ARTICLE V. 
AVERAGE OPENING OF FLOWERS. 
By G. U. Hay. 
The records that have been made by the writer and published 
in the Bulletins, during the last nine years, (with unpublished 
notes for the season of 1910) of the opening of flowers at 
Ingleside, and incidentally a glance at weather conditions, have, 
it is hoped, not been without interest to plant students. As far 
as possible the same plants under the same conditions of situation 
and temperature have been observed. This is an important 
feature in taking such observations. It is well known that 
flowers bloom and reach maturity much earlier in scanty soil in 
sunny situations secluded from cold winds. It is obvious that 
observations made in such chosen spots should not be compared 
with those made in more exposed places where the rays of 
sunlight have less chance of concentration and where the soil is 
deeper. For instance, it is noted that plants bloom earlier on 
the sunny south-eastern slopes of Rockwood Park, St. John, than 
they do in the open places at Ingleside, although the latter, 
situated about nine or ten miles, “as the crow flies,” from the 
city, as well as places further inland, are much earlier than in 
bleak exposed situations along the north side of the Bay of 
Fundy. 
One of the earliest plants to come into bloom about St. John 
is the coltsfoot ( Tussilago farfara ), an introduced plant. The 
writer saw it in bloom one year in a sheltered nook as early as 
the 27th of March. The first native flowers to bloom are the 
mayflower ( Epigaea repens ) and the hepatica or liverleaf 
( Hepatica triloba ), if we except those earlier inconspicuous 
flowers of certain trees and shrubs that are in haste to scatter 
their pollen before the leaves appear. 
Our spring-comings are uncertain, as may be gathered from 
an examination of the earliest and latest openings of flowers in 
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