Blooming! Spring Blossoms by Carole Gerber

Sometimes it seems as if spring is a long time coming--and then suddenly it's here, taking the landscape by storm, in a tsunami of blooming trees in a spectrum of shapes and colors.

SPRING IS BURSTING OUT ALL OVER. THE SUN IS WARM! LET'S GO!

TREES, SO BARE AND PLAIN ALL WINTER, ARE DRESSED UP FOR THEIR YEARLY SHOW.

Some buds are tiny and pale and some are boisterous in color and size.

Dogwood spread their low branches wide to show off their white crowned blooms, and crabapple trees are covered with small flowers, white and fragrant, both dressed for Eastertide. Other flowers show their colors! Cherry trees bare bouffant pink ruffles on stubby stems that bounce and flounce in the breeze.

THE OAK BEARS TWO KINDS OF BLOOMS.

MALE FLOWERS DROOP. THEY'RE GREENISH GOLD.

THE FEMALE BLOOMS ARE SMALL AND RED.

BOTH OPEN AS NEW LEAVES UNFOLD.

The red maple, true to its name, bears its spring red clothes, but the redbud blooms are rose pink. And conifers like pine and balsam firs hide their quietly colored flowers so well that most of us don't see them, just their potent pollens borne on the breeze. And a windy, warm spring rain can bring the trees' bright petals down in a colorful shower of flowers!

People wax poetic over flowering trees, but for the trees, it's just their job to flower and pollinate and provide their fruits and nuts to secure that more trees will grow and bloom for many springs to come, in Carole Gerber's poetic Spring Blossoms (Charlesbridge), offering sybillant verses and a bit of botany, while artist Leslie Evans follows two girls out under the flowering trees to celebrate the spring beauty, illustrating the botany session as they go. Appended are charming illustrations of each bloom for easy identification in a lovely spring lesson.