By the time that we get to mid-February, we look out on a snow cover that has been with us continually for about 90 days.
The very snowy December that gave us more than 3 feet of snow was followed by a January with little snowfall.
A storm that deposited about 6 inches early in the month was virtually all that the chilly month provided. The snow that we see now has been coating the ground for a long time. Warmer daytime temperatures followed by chilly nights make for a thawing-freezing situation. The snow's surface will become crusty and even hard-covered at places.
Lightweight animals can move over this snowpack without sinking, so tracks of mice and birds abound. With the recent ice storm even critters like foxes will go over the surface.
This old snow is coated with numerous tracks. Many are new each day, but their stories are harder to read when blended with those of days or even weeks ago. Footprints and gaits are in the snow everywhere now.
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Many of us are ready for a new coating to see these tracks better. But there is more here among the tracks.
Recently, while cross country skiing, I stopped to observe a scattering of seeds on the snow as I passed through a forest. Seeds from the nearby birch trees had dropped here. These minute seeds with three or four points lay there on the snow. Each was easy to see with such a light-colored background.
Continuing through a coniferous forest, I saw more from other trees on the snow too. Under white spruces were good numbers of cones. Lying on the snow, most were partially open with a few of their seeds nearby.
Seeds of spruces are borne in the cones (smaller and thinner than pine cones). Here they develop through the summer, ripening in the fall.
When seen outside of the cone, the seeds will remind us of the samaras of maples (the seeds that twist like a helicopter as they fly through the air). They are much smaller than those of the maple, but they have a similar shape.
The virile seed part is carried by a single wing and, when feeling the wind, it will take flight. White spruce cones grow mostly on the top branches of these evergreens.
Here, in the drying air of fall and winter, the cones open and allow a breeze to come by to disperse their abundant seeds -- if they escape being eaten by birds, that is.
White-winged crossbills and red-breasted nuthatches are fond of these cone seeds, and, when they open, the birds move in for a snack. Despite the many seed eaters in the Northland winter, there are many more seeds.
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Now as we move from mid- to late-winter, the cones and seeds drop onto the snow as a sign of the coming spring.
As always happens with plant germinations, most will not survive, but enough will to continue the growth of white spruces.
We now see plenty of these plant packages of the next generation on the snow. The trees are preparing for spring in their own way.
Contact Larry Weber with questions or comments c/o budgeteer@duluthbudgeteer.com .
