The first wild plant in the Northeast welcoming winter’s demise is marsh marigold, also called cowslip. Part of the buttercup family, this plant isn’t related to garden variety marigolds. Marsh marigolds are commonly found in very damp soils – even upland marshes – hence their name. They grow up to two feet tall with hollow branching stems and yellow blossoms.

The earliest I’ve ever seen them mature enough to be harvested and eaten was March 15. Add four weeks to that to get 2025’s edible date.

Marsh marigolds require constant moisture. Most suitable habitats are swamps, streams, wet meadows, ponds and shallow water on the edges of lakes. This plant is perennial, with two-inch diameter flowers, bright yellow to whitish. Each blossom has five to 10 petal-like sepals. Cowslips contain the toxin glycoside protanimomin; plants must be boiled to destroy poison. Boiled and spritzed with vinegar, cowslips taste like spinach that has been boiled and spritzed with vinegar.

Buttercup is the next early bloomer. This soggy soil inhabitant’s sap is also laced with glycoside. To a lesser extent, so are the plant’s flowers, seeds and leaves. Its greatest toxicity is found in its flowers. Drying the plant negates poison; then cattle can safely eat it. Baled dry buttercup hay can be safely eaten by ruminants, but net feed value is questionable.

Making buttercups into baleage or haylage is not a great idea: we don’t know how well fermentation knocks out glycoside. I learned the hard way that hitting buttercup with weed-whackers is unwise, since atomized glycoside tends to paralyze lungs (mine, anyway). Stepping away from the noxious mist eliminated any further health issues, as did putting away the weed-whacker.

The third greeter of spring is yellow rocket. The most common early source of yellow pigment in existing meadows comes from rocket, this year appearing about four weeks later than normal. Rocket can be winter-annual or biennial and reproduces from seed, which germinates in both spring and autumn. Young leaves are round or egg-shaped, poised on short stalks. Flowering stems occurring second year can, when mature, exceed two feet height.

Yellow rocket, a member of the mustard family, is earliest to flower in that botanical class – usually very soon after snow melt. Lower leaves become lobed, while the stem leaves develop deeper indentations and thick green foliage. During spring, yellow flowers are produced at the upper stem and are grouped in clusters. Pod-like fruit is long and sharp at the tip. If not mowed, fruiting stalks remain all summer.

Yellow rocket forms taproots, which can be removed by hand when small – not an option in meadows. Agronomy Extension agents generally agree that there are no effective anti-rocket pre-emergence herbicides.

Sue Reidhead photographed this yellow rocket specimen that volunteered on the gravelly Hartwick beltway near our home.

Five years ago, temperatures in Central New York seemed suspended between 45º and 55º for the last 10 days of April. A dairy farmer who had moved up from Pennsylvania a couple years earlier called me in a panic just before daybreak one late April morning. His meadows were infested with yellow flowers, the likes of which he had never seen before. I told him I was 99% certain that they were yellow rocket and that mowing them would totally stifle the stand for that year.

One weed scientist, who recommends sustainable cropping practices, described the conditions which made yellow rocket feel very much at home. The plant is a smooth-stemmed native of North America, found in new meadows (generally second year growth), along roadsides and in fields. Importantly, soils where this weed occurs are low in calcium and very low in phosphorus. This Quaker State immigrant was organic, so to rectify this phosphorus deficiency (documented by soil test), I suggested that he apply bone meal, since monoammonium and diammonium phosphates are prohibited by organic standards.

The fourth yellow-blossoming wild plants symbolizing spring’s advent are dandelions. When grassy to mixed mostly-grass meadows turn from yellow to white fuzz, it’s time to mow these fields. Occasionally remove the grayish-white fuzzy mat from the haybine, then throw it into the swath to be chopped (or round baled), since its feed value is abundant.

The fifth yellow early bloomer announcing spring is wild mustard. This weed takes over new seedings as well as spring-planted small grains, but not till the last week of May (or the first week of June this year, due to spring’s tardy onset). Both yellow rocket and wild mustard belong to the Brassicaceae family, essentially making them second cousins. Obviously, rockets tolerate cooler soil than mustards.

Wild mustard can be smooth stemmed, so it can be confused somewhat with yellow rocket. But wild mustard petal pigment leans toward pastel yellow. Tasting the leaves of each smooth specimen reveals that rocket is somewhat bitter – though not toxic – and wild mustard is a little radishy. Rocket matures before mustard, but if you do save some rocket seeds, you’ll find they’re smaller than mustard seeds, which appear later.