Coastal Botanical Report for Montauk

The great maritime oaks of Montauk are just about fully leafed out. The shad bushes, whose mid-May leaves signal the arrival of shad roe in some of the local small rivers and creeks, are peeking out tender greens. The throngs of tendril-sending shad bushes cover the flanks of the dunes from ocean to sound and twine together to ably provide cover for foxes, rabbits, deer, raccoon, big black rat snakes, salamanders, mice and a few native beach dogs.

With Mother’s Day came the early lilacs, both pale and perfumed French and the less fragrant but intensely colored Greeks. The peonies, harbingers of lazy heat, are plumping up their erotically pink petals inside feathery green flower pods as they soak up any sunshine that gets through the low, cold Canadian clouds and the soupy Atlantic fog. Small, hopeful violets and violas are peeping up their happy purple and yellow faces. The herb garden chives are green stalks with little red fruit globes on top. The emerald moss beneath the Three Sisters oak is virginally soft, a few still yellow forsythia blossoms lay on the grass, and clovers of all families are clustered in lucky clumps from the Montauk Manor to the foot of the Hither Hills. The biggest and proudest of all the spring dandelions are in buttery bloom. Holly bushes are in flowering ecstasy and many red berries are expected, early strawberries are in flower.

The red tulips planted with hope in December now stand about in small battalions. The pussy willows are tall as giraffes. The first seven leaves of the Stupendous Scotch Thistle (the prickliest life form on earth) have shown themselves in un-weeded lanes and native gardens. The Tiger lilies are two feet tall leaves and the irises need an extra week of sun to bloom. The Scotch broom’s pale yellow white blossoms are almost full.