Warm Winter Weather Causing Plants To Bloom Out Of Season

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – The unseasonably warm weather we've all been enjoying is causing something strange to happen in yards across the area.

It's not their season for blooming, but plants and flowers not typically seen in December are sprouting and blossoming in the winter.

"Look at how good this Swiss chard and endive is doing, it's going to town, it's loving the weather..." said gardener Doug Oster, standing in his home garden in Pittsburgh. Oster didn't have to go far to get lettuce for his Christmas Day salad. There's lots of lettuce in his garden, thanks to the unseasonably warm winter.

"In the vegetable garden, we're seeing things like garlic come up which usually don't come up," said Oster. "On the perennial side, we're seeing things like daffodils and crocuses coming up."

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It's not just in the vegetable garden. Flowers are budding and blooming all across western Pennsylvania. KDKA received several pictures of flowers blooming from viewers. Oster says this is a little out of the ordinary, but it's nothing new for plants.

"Plants have been dealing with shifts in the weather for hundreds of years," he said, "and so the bad news is anything that's blooming right now, that part of the plant will not bloom again in the spring."

While there's nothing that can be done to change the weather or prevent the flowers from blooming early, Oster said there should still be lots of flower blooming in the spring, as long as the warm winter weather pattern doesn't continue much longer.

"Everything is not going to bloom, just some parts of the plant usually are going to bloom," he commented, "and then once we do get cold, they'll shut down again and we'll wait and in the spring, we'll get our blooms again."