After the Snow Showers, April Flowers

I’m almost worried about jinxing our collective luck by saying so, but it looks like perhaps springtime is finally coming to Philadelphia. Following a winter that brought the Game of Thrones realness in a big way, everyone is on tenterhooks watching the forecast. With sun and balmy temps looking likely for the rest of the month, perhaps our long travail of ice, snow, and “winter storms” with dumb names are behind us.

Springtime means a lot of things, but my favorite one is flowers. With Easter happening this weekend, I figure there’s no better time to pen (click?) a short ode to the ubiquitous spring flowers of Philly, our annual harbingers of life, renewal, and all that good stuff. I don’t now much about the language of flowers, but I can share a thing or two about the blooms you’re likely to encounter on your springtime strolls.

A glimpse of spring: that’s a Rittenhouse Square window peeking out from behind all those gorgeous white dogwood flowers. Photo: Creative Commons

The fragrant, showy blossoms best-loved by Philly residents are, of course, the lilacs and cherry blossoms, with flowering dogwood pulling an honorable mention. Last week’s Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival celebrated all things sakura, with a generous side helping of sake. D.C.’s cherry blossoms are renowned, but ours aren’t half-bad either – they are all descended from a gift of 1,600 trees that Japan gifted the City of Philadelphia as a gesture of goodwill almost 100 years ago.

As for dogwoods and lilacs, right now is a great time to plant your own slice of botanic heaven. April and May mark the flowering season of these trees, which are ideally suited to the local climate and can be readily found anywhere that sells plants. With colors ranging from hot pinks and vivid violets to delicate whites and baby pinks, these Philly street plants appeal to the romantic in all of us.

And then, we have the redheaded (cottontopped?) stepchild of Philly flora.

I literally laughed out loud behind my laptop’s screen when I typed “Bradford pear smell” into Google and discovered the vociferous hatred that the internet apparently harbors for this innocuous, picturesque fixture of Arch Street landscaping. It seems that the Bradford, or Calloway Pear is gunning for the gingko tree’s heretofore unchallenged title as the most loathed stinky tree in Philadelphia. One of the milder similes I read compared the perfume of the Bradford’s tiny white flowers to “tuna on a tree.” The good news is that arborists promise the raunchy smell will last only a few weeks, but the trees stay lovely (and shade-creating!) the whole rest of the year.

Look at it this way: flowering trees trump dismal slush any day of the week. As the Dothraki say: it is known.

Happy Easter weekend, Center City! Spring has sprung.