Plants Emerge in Island Woods and Fields, mid-May

In the spring if you walk outdoors you can notice a wonderland of rapid, new plant growth. Even in cities with a lot of asphalt and concrete you can watch the trees leaf out and look at the weeds as they emerge in a vacant lot. The same patch of land, the same plant, it turns out that from day to day they aren't the same after all. Besides, their timetables are changing. I've observed on this island during the last 40 years that new growth now emerges a week or so earlier than it did in the 1980s and 1990s. This is true of apple tree blossoms, for example, but it's also true of the uncultivated plants one finds while walking in the spruce forest and the mown fields and natural clearings less than a half-mile upland from the ocean. One of those most striking in their emergence is the ferns. On this island are about a half-dozen different species of ferns, some favoring one habitat, others another. Here is a photo of Oak Ferns, emerging in a small, dry field on May 12, followed later by another photo of the ferns a week afterward. Walking about on that date you might also see iris emerging where it has naturalized, and bluets, and bay plans in the leaf bud stage. The earlier emergence is due to global warming from increased carbon in the atmosphere which combines with oxygen to make CO2 that is trapped in the atmosphere, warms the Earth, and causes habitat change gradually, but not so gradually that it's beyond notice. 

Oak ferns emerging May 12, 2018

Bay leaf shrub in bud stage, May 19

Bluets, May 19

Naturalized iris, May 19

Oak ferns unfolding May 19

Natural historians have compared the dates of emergence so painstakingly recorded in Thoreau's journals for the 1850s with the dates of emergence of various plant species emergence today in Concord, Massachusetts and its environs where Thoreau made his observations. To my knowledge no one has made a similar record for plant emergence on this island, but I imagine there must be records of emergence on nearby Mt. Desert Island, especially in connection with Acadia National Park--though these most likely don't go back further than some time in the 1900s. Guides to birds and wildflowers that can be found there also exist, over a period of several decades. For this island, there is a book of bird sightings that was compiled late in the last century, but this isn't the entry to discuss what I know of the changing bird populations here.