The first flowers of the year carry a specialness that no other bloom or season can touch. I’ll spend weeks looking for the first snowdrop and then, when I finally find one, I’ll get down on my hands and knees in the mud to see it more closely.
I patrol crocuses for queen bumblebees, which might sleep in one at night before they find a spot to build a nest. I grow daffodils for the vase, which I fill every few days to bring hope into the house.
I cheer on primroses and cowslips, and then dutifully take seed and divide clumps after they’ve flowered, so I might have more primroses and cowslips next year and the year after that, because there’s no such thing as too much of these beauties.
For humans, spring flowers bring light at the end of darkness. I think it’s no coincidence that most of them are bright white (hellebores, tree blossom and snowdrops) or yellow (primroses, daffodils, marsh marigold, aconites).
Across the world and across time, as the days shortened in autumn, people substituted sunlight for fire, while monuments such as Stonehenge serve as a reminder of how important it is for us to celebrate the return of the sun.
But nature does that, too. Those little bursts of light that appear in the mud are a sign that brighter days are ahead. And what a sign they are.
Some of them emerge from frozen ground and continue to bloom through snow and ice. After the winter solstice, the days gradually lengthen. This month sees the spring equinox – when night and day are finally of equal length – and we can again breathe a sigh of relief.
Other spring markers come with it: the first frogspawn, the first hairy footed flower bee, the first jubilant song of the blackbird. These days our seasonal boundaries are blurring, thanks to climate change.
Summer often meets spring the wrong way round as some plants continue flowering in mild weather, while others appear early – in Brighton it’s now common to have flowers all year round, and to see pollinators visit them, too.
I might see my first frogspawn in January rather than March, while even hedgehogs may remain active throughout winter. Each one is a little gut punch that takes a bit of the wonder of spring away from me, but it doesn’t last – it can’t, because spring is the season I live for.
These beacons of light in the mud do so much more than promise us brighter days ahead. For pollinators, spring flowers are a lifeline.
Queen bumblebees spend up to six months hibernating, and when they emerge in spring they must find nectar quickly or they will die. Then, once they’ve started nesting, they must keep the nest at a steady temperature of 30ºC, which they do by shivering their body and brooding their eggs like a bird.
This means spring flowers need to be close by so they can quickly pop out to refuel and fly back again before temperatures dip.
Two years ago, a cold wet spring saw bumblebee numbers plummet, and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust suggested the low ambient temperatures meant it was almost impossible for queens to keep their nests warm.
The constant rain may have flooded underground nests and made it difficult to fly, while delicate flowers such as crocuses quickly perished – fewer flowers mean queens will have been out of the nest for too long in search of nectar.
Everything is connected. More spring flowers might give us hope in the darkness but they can also give us life, in this case literally, helping the bees that pollinate our food crops.
Top image: a bumble bee on a crocus. Credit: revetina01/Getty Images
