I watched with alarm as several of my ferns put on a burst of new foliage during the month of November. It's usually pretty cold here by Nov. but this Nov. was warm and balmy. We even had
temperatures in the low 80s.
The
reddish/brown fronds on the following fern are the new ones.
A number of plants thought we skipped winter and went straight to spring. One
hydrangea put out several new flowers even as the foliage was dying back.
My
camellia 'Yule Tide' is blooming a
month early.
The Valley Oaks, indigenous to this area and temperature
sensitive rather than light sensitive, have not even begun to drop
their leaves.
We usually get one or two hard frost (25* or less) each winter that go on for 3-7 nights. I'll cover the new foliage on the ferns, but I don't think that will save them. Hopefully they will come back next spring.
5 comments:
Poor confused plants! We've had an unusually mild fall up here in Seattle too, I still have cosmos, roses and bachelor's buttons keeping their blooming cycles going. Weird year! Hope your ferns survive.
Abigail, do the Valley Oaks drop their leaves in fall or spring? Oh, I guess you meant they usually drop in fall. (I was thinking of Live Oaks, which drop their leaves in spring.) Good luck with the confused plants!
Hahaha! That means no one has to clean the gutters until the leaves drop. A silver lining unlooked for.
Thanks for your comments...The Valley Oaks do drop their leaves in the fall but only when it gets cold enough unlike many other deciduous trees that drop their leaves when the days get shorter. They also put on new leaves when it warms up, sometimes as early as Feb. which happened this past Feb. when we got temperatures in the 80s.
Yeah, I was just telling a friend last night, that it does not feel like winter yet. Or even fall. Nice weather. It just gets dark early.
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