Annual Plant - Winter

Winter

Winter annuals germinate in autumn or winter, live through the winter, then bloom in winter or spring.

The plants grow and bloom during the cool season when most other plants are dormant or other annuals are in seed form waiting for warmer weather to germinate. Winter annuals die after flowering and setting seed. The seeds germinate in the fall or winter when the soil temperature is cool.

Winter annuals typically grow low to the ground, where they are usually sheltered from the coldest nights by snow cover, and make use of warm periods in winter for growth when the snow melts. Some common winter annuals include henbit, deadnettle, chickweed, and winter cress.

Winter annuals are important ecologically, as they provide vegetative cover that prevents soil erosion during winter and early spring when no other cover exists and they provide fresh vegetation for animals and birds that feed on them. Although they are often considered to be weeds in gardens, this viewpoint is not always necessary, as most of them die when the soil temperature warms up again in early to late spring when other plants are still dormant and have not yet leafed out.

Even though they do not compete directly with cultivated plants, sometimes winter annuals are considered a pest in commercial agriculture, because they can be hosts for insect pests or fungal diseases (ovary smut – Microbotryum sp) which attack crops being cultivated. Ironically, the property that they prevent the soil from drying out can also be problematic for commercial agriculture.

Read more about this topic:  Annual Plant

Famous quotes containing the word winter:

    The first general store opened on the ‘Cold Saturday’ of the winter of 1833 ... Mrs. Mary Miller, daughter of the store’s promoter, recorded in a letter: ‘Chickens and birds fell dead from their roosts, cows ran bellowing through the streets’; but she failed to state what effect the freeze had on the gala occasion of the store opening.
    —Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    All men hesitate
    Separately, always, seeing another year gone
    Frockcoated gentleman, farmer at his gate,
    Villein with mattock, soldiers on their shields,
    All silent, watching the winter coming on.
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    The winter does what it can for its children.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)