This is always true here, and I assume elsewhere. Every year our golden-yellow crocuses are the first to bloom. The first wildflowers are sagebrush buttercups, then yellow fritallary and glacier lilies. Then the first purplish flowers, shooting stars.
Any explanation?
(edited to correct: “meadow buttercups” should have been “sagebrush buttercups”.)
This is an interesting question. I did a bit of high-level research and saw that the main idea online is that yellow is good at reflecting light and likely works well for early pollinators (which includes flies that do not have the best vision for different colors). This would also generally make sense given that light levels are weaker in late winter early spring so a highly reflective color would give good visibility.
Why are the First Flowers of Spring Often White or Yellow?Donna L. Long (donnallong.com)
The reason is simpler than it may sound. White and yellow flowers are first because bees etc. that pollinate them can spot them very easy. The flowers that were not yellow or white simply were not favored by nature to survive. Let me put it this way i could not see my dark cornish chickens the second they hit the brush. My white leghorns i saw a mile a way literally.
Thank you! I figured it had to be some kind of evolutional thing but it would not have occurred to me that it was to attract early pollinator. A very good tidbit to tease my grandkids with …
Bees can see wider spectrum of light wavelengths than humans, especially in the UV range. If there is an evolutionary benefit to the color early plants display, its likely they are colors we cant see.
Yes the white and yellow flowers won the early season. Is there a vitamin or mineral in some we have not identified yet is a real question. Bees are not well understood but one thing that is understood is that they are dying at alarming rates.
White snowdrops are always first here, although, this year, they are followed up by the purple species crocus…I was surprised; usually the yellow ones are first. Certainly, dandelions aren’t far behind!
Forsythia always the first flower to bloom here. It is nature ways, noticed or not.
NY. First is purple crocus. Next little white flowered weeds and white flowered
Japanese Andromeda. I saw a red flowering tree yesterday. Next but not yet yellow daffodil and yellow forsythia. Next purple PJM Rhododendron.
I forgot the purple periwinkle that blooms before the daffodils and forsythia.
Here we have buttercups and many small white flowers. But, mainly yellow. Oh yes and I saw a dandelion about a week ago!
Now there’s an interesting wrinkle: you have purple blooms ahead of yellow ones.
Possible explanations could be that, regarding crocuses, you just don’t have any yellow crocuses to beat the purple ones, and crocuses in general are very early. Height could also be a factor, because plants that are close to the ground have advantages of retained heat. As for daffodils, they are often introduced and may follow some other pattern. Forsythia here, as in your case, are typically early bloomers.
I don’t know what to suppose about periwinkle, except that it’s a very low-growing plant.
Just a couple general rules about flower color and pollinators. NONE of this is a hard and fast rule, there are always exceptions. As noted above insects see much better in the higher wavelength end of the visible spectrum (greens blues purples) and into the UV. Insects can’t see reds as well. If it’s a red tubular flower it’s probably pollinated by a hummingbird. Large white and yellow flowers often mean they are open at night and moth pollinated. Many white flowers have UV markings making them stand out more. This might mean the whites and yellows are most successful in early spring because they are highly visible, maybe to all pollinators to try and cast the wildest net when warm weather and sunlight can be hit or miss
Gotta’ throw the dark, scarlet red trilliums in as an outlier. We called them ‘stinking benjamin’, and they flowered along with the (mostly) white trout lillies even before sugar maples show green.
It could be the cultivars/varieties of plants you have. There is that meme of the daffodils that comes up every spring and people worrying about their daffodils every spring for the fact that often times come up months before it is time. The fall planted bulbs bloom with the snow and go away with the snow in my experience. Then we have these fruit trees blooming. Our asian plumbs are already showing green but our final frost is now until May for example. Then we get some of our yellow flowers like coreopsis come July in my garden. Those take over until August or September where pansy take over. Our yellow is the most noticeable and long lasting but I would also add that there seem to be a lot of yellow flowers. Flower color wise there are tons of yellow, white, pink, blue and purple. There is very few red perennial where I live. That is an interesting thing I just thought of where there are some colors that are super prevalent but some non existent.
We have mustard and groundsel that blooms early around here, but the same time as red dead nettle with burgundy flowers a lot of white flowered weeds and daisies as well as violets so we have the whole gamut here.
When I had one,the yellow flowers of Cornus mas were the first to bloom,of my fruiting plants.
This is just a hypothesis, but maybe early plants produce yellow and white flowers because those colors are the cheapest to produce. There’s not much competition at that time of year and energy reserves are limited at the beginning of the season, so it would pay to be efficient. In Hawaii the Akala raspberry mostly gave up its prickles over the millennia because it didn’t face the herbivore pressure of its mainland ancestors. Plants are cheapskates.
In fairness the environment in Hawaii is just waiting to be destroyed. It is such a fragile ecosystem compared to many other ecosystems. I loved it in Hawaii when I visited but it felt weird how much they had to protect their ecosystem.
