One of our first trees to bloom is the red maple (Acer rubrum). Here you see male red maple tree flowers blooming yesterday before their tree’s leaves appear. The flowers are starting to release their pollen, which (if things go according to the script) will fertilize the waiting stigmas of nearby female red maple flowers.
At about the time that the maple trees leaf-out, those fertilized female flowers will have elongated into fruits in the form of “double samaras” (winged seed pods) that drop and spin through the air like little helicopters. The idea is for them to land at a respectable distance from their tree and germinate into maple tree seedlings.
Curiously, red maple samaras are reddish and fly in the spring, yet the samaras of sugar maples (Acer saccharum) are green and fly in the fall. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 26, 2023.)