Posts from the Plants on the Plaza: April 12–23

Spring Break is in full swing at the corner of Avenue Road and Bloor Street. By the first day of April, plants were beginning to poke through the ground in the ROM’s gardens on the Helga and Mike Schmidt Performance Terrace and the Reed Family Plaza. Now, a few weeks later, there is a suite of plants in full bloom and the parade of insect visitors has already begun.

This is the first in a series of posts that will continue throughout the spring, summer, and fall, tracking the progression of flowers and fruits in the ROM’s plaza gardens and recording the insects and other wildlife that they attract. The gardens were planted with spring bulbs and native plants to promote biodiversity in the heart of the city and are now in their second full season.

The Turkestan tulip, Tulipa turkistanica, is a species of tulip native to central Asia and is planted around the world as a spring bulb. It differs from familiar garden tulips by producing a branched cluster of flowers with pointed petals. These flowers are open for business with plump stamens laden with pollen.

First customer: a European Honey Bee Apis mellifera. The hind legs of honeybees have been adapted as pollen baskets to collect pollen from the plants they visit. This one’s basket is already full.

Wild Ginger, Asarum canadensis, is a species native to Ontario. In the wild, it grows in woodlands and blooms early in the spring. From the top it looks like a carpet of fuzzy, light-green, kidney shaped leaves. In fact, each plant has two leaves, and a single blood-red, tubular flower that sits right on the ground. Its anthers are bursting with pollen too but it likely won’t be visited by honeybees. Flies and beetles eat its pollen, attracted by the colour that mimics dead meat. The flowers are most conspicuous before the leaves expand and cover them over.

The leaves of barren strawberry, Geum fragarioides, on the left and bearberry, Arctostaphylos uva ursi, on the right are greening up and both species are producing flower buds. Come back next week to see what the flowers look like!

It is Earth Day—and, it’s snowing! Luckily, most plants that bloom early in the spring are adapted to rapid changes in weather. Today the barren strawberry is in bloom but the bearberry buds are still closed-up tight.

Deborah Metsger is Assistant Curator of Botany at ROM. Kevin Seymour is Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at ROM.