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Mid-April in the upper Virginia Piedmont is the most ephemeral time of the year except when the world is blanketed by snow when the land is transformed. The transition of green from day to day is subtle in spring. It is nevertheless there. Leaves emerge and overnight veer from pale yellowgreen toward blue-green. It all happens much too rapidly for this springwatcher. I find myself outwitted by the rush of the season.
From day to day streaks of yellowgreen of new and emerging tulip tree and red maple leaves flow upward on the Virginia hills and mountains. Air is colder at night on the mountain tops so spring is later — often much later — than it is at lower elevations. Spring green is delayed at the summit.
I just looked at the issuing leaves of a tulip tree. Their pale green fragility and newness nearly broke my heart. The perfection is absolute. It is also transient, for the hue will deepen and the leaves grow overnight.
As spring progresses and the temperature climbs, insects will begin to nibble, chomp and tpnnel new leaves. How transitory is spring perfection.
Leaves of the American Beech, Fagus grandifolia, push out from elongated bronze buds later than other trees. I anticipate their emergence with pleasure.
A new beech leaf has a sheen on its elegance like the bloom of a peach. Beauty in nature is difficult to put into words for nature is perfection; it is never like anything else, I was going to write that new beech leaves are velvety.
They are, but velvet is a man-made texture. It would be truer to write that velvet resembles a new beech leaf.
An uncoiling fiddlehead, or crosier, of a Christmas Fern seems to symbolize the strength, beauty and determination of spring. I am reminded of the inadequacy of the language
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