April



By Peter Conway

April is the month when spring definitely starts to spring. Suddenly, everything is trying to flower and blossom at once. When the the sun shines, the sky is a deep blue, birds sing their heart out, and everything feels wonderful. But a day – or an hour - later it can be grey and cold and you are reaching for your winter coat again.

WEATHER

The classic April day that sticks in memory has scudding clouds, blue sky, and the odd sharp shower, and April almost always has days just like that. A particular feature of April weather is that showers and cloud bubble up after a bright sunny start: it is the power of the April sun combined with moist breezes off the sea that creates this effect

When the sun does shine, it is just right - warm and pleasant, without being too hot - mid to high teens centrigrade, perhaps rising into the low 20 if one is lucky. Except possibly right at the end of the month, when on a sunny day shade and suntan cream can start to look welcome, it is generally still a delight in April sit out in the sun even in the middle of the day. Breezes also mean the air stays fresh and the sky a deep blue.

But April can also feature quite a lot of dull grey cloud, under which temperatures dip noticeably. Early in the month, this can have you reaching for winter coats and pullovers, and even looking lingeringly at woolly hats. The central heating may even go back on again, but not for extended periods.

Nights usually avoid frost, however. An exception to this was 2008 when highs to the south west and over Greenland brought north winds and 5 inches (12 cm) of snow overnight on the 6 April, a Sunday, though it had melted by the afternoon. The following day also brought some snow overnight, but by the 9th daytime temperatures were up to 14 degrees - warm enough to walk in shirtsleeves in the sunshine

Later in the month, grey skies can also bring temperatures down, but only to around 9-10 degrees. What makes a big difference is that by now night times have warmed up - typically to 7 or 8 degrees. One still needs warm bedclothes, but the wind has lots its cutting edge, and winter coats, hats and scarfs have quietly been forgotten and returned to the back of the cupboard.

As with March, if Easter falls in this month, it tends to start sunny and then get cooler and cloudier. Good Friday is often the best day, while Easter Sunday is almost always disappointing. Easter Monday is more mixed, starting cloudy and turning fine.

In the odd dry spring of 2003, it was not till mid month that the rains finally came: predictably their start coincided with Easter. By this time the countryside looked so sorry that they were welcome. Even then, the rest of the month alternated rain with fine sunny days.

However, even this unusual April was beaten by April 2007, when high pressure and hot sun -with temperatures regularly and unseasonally into the low 20s - lasted practically the entire month.

There was no rain whatsoever in the first three weeks of the month, and even when westerlies returned from 23 to 27 April, there were only a few, scattered and very short lived showers.

Following on from a very warm January to March, this was the month when it seemed global warming had really started to impact our climate, though the rest of the spring and summer in fact turned out to be unusually cool and rainy.

At the start of the month paths can still turn muddy if it rains, though grass is no longer squelchy under foot. But any mud dries in less than a day once the weather dries up, even if it is grey. By the end of the month, the ground is dry even hours after a downpour, except in particularly damp places such as hollows and the depths of woods (or after a prolonged period of intense heavy showers, as in 2008). Pot plants also start to need the occasional watering, or regular watering if it is sunny.

One stops thinking about what time it gets dark, although lighting up time in fact advances from 7.35pm to 8.20pm during the month, meaning that by its end it is light till nearly 9pm. The longer days mean that one can once more get up late on Sunday, dawdle around and then suddenly decide to go out, and still have time for a good long time out in the countryside.

NATURE NOTES

By the start of April, the full flowering phase of spring has usually arrived: just occasionally, as in 2004, it does not start until a few days into the month, but usually it has already arrived in the last week in March. From then on, April is a delightful month, when every day seems to bring new delights.

One exception was 2006, when after a cold March - or some said, a normal winter after ten years of warm ones - everything was even later than 2004, with many flowers and leaves coming out a week to ten days later than described here. March 2007, by contrast, was so mild that many April activities happened two or three weeks early. The month was almost totally dry, with only very minimal scattered rain in the third week: despite this, most flowers and greenery somehow managed to hold on, and though at the end of the month the grass was tired in some places, it was still thick and green in others.

In 2008, everything once again looked about to come out early, but then five inches of snow on 6 April gave everything pause for thought. There was a ten day hiatus in the advance of spring, before everything returned to a more or less normal schedule in the second half of the month.

These variations apart, the normal sequence is for blue forget-me-nots, and bobble-headed grape hyacynths appear in gardens at the start of the month (the latter fading at the month’s end, and a week to ten days later bedding plants (alyssyms and aubretias) burst into bloom (from the start of the month in 2008). Magnolia trees put out their magnificent huge flowers, which soon fade and fall. (All of this happened from as early as the second week of March in 2007: in 2008 some came out in late march, others in the first week of April and were then killed off by the snow). Forysthia is still in glorious yellow bloom, fading away mid month (the same in 2007, but largely gone by the end of March 2008).

Yellow celandines are also still at their height at the start of the month, blooming cheerfully almost everywhere one looks: they can be found out right up to the end of the month, though by mid month they are fading in many places, their leaves shrivelling away to leave no trace. Daffodils are largely gone over by mid April, though a few isolated ones survive (almost none after the first week in 2007 and in 2008 they only survived in isolated rural spots till about mid month). The blue flowers of rosemary also fade (though in 2006, they did not even come out till mid month, and in 2008 most seemed to flower late in the month.)

Cuckoo flowers are much in evidence in meadows and on grass verges: at first as isolated clumps, and later in the month as great dreamy drifts of pale pink. (They started in the fourth week of March in 2007, however, and were in drifts as early as the first week of April: in 2008, some as early as mid March, but no drifts until later in April). Daisies and dandelions also gather force – at first as isolated examples, but by the end of the month carpetting any piece of grass that they are allowed to. (Again, in 2007, all this happened in March, and both flowers were in carpeting mode throughout the month). Towards the end of the month, some dandelions start to go to go over, turning prettily into spheres of delicate seed, but most are still in flower. (Perhaps a third to a half had gone over by end of April 2007, however).

On the sides of lanes and fields, deadnettles - both white and red - last throughout the month, as do the tiny blue flowers of speedwell, and white-flowered three cornered leeks (the latter gone by the third week in 2007 and 2008). They are joined by yellow cowslips, diminutive wild strawberries, yellow archangel (the yellow deadnettle), and lungwort, a dwarf comfrey.

On pastureland, one of the most ubiquitous (though usually unnoticed) flowers is ground ivy, whose tiny blue flowers do not look so impressive in isolation, but form dramatic carpets when they can. Later in the month it is joined by the blue spikes of bugle, which get bigger as the month draws on. Purple (and sometimes white violets) are also to be seen all over the place. In the cracks in walls, ivy-leaved toadflax, with its dainty purple flowers starts to flower and send out its tendrils to explore the world around the third week. Yellow cordialis is another plant that makes a pretty display out of walls and odd crevices towards the end of the month, as do relatives such as pink-flowered common fumitory.

Perhaps the finest flower of grassy verges this month is stitchwort, however, whose delicate double-petalled white flowers can be found in isolated clumps from quite early in the month (not till the third week in 2006 and as early as the fourth week of March in 2007), but which really come out in all their glory towards its end. By this time, hedge mustard, with its tiny white flowers, is also out, while honesty, its more flashy pink-flowered relative, appears a bit earlier in the month (in late March 2008).

Towards the month’s end, the pretty pink flowers of herb robert can also be seen on verges, as can some early vetches, as well as comfrey, and the strange erotic Lords and Ladies (Cuckoo Pint) flowers. (Also the related stinking cabbage near Haslemere, which smells awful!). If you see bare spikes of green sticking up from the ground around this time, they are probably mares’ tails (they latter open out into a sort of fly-whisk).

April is also a good month for gorse and broom, and sees brambles and sees the blooming of candle like spikes of flower on cherry laurel, which has rhododendrum-like waxy leaves. (The flowers came out at the start of April in 2008, and were going over by week three). In boggy places, yellow clumps of marsh marigold can still be found throughout the month, and at the edge of ponds reeds start to grow.

The real glory of April, however, is in woodland flowers. Right from the start of the month, white wood anenomes (pictured) demurely cover the cool shady ground in selected woods, and usually last long enough to overlap with the bluebells by a week or so (right till the end of the month in 2006 and till around the third week in 2008 with isolated examples till late in the month). The bluebells themselves can be found in scattered flowers as early as the first week of April, but typically they start to come out in force mid month, and are best from the end of the third week until the end of the first week of May.

There are variations in this both from year to year and place to place, however. In 2004, bluebells were coming out in force as early as 9 April, and were fully out a week later. In 2005, by contrast, although I saw some early ones on 3 April 2005 on a south facing slope at Ide Hill in Kent, most bluebell wood barely started to come out until right at the end of the month.In 2006, the bluebells were even later, only showing the most tentative buds even in the last week of April, and not at their best till the end of the first week in May. In the hot and dry spring of 2007, some were seen even in the first week, they were at best in the fourth week, but fading fast in many places by the end of it, perhaps due to the lack of rain.

In general, trying to catch the right time and day to see the bluebells is a frustrating business: and one of the most painful experiences of mid April is to do a walk and pass endless bluebell woods that are not yet in bloom, or to catch a wood when it is half out, with just reedy blue stalks of unopened flowers. They always seem to leave it just too late, not coming out till all the woodland foliage is out. At best, all flowers on each stalk are open, and each flower is fat. Then the woods get that magical blue-purple haze. There is no greater emotion that to glimpse this in the distance through the early foliage of an April wood.

Towards the end of the month, you might be lucky enough to catch another flower that carpets woodland - ransoms or wild garlic, whose distinctive smell usually preceeds sight of a shimmering sea of its white flowers. Harder to spot is pretty little wood sorrel, which flowers during April (going over towards its end), and grows in shy clumps, or (rarely) large mats. (Wood sorrel likes damp places, however, and I saw none at all in dry 2007). Towards the end of the month (though not till early May in 2006 and as early as the start of April in 2007) rape fields come into bloom, bringing intense patches of yellow to the landscape: related wildflower species such as charlock also flower.

April is also a time of blossom. At the start of the month, the wonderful blackthorn bush bursts into flower, its twigs totally covered with tightly packed white flowers. (Again, in cold 2006, the blackthorn did not come out till the third week, and was at its best at the end of the month. In 2007 it tried to come out in mid March, but was defeated by a cold snap and in fact started generally in early April as usual: the same happened in 2008 when the second week in April saw some blackthorn still coming out and others going over).

Later in the month (from the second week in 2007 and 2008), one also sees wild cherry trees in flower in the woods (not to be confused with the pink ornamental cherry plums of city parks and streets, which come out in late February or early March), its white blossoms hanging down in bunches like the cherries to come. A hybrid of this tree - with heavy bunches of thick, multi-layered “plena” flowers blooms in gardens and city streets at the same time. These trees are all going over as the month ends, however (though not till the end of the first week in May in 2006). Apple trees - including wild crab apples - can also be coming into full blossom by the end of the month.

Interesting shrubs to watch out for this month are the flowering currant, a garden escapee that is now widely naturalised and has lovely pink flowers and serrated three-lobed leaves like a strawberry. Towards the end of the month the bush with thick finely-toothed leaves and white umbellifer-like flower heads is the wayfaring tree (which is in fact not a tree).

April is also the month when the drab brownness of scrub and trees bursts into glorious life. As a rule the leafing moves from smaller to larger trees (both of different species and within the same species, but there are exceptions - eg massive horse chestnuts which leaf very early). The sequence is a few tentative leaves in the first week of the month, more of a fuzz on smaller trees in the second week, then an explosion of greenery in the third, followed by the larger trees leafing in the fourth. By this time, the whole countryside has a lurid bright green look on sunny days. (In 2007, this rapid greening was in week two, by the end of which almost everything except was in leaf, even oak trees. The one exception was ash, which did not even start to leaf until the first week of May. 2008 looked set to repeat this trick, but snow on 6 April set things back, and a more normal sequence resumed mid month.)

The very first leaves come on cherry plums, elder bushes and weeping willows in March: by early April the latter is putting out curly yellow catkins that look like caterpillars. But in early April the horse chestnuts follow, their brown sticky buds expanding into monsterous ovals that look like some wierd fruit, and then overnight producing limp bright green leaves. This can happen as early as the first week, though was a week to ten days later in 2006 and 2008. (If you wonder why you then almost immediately find green leaves on the ground, it is because squirrels eat the flower buds and discard the leaves). At the very end of April, by which time the horse chestnut leaves are fully out, some might start to put up their spikes of candle-like flowers (These were at their best and starting to fade at the end of April 2007). Following on from the alder and hazel catkins of March (now long gone), pussy willow is still at its height early in the month (though in 2007 had all but finished by the end of March), and other trees are preparing to produce their catkins or flowers.

As early as the first week in April (though as late as the end of the second in 2006, and in mid March in 2007 and 2008, though emerging more slowly in the latter year), hawthorn leaves slowly emerge, and these have a huge impact on the appearance of the countryside, turning large swathes of scrub and understory green, and giving woodland an ethereal green fuzz.The next stage, about mid month, is for other understory trees such as hazel to start to leaf, and for bramble (blackberry bushes) and wild roses to start to put out new growth (again, new bramble growth started in late March in 2007 and 2008, and in the latter year hazel leafed then too). Though generally unnoticed, the latter also contributes a lot to the general greening of the countryside.

At this time, about mid month (though at the start of the month in 2007 and 2008), the Norway maple achieves a brief prominence by putting out a great shower of bright yellow-green flowers, which look like leaf buds from a distance. For a week or so, these are the brightest, most noticeable tree in the park. At this time, hornbeam suddenly becomes a mass of catkins (in the first week in 2007), with most falling and turning to leaves about 10 days later. (In 2008, hornbeams leaved widely, though tentatively, from the start of the month or even in late March, with female fruit buds, but the male catkins did not appear at all in any numbers for the rest of the month. Do trees produce male and female flowers in alternate years? Young hornbeam leaves look very like young hazel leaves and are hard to tell apart: Hazel leaves don't get rounder until they develop a bit.)

The short brown catkins that have hung on the birch trees all winter open out into yellow lambs tails (again this happened at the start of April 2007 and 2008, with leaves following 10 days or so later in 2007 and a few days later in 008). Sycamore comes next (at the start of the month in 2008, though only tentatively), and ash flowers open into something that looks like fuzzy lettuce, before falling messily to the ground (there seemed to be none at all in April 2007, however: in 2008 they came out mid month and faded towards the end, though again I think some would have come out earlier but for the snow).

By the third week, mid-sized trees like limes, rowan and poplars are putting out leaves (Limes did produce leaves in the second week in 2008 but remained tentative till the fourth week). Huge curly yellow catkins like caterpillars appear on white willows, along with their leaves (week two in 2008), and lurid bright green beech leaves appear like teardrops, hanging down from their twigs in groups of two or three (in the third week in 2008, gathering strength in the fourth.

By the end of the month, the larger trees come into leaf - the tall poplars, and finally ash and oak. An old country saying says "Oak before ash: we are in for a splash. Ash before oak: we are in for a soak." If this means oak before ash means less rain, 2007 seemed to prove it, as oak and most other trees were fully leafing by the end of the second week, while ash did not start to leaf till early May. In 2008, oak was leafing by the end of week three (and simultaneously putting out tiny tassles of green flowers), but ash had only tentative years by the end of the month, making it the last bare tree in the landscape. Other late trees included alders, which had started to leaf early in the month and then stopped, and London planes, which were still only tentative by the month end. (Do they release their seed balls in April?)

April is also still a good month for lambs, whose cheerful folicking on a warm sunny day produce the most idyllic feelings.

In the bird world, the songs you hear all around get more diverse, with summer visitors arriving. An easy one to identify is the chiffchaff, whose rather ponderous song is heard everywhere right from the start of April. Other summer visitors arriving in May include willow warblers swallows, house martins, yellow wagtails, and of course the cuckoo.

Meanwhile our resident birds continue to sing. Particularly delightful is to hear blackbirds and song thrushes in the later afternoon (the latter can be distinguished by its habit of repeating each phrase several times: blackbird song is more fluid and not repetitive), and chaffinches also seem very noisy in April. You also hear all sorts of squeaks, but less of the characteristic see-saw song of great tits, as well as the cheeping of blue tits, greenfinches, dunnocks and others, and the inventive warbling of robins. I have also head nuthatches and blackcaps, and seen yellowhammers during the month

Once nights warm up - mid month in 2008 - a number of varieties of butterfly can also be seen (peacock, red admiral, brimstone, orange tip, cabbage white and others) and other minor fauna also appears – for example snails, making an unwelcome return to many gardens just in time to eat the petals off prized blooms. Other bees and swarms of tiny insects are in evidence, though only at the end of the month does the air on a sunny day start to seem alive with them (true in week three 2007). Flies are still rare and not a nuisance.

There is not yet much flora to be seen on the downs in April, and it is not yet a good time for meadows - that honour belongs to May, when the buttercups come out, though these can start in places at the very end of April. But even without these, the grass in April is already springing up thick and green, its fronds pointing ramrod straight up towards the sky.

And in general, everything seems to be growing straight and strong in April: even through the goose grass and nettles can reach up to a foot high by mid month, neither they, nor the yet-to-flower cow parsley have yet taken over to impose raggedy confusion (though in 2007 and 2008, the cow parsley was in flower in the last week). Instead, all is fresh and green, and full of the sheer joy of new life.

© Peter Conway 2006 - updated 2007, 2008 ● All Rights Reserved ● From his South East of England Almanac

Posted by Peter C


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