By Peter Conway

March is the start of spring, but it is not quite yet the flower-filled high spring of April and May. Instead, this is a sort of pre-spring, a time of awakening nature but with mixed weather and temperatures.

In fact, March can have the biggest contrasts between weather of any month of the year. If the sun shines, it can seem almost summery, and you find yourself casting off the winter woollies and walking in shirtsleeves once again. But then a savage cold snap or driving rain can make it feel like January again.

One consolation in March rain is that it is necessary to produce a vibrant display of flowers and tall green grass in April and May. If March is dry, as it was in 2003, the flowers wither and the countryside never quite recovers.

WEATHER

“March comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion” is the old saying, and the traditional pattern is that the month starts with stable weather, perhaps with a touch of welcome warmth, and then degenerates mid month into equinoctal storms of lashing rain (usually in time to spoil 21 March, the first official day of spring).

In recent years, this pattern seems to be no longer valid, however, and the best generalisation about March that can be made is that it alternates relatively warm sunny days with much colder greyer ones when spring seems far away. The reason is that the sun in March is powerful when it shines, but the sea around the UK is at its coldest, bringing chilly air in when there is cloud cover.

It is not unusual to get this contrast in the same day. As Charles Dickens says in chapter 15 of Great Expectations:

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold; when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade”

In recent years, particularly, March has featured some decidedly wintry weather, caused by high pressure to the west bring winds straight down the north coast from the arctic. An excellent example of this was the Easter weekend in 2008, which fell on the unusually early date of 21-24 March (the earliest Easter since 1913). In a stark contrast to the previous year’s Easter - which was in early April and had seen temperatures of up to 24 degrees - Easter 2008 saw northerly winds, snow flurries (some even settling in the Weald), hailstorms and temperatures as low as any in the winter.

2007 also saw a similar cold period from 18-25 March, which produced snow on the 22nd, though this was less noticed as it did not coincide with Easter. Meanwhile in 2005 and 2006, the month started with northerly and easterly winds, and they continued until 13 March in 2005 and until 23 March in 2006. Ten inches of snow fell on parts of Kent on 2 March 2005, and on 4 March snow settled in North London. In 2006, there was no snow in the south east, though plenty further north, and the month started with cold sunny days. The cold winds up to 23 March that year were so fierce that spring was completely put on hold, with none of the usual blossoms and flowers coming out.

March can be much more benign than this, however. From 2000 to 2003, warm sunny days seemed better interspersed through the month. March 2003 was exceptional in that it was almost all sunny and dry, which meant the countryside was looking very parched and unhappy by the end of the month.

When the sun does shine, you shed hat, coat and pullover in quick succession. The sky is a deep blue of the kind one never sees in summer, the birds all seem to be singing and you feel that winter is finally gone and six months of warmer weather stretch before you. Suddenly it is warm enough to sit outside a pub to eat, or to have a picnic on a hillside. You lie down on the grass for the first time since October.

The transition from cold to warm is often very rapid. In 2005, for example, once the cold north winds abated, temperatures went from a few degrees to 20 degrees within a week (though it turned cold again for the last few days of the month) by the end. Showing how changeable March can be, wintry weather returned for the last few days of the month, however, as it also did in 2004. In 2006, the break in the cold came with a switch to milder westerly winds, which brought plenty of rain, much needed after a dry winter. In 2008, the temperature had reached the mid teens within a week of the arctic Easter.

2007 saw March starting very mild, with high pressure to the south of the UK bringing warm winds up from the Azores. Temperatures got as high as 17 degrees, before abruptly dropping to 6 degrees on 18 March under the north winds described above. There was then a gradual recovery back to warmer temperatures (though often tempered with cooling north east breezes if one was exposed to them), until the month ended on a very warm note, with temperatures up to a summery 18 degrees. Though rather dry, there was just enough rain in the month to keep things green. Other warm ends to March came in 1999, 2000 and 2002.

The other kind of weather traditionally associated with March is stormy weather off the Atlantic. 2008 saw lows of this kind from 6 to 15 March, with particularly strong winds around 10-11 March. It was a particularly dismal month, in fact, with only five or six really good sunny days, most of them at the start of the month.

Even at the start of the month it is light till after 6pm, meaning day length has more or less ceased to be an issue. The clocks going forward on the last weekend of the month still rather take one by surprise, however: can it really now be light until almost 8pm? But yes, it can, and this is the start of five and a half wonderful months when this will be true.

It is starts to be dry enough to sit on the ground, due to the increased temperature of the sun, which makes evapouration faster. In January, even if the weather is dry the ground stays wet. By the end of March, if the weather is dry for a few days one can sit on the grass in the park, though heavy rain still has the power to turn paths muddy and the turf soggy. (In 2008, the exact opposite happened, however: the ground started the month dry after a very sunny February, but after stormy weather and then a cold snap, ended the month with mud of a midwinter intensity.)

You start to want to turn the heating off for the summer in March, but keep being forced to put it back on by cold weather. The same goes for attempts to retire gloves, hats and scarves, but gradually during the month they fall out of use (though less so in 2008). They still do not quite go back in the cupboard, however, but stay out, just in case.

Hayfever sufferers get reminded of their ailment, if they were not already reminded of it in February. Tree pollen – and in particular birch pollen which can start at the end of the month – is the cause of the suffering.

If Easter falls in March, it often starts sunny, but nearly always degenerates into cold and grey weather.

NATURE NOTES

Yellow is the colour in March. It is, of course, daffodil month: the few that came out in February are gradually joined by all the others in the first two weeks. It is not until the third week – around 20 March – however, that they reach their glorious height (right photo): often just in time to be blown over by classic March gales.

Star-shaped yellow celandines (left photo) also appear on river banks, along the verges of roads, and in carpets on woodland floors. Once again, one gets a few in the first week of the month, and then they gradually gather force, peaking in early April (or getting smothered by other vegetation). You have to be out in the middle of the day to see celandines at their best, however: they open late in the morning and shut early for the evening, and otherwise are tightly closed yellow buds.

Another yellow favourite is primrose, which crops up on wayside verges right from the start of the month, and can cover some road or path verges by its end.

As the month goes on the spiky leaves of the bluebell plants are also more and more in evidence on the floors of the woods where they grow – somewhat tantalisingly as the flowers are still some weeks away (one wishes one was doing the same walk in April). The same goes for ransoms (wild garlic) whose waxy leaves appear as early as late February, and which are fully grown (and smelling very garlicky) by the month’s end. As the month progresses another but duller carpetter of woodlands - dogs mercury - is fully grown, and at the end of the month little white wood anemones start to come out, star-shaped by day, and demure hanging bells by night (much earlier in 2008: some appeared as early as the start of the month and they were fully out in the third and fourth weeks).

Even in woods where these plants are not present, goosegrass, the triangular waxy green leaves of cuckoo pint, and also the fern like vegetation of cow parsley are covering verges and the edges of paths by now, giving them a vibrant green look. Less welcome, stinging nettles continue to grow, though are not yet more than a few inches high. Later in the month they may be joined by spurge or herb robert leaves. Grass on lawns and in parks is cut for the first time sometime in the second half of March, and pastureland in the countryside loses its tired winter look and starts to look fresh again. Garden hedges that have thinned or shed leaves altogether green up again.

Snowdrops and crocuses finally fade in the second half of the month (by the end of the first week in 2008), but one does not notice as there are plenty of other delights to distract one. Some daisies and dandelions appear in the grass, and in the countryside they are joined by violets, speedwell, chickweed, groundsell and other minor flowers. In their secret places, the fritillaries put out buds, or even come into bloom late in the month (again, many out by week two in 2008, though others were still out at the month’s end).

Red deadnettles continue in full bloom on broken ground, and are joined by white deadnettles, which can make pretty patches. Rosemary flowers in back gardens, purple periwinkles lurk in hedges, and gorse flowers are yet another splash of yellow in the landscape. You can also see clumps of three-cornered leeks, which look a bit like white bluebells, and lungwort, a spotty-leaved relative of comfrey. By the sea, alexanders – a sort of yellow-green cow parsley – spring up, and inconspicously in grassland you see the diminutive white chickweed.

With the flowers, bumble bees and other bees return (though they came as early as February in 2008), as do ladybirds and various tiny insects, but they are not yet particularly noticeable. Hibernating butterflies, such as the Peacock, Red Admiral or yellow Brimstone – can also also appear in late March, but are similarly hard to spot. Snails reappear and start to chew your plants (though not in 2008). You see lambs in the fields – perhaps the most cheerful sign of spring of all.

Early March also sees the pink cherry (actually cherry plum) blossom at its height, and other exotic blossoming trees come out in parks: the blooms fade by the second week as leaves replace them. The wild, white version of the cherry plum follows a similar pattern in the countryside – perhaps lasting a week or so longer.

Some other leaves also appear in woodland understorey plants. Elder puts out tentative leaves (though this started in late January in 2007 and 2008) which slowly gain in confidence as the month goes on, and budleia is also quietly putting out new greenery. In March 2007 and 2008, wild roses put out tentative leaves in the second half of the month, as did some brambles, but they remained tentative at the months’ end. Dogwood – identifiable by its red stems – was also starting to leaf.

As early as the second week of March (or right at the start of the month in 2008), weeping willow becomes the first major trees to come into leaf, its drooping fronds a bright yellowish-green in the landscape, with both catkins and leaves forming at the same time. March is also the month for pussy willow catkins (in fact, the catkins of the goat willow or sallow), which appear by mid month (a bit early in 2007 and 2008). However, white willows don’t put out leaves until the very end of the month at the earliest.

2007 and 2008 also both saw hawthorn starting to leaf mid month, though in the latter year the leaves came out only slowly and were still quite tentative at the month’s end. This event – which normally would be expected in early April – has a profound effect, giving many areas of woodland and scrub a green fuzz of new growth. In 2008, hazel also started to leaf in the last ten days of the month, as did some smaller hornbeams. Both hazel and alder had lost their catkins remarkably early in the latter year – by the end of February in fact. Normally, they would last until mid March or so.

In 2008, the end of the month also saw other early April tree activity beginning – birch started to put out catkins, some sycamores began to leaf, and so did larch - the only conifer to lose its leaves in winter. Apple trees came into leaf as well, and some wild cherries were just beginning to blossom. Even in a normal year, most other trees are sniffing their air with their buds in readiness for putting out leaves or flowers in April: note the knobbly black ends to ash twigs, which will become its lettuce-like flowers (though ash does not flower every year – few seemed to in 2007, for example).

In gardens, mimosa comes into glorious yellow flower, and the striking yellow forsythia does too: it started at the beginning of the month in 2008 and was fading by the end. Cherry laurel, often mistaken for rhodendendrum, puts up little spikes that will later become its flowers (though this happened in late January in 2007).

Birds continue to make their mating calls. You can still hear lots of robins during the month, but great tits, while active, do not seem to do their see-saw territorial song so much as they do in February. However, chaffinches start up, the cheerful chatter of greenfinches are much in evidence, and the playful rasps of blue tits are everywhere. The laughing call of the green woodpecker can be heard in the woods, and sometimes the tapping of the greater woodpecker, though this too seems less common than in February.

From the middle of the month, blackbirds start to sing from their favourite high perches towards the end of the day, and so does the more repetitive song thrush. You can also hear chattering wrens, and right at the end of the month, the chiffchaffs – one of the first summer visitors to arrive – with their somewhat ponderous plodding song. Incongruously, larks can be heard twittering above fields and downs – a summer sound that rather seems out of place.

The last week in March also sometimes sees a more general flowering – for example in 2002 and 2005 (despite its fiercely cold start) – when all the April flowers seem to come out in a rush. Firstly blue forget-me-nots and then grape hyacinth and then almost overnight tiny white blossom covers ever inch of the blackthorn bushes. Wood anemones are in full bloom now in the woods, and even early stitchwort or cuckoo flowers or the odd bluebell are seen. Marsh marigold spring into life, and wild strawberry flowers can be found. But in other years, such as 2004, all of this exuberance is delayed until some days into April.

Two years when the above sequence was disrupted were 2006 and 2007. In 2006, the cold meant almost no flowering took place till the last week of the month: daffodils remained tentative, celandines did not appear at all, and nor did daisies, dandelions or any other flowers. Primroses were few and far between, and mainly in gardens. The greening of the woodland verges with goosegrass and cow parsley did not happen.

The cherry blossom, which came out in mid February in 2005 and then was in suspended animation for the four cold weeks that followed, also did not bloom till the last week of March 2006. When the weather warmed up on 24 March, all of the above started to grow like mad, however.

In complete contrast, the very mild start to March 2007, which followed a very mild January and February, had everything coming out early. Many hawthorn bushes started to leaf mid month, as did some horse chestnuts. Blackthorn also blossomed in places. But all of these activities, normally associated with April, were brought to a sudden halt by the cold snap from the 18th onwards, and did not resume generally until the end of the month

Other plants continued to behave as if it was already April. Daisies carpetted the grass in parks, as did dandelions, and grape hyacinths and forget-me-nots came out mid month. Magnolia trees flowered in gardens from the same time. Cuckoo flowers were quite common in the last week of the month.

In 2008, a repeat of this seemed to be on the way, with wood anemones appearing early in the month, some grape hyacinth and forget-me-nots from right at the start of the month, hawthorn budburst starting from the first week, and some blackthorn blossoming in the second. Horse chestnuts put out leaf buds in the second week, garden bedding plants bloomed mid month, and there were some daisies and dandelions. A few cuckoo flowers and the odd stitchwort appeared in verges. But cold weather (and even snow) in the third week of the month put paid to this optimism, and all the above remained very tentative, with a pick-up in activity only in the very last few days of the month.

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