"Most of the woodland wildflowers are as late as they have ever been, and some are later than they have been in the last decade..."

"Bloodroot, red maple, toothwort, we haven’t recorded any blooms yet for any of them yet this year."

Last week’s bloom count lacked forsythia, long past its historical average of April 10 in [Aldo] Leopold’s study and March 9 in the [University of Wisconsin] Arboretum’s recent work and a latest date of April 20 for Leopold and April 15 at the Arboretum. The pale purple of hepatica held out past its April 17 record. Dutchman’s breeches, bloodroot, toothwort, white violets and Pennsylvania sedge were all reaching the record late dates for production of pollen of flowers....

“The same thing is happening up at the Leopold shack” near Baraboo, said Stan Temple, who has kept up his research on phenology as an emeritus professor of conservation. “It has been one of the latest dates for most of the things that we keep track of.”

March and April ran close to five degrees colder than average, but, as Temple notes, a late spring is no strange thing in Wisconsin....

“It seems even later because our recent comparisons have been so, so early,” Carpenter said. It was just last year we set so many of the earliest dates we’ve seen.”

Very late spring. Somewhere, Al Gore is fuming.