.

Chattanooga: Blackberries and Multiflora Rose blooming, Black Locust blossoms just starting to open. Shortleaf Pine dominant.

Knoxville: Honeysuckle blooming. Black Locust in full bloom. Shortleaf Pine very healthy looking. (Shortleaf Pine is native into southern Indiana but it looks scruffy and unhappy.)

Rockcastle, Ky: First White Pine sighted.

Corinth Ky: First Redbud blooming. American Plums ending bloom.

Dayton Oh: Redbuds in full bloom. 

Toledo, Oh: American Plums in full bloom.

I know there are some big gaps in the story but I was driving for 1/2 the time and was looking at the road and not the scenery.

Springtime from a different perspective

B50 Growing Degree Days is one measure of how much "heat" has accumulated over the course of the growing season. It is one way to quantify how sprung "springtime" is since many plants don't grow much when the temperatures are below 50 degrees F.

The chart shown above suggests that plants in Charlotte, Michigan would have had a similar degree of development on April 5, 2021 as on May 1, 2018 and May 1, 2021. All three dates had about 85 GDD b50. That is a huge range of 3.7 weeks.

Even if you said "2021 is an outlier. Let's ignore it" then you still have an April 12-to-May 1 range or about 2.3 weeks.

One rule-of-thumb is that springtime proceeds north at a rate of about 200 miles per week. 2.3 weeks is the equivalent of 460 miles or the N/S distance between Eaton Rapids, Michigan and Knoxville, Tennessee.

It will be interesting to see if we have Black Locust in full bloom on May 18 since that is where Knoxville is right now and they should be that far ahead of us if the 200 miles a week is true.