May 2025 in the Northern Hemisphere

[Knud]

This spring has provided one of the best flowerings in our garden that I can remember. The weather has clearly been a factor, with dry spells during the first three months of otherwise normal precipitation, and very nice and dry weather April and May. An apparent absence of the dreaded slugs has helped, probably also down to the weather (it has been cool), but one can always hope that it reflects a real dip in their numbers.

There was a careful start already mid January with the first bulbs. It has peaked from mid March with early Saxifragas in garden and pots, and April with Erythroniums and Trilliums. Now well into May the later Saxifragas are starting, one of the first ones is one I got as Saxifraga paniculata ‘Rosea’. Today the S. paniculata ‘Baldensis’ opened its first flower, the picture of it below is a few days old.

Two bellflowers are also in bloom, Campanula chamassonis and Edraianthus sutjeskae, both in pots. The last picture is of Haberlea rhodopensis which has been flowering for a couple of weeks.

[Knud]

A few ‘reds’ that have been flowering the last few weeks. Reddest of them all, Tulipa Sprengeri, beautiful in bud and in bloom. Our red hawthorn Crataegus Paul’s Scarlet is just covered this year in its dense clusters of flowers. Another and much smaller tree but still reddish is the Sorbus filipes, flowering richly as it usually does. A shrub just covered in flowers these last weeks is the Enkianthus campanulatus, and well, it has at least red in its common English name, Redvein Enkianthus.

The bee on the Enkianthus I was told recently is a ‘mature’ one, since it has mastered arranging its collected pollen in neat ‘bags’ on the hind legs. When young and ‘inexperienced’ the bees have pollen ‘all over’, like the one on the Erythronium in the last picture, taken six weeks ago. Can anyone confirm this? I know, it is a different species of bumble bee, but I have seen this ‘pollen all over’ also on small wasps.

Knud