Number One - A Dandelion

Well, the premise of The Big Year is to find, identify and photograph as many West Virginia Native Wildflowers as I can  in one year. This includes common, rare and those that have been here for ever and are good as native. I thought the first would be a Dandelion, in January and it is. They were introduced many years ago, some say as a food source for the imported honeybee; which is a nice tie-in to another part of this day. Some say the deeply toothed leaves earned its Old French name of dent-de-lion, tooth of a lion. Find many facts about this interesting, edible, hardy and obnoxious flower here. Reporting a dandelion as the first flower in a wildflower big year would be equivalent to a birder reporting a European Starling as his first bird of the year.

Common Dandelion (I'll be avoiding Latin Names) 

By the way; whats going on this winter? First there was two feet of snow in October, then several ice/snow storms in December and early January like normal. But today, it was sunny and 68 degrees. It's been milder and rainy for a few days so its no wonder the dandelions are trying to bloom and I found Daffodil heads several inches above ground and my honeybees were flying everywhere.

  I suppose this winter is like many past and future winters; mostly normal with a few odd weather days. (A nice day in January when you can get in a nice hike with the grandbabies will eliminate the shack nasties for a few days) But I worry about it throwing off the normal bloom time of wildflowers. Last year was extremely mild and most wildflowers in WV, and around the east coast, bloomed a couple of weeks early, causing me to miss a few. But I am looking forward to spring whenever it gets here; Blood Root, Trout Lilly, Trillium  even those almost microscopic flowers that I can see in the yard, but have never taken the time to properly identify