Detail Diary, Vol #12

Magnolias peak and fade; I eat the spring

March 10 - 24, 2024

Dear friend,

In my last Detail Diary recap, I promised magnolias. And I give you magnolias. Also, the greening that was just trembling on the brink two weeks ago, now in full swing.

Two weeks is enough time for magnolias to open, peak, and begin to fade. This volume begins with closed buds and finishes with fallen petals losing their blush. But as lush and lovely as the full pink-blooded blooms are, I find that the passing prime creates new interest. Petals¹ fold and bruise, and retreating magenta leaves a tender streak along the midline; dropping petals expose the flower’s central spiral packed with stamens and carpels; the tree is untidy and transitioning. And of course, the ground beneath the magnolia is snowed with that rich, buttery blanket.

Expert forager

Alexander M Crow

let me in on the secret that magnolia flowers are edible. I didn’t get organized in time to collect young flowers (how quickly they age), but I did taste one petal today. The gathering bitterness was noticeable, but I could still detect the notes of ginger and citrus zest for which they’re prized.

And that wasn’t the only spring bounty I learned about from Alex. Just before the true greening, on the same day as the first magnolias, I encountered an elm tree “replete with spring-green samaras,” delicate, winged, tissue-paper fruits. See my review of the edible samaras below.

In the meantime, the true leafbuds broke. After a single weekend, I looked out my office window and was astounded by the halo of green that had suddenly appeared in the tuliptrees². By the equinox, they were on green fire.

Blackcaps and serins are singing; nests are building.

And meanwhile, forsythia is still with us, a vibrant link to the bare-branched times of only a few weeks ago.

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Here is your usual reminder that this post is best viewed on the web or in the Substack app! (From email, click on the title of the post or “Read in app.”) Clicking on a Note will also take you to the browser/app to see its full text and sometimes additional photos. For an introduction to my Detail Diary, see here, or peruse past volumes.

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After Alex informed me that elm samaras are edible, I went back to collect some. I found them very mild, the flavor mostly vegetative, but with a hint of sweetness (some people describe them as tasting like sugar snap peas; these samaras were mabye wearing just a single spritz of snap pea perfume). Salady bits. I put them on my pizza. I think the color contributed more than the flavor.

Above is my blackcap; here is Blackcap with Shriek of the Week. See also a link to an article about blackbird alarm calls (they have a large vocabulary of alarm and anxiety) in the original Note above.

Every Saturday

Debs Stott

invites us to make dialogues between pairs of photos (colors, textures, patterns, subjects, moods), i.e. diptychs. I made some springy ones, which you may or may not have to click on my Note to see.

(I called it a whorl in that Note because it sounds nice, but actually magnolias don’t have whorls like other angiosperms, they have spirals. See footnote 1.)

Instagram reminded me of a story I posted on March 22, 2023 of a magnolia at its peak. I checked on the same tree today, March 24, and it’s a testament to this year’s earlier spring.

But a fading, leafing magnolia can still make a lovely canopy for a pair of lovers.

1. Actually, magnolias have “tepals,” that is, undifferentiated petals and sepals (the latter being a leafy-looking outer whorl in most angiosperm flowers). This and the spiral arrangement of the reproductive organs are two marks of the early evolution of Magnoliaceae, having branched off prior to most other angiosperm descendants with more differentiated whorls of flower parts.

2. By some taxonomic schools of thought, the tuliptree genus Liriodendron is one of only two genera in the Magnoliaceae family, the other being Magnolia. And Liriodendron tulipifera is one of only two species in its genus. Unlike Magnolia, tuliptrees flower after they leaf, so we have this to look forward to.