It’s both a wonderful and disconcerting feeling: You wake up in the middle of February to 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. It’s beautiful, but it shouldn’t be, and you know that another winter day is right around the corner.
Flowers, however, don’t have quite the same level of clairvoyance. They stretch up and out of dormant days and say hello to spring, though the threat of chilly days is imminent to new blooms.
“The weather plays tricks on them, I guess you’d say,” explained Andy Braswell, who works at the Leflore County Extension Office of Mississippi State University.
“The weather gets warm, but we’re not really getting warmer.”
Braswell said, however, that all flowers are not created equal. While some might suffer from freezes that follow warm days, others, such as daffodils, can handle even the most severe fluctuations in weather.
“Most of the time, on flowering trees, the flowers will start budding out and then we’ll have a freeze that could damage them,” he said.
Braswell noted that this is true for peach and apple trees, in particular.
“As far as daffodils and stuff like that, they usually bloom and can withstand more,” he said.
Though a winter resurgence may not be kind to new buds, Braswell said it often isn’t cold enough to kill the plants.
Braswell encouraged anyone looking for more information to call the extension office, which handles all things horticultural.
• Contact Jeanie Riess at 581-7235 or jriess@gwcommonwealth.com.
