Each year, the Northland experiences a season between the seasons. After the snows melt and before the trees reveal their new green leaves, we experience this unique time. It is usually from about mid-April to mid-May. The nearby lakes are opening, following the lead of ponds and swamps. Sparrows have returned and are now being followed by phoebes, hermit thrushes, ruby-crowned kinglets and the first warblers. Red maples have begun to bloom, while aspen trees hang ripe with pollen. It is also during these weeks that the forest floor awakens from the snow cover of winter.
The spring wild flowers will take advantage of the sunlight that penetrates through the unfoliated trees to the leafy soil. Here, they emerge from their dormancy and quickly unfold new leaves and flowers before shade covers them. First is the hepatica that already, in late April, has opened its six petals of purple, blue or white. Hepatica is first because, unlike the other early spring ephemerals, it keeps its leaves all winter, thus giving it a head start to the blooming season.
Those wandering through the woods now will also be struck by the abundance of green mosses. These tiny plants that seldom reach more than an inch or two in height are usually not seen. Since November, they lay hidden beneath the snowpack. Despite being there for more than 140 days, they remained green.
By late May, the diminutive mosses will be in the shade and with all the other greenery in the Northland forests, the mosses will again get overlooked. If noticed at all, we see mosses as being little green growths on rocks, logs, stumps and sometimes on bare ground within the forest. We may have been advised that moss grows on the north side of trees and so serves as a natural direction finder. (Mosses do grow on the north side of the base of trees, but they also grow on the east, west and south sides, too.)
Now, in late April, they take moisture and available sunlight to go into their next phase of growth. The leafy stems that wintered in a dehydrated stage soak up water from the melting snow, and the tiny leaves unfold. From the tip of the stems on most mosses now grows another structure. Looking something like a long neck of a bird complete with a head and beak, the reproductive capsules extend above the rest of the plant. Each small plant holds up its contribution to propagation.
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Unlike the nearby wild flowers and grasses, mosses do not produce flowers. Instead, they develop an oval shaped capsule, a container, filled with tiny spores. When they appear at this time, the spore capsules are green, but when ripe with maturity, they turn brown. Later in the season, they disperse the spores. All these green mosses that we now see in late April during this "season between the seasons" are rapidly preparing their continued growth. And the woods of late April have more green.
Larry Weber is author of the "Backyard Almanac" and "Butterflies of the Northwoods." He lives in Carlton County and teaches natural science at Duluth's Marshall School.
