looduskalender.ee

Coltsfoot

 

 

For Tartu people the coltsfoot is in full bloom since long already, on the northern coast we find flowerers only in some warm and windless location. The weather is extremely changeable – alternately snow and sunshine, but friends, we are still only in early spring. The first flowerers of city people delight the eye on road verges and wastelands. In nature we find them in clayey habitats with poor soil, on ditch banks and field margins.

 

In the grey-brown colours of April the flowers of the coltsfoot shine like little suns. What power makes a plant, newly emerged from the only recently frozen ground, to flower? But the flowering was prepared already in the summer of last year, even the flower buds were ready-grown and into the rhizome a sufficient store of nutrients for early spring was collected.

 

The little flowers of the coltsfoot remind a little of the dandelion. The flower stem is covered with brownish scales – they are really transformed plant leaves that successfully protect the coltsfoot against night frosts. The plant lets the stalk grow during the whole flowering period and the large proper leaves develop only after the flowering.

 

Coltsfoot