Kangaroo paws normally flower in late September in Cranbourne, south-east of Melbourne. This year, they bloomed in July.
The Western Australian plant has since been joined by a host of spring-blooming flowers, attracting animals who would typically wait for warmer months.
“I’ve noticed birds and insects [appearing] because of all of the flowers,” says Mandy Thomson, the acting horticulture manager at Cranbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens.
“New Holland honeyeaters and wattle birds and little fairy wrens everywhere, it’s really lovely.”
Even the kangaroos are running early, with joeys emerging from their mothers’ pouches much sooner than normal, she says.
An early spring is in full swing across the country, as global heating-fuelled blasts of warmth – accompanied by the odd thunderstorm – deliver one of Australia’s hottest Augusts on record.
Wattle buds are popping up as the snow melts away in alpine Jindabyne, New South Wales, while the gentle aroma of jasmine is wafting through storm-stricken suburban Melbourne.
In the Australian Botanic Garden at Mount Annan in Sydney’s west, paper daisies arrived a couple of weeks ahead of schedule for the second year in a row.
“Our daisy display has started to pop, and it normally pops [in] at least the first week of spring,” says Chris Cole, the garden’s horticulture supervisor.
While the gardens in Cranbourne and Mount Annan once faced weeks of frost, keeping early blooms at bay in years gone by, warming winters mean fewer cold snaps.
“It means that they can just flower really early and successfully,” Thomson says.
At the same time, mild weather in the country’s south has kept the winter plants like wattles, grevilleas and banksias flowering as the seasons change.
“There’s a layer of kangaroo paws and little flowering daisies, and then all the wattles flowering above that, so you’ve got that mixture of summer, spring and winter flowering all occurring at the same time,” Thomson says.
While varying weather can create overexcitement about early spring from year to year, rising temperatures and earlier blooms are becoming increasingly consistent.
Every year, Sydneysiders call Prof Brett Summerell, chief scientist at the city’s Botanic Gardens, to ask whether spring has come early or whether they’re just imagining it.
“Most years, it’s been just imagining, but certainly last year and this year, it’s been more than just imagining,” he says.
Shorter winters and longer summers will keep dragging spring forward as global heating accelerates. Australia’s average temperatures are already 1.5C higher than in 1910, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
“We’re seeing the temperature we normally expect on the first day of September just creeping earlier and earlier,” says the University of Melbourne climate scientist Linden Ashcroft.
“Spring feels a bit early, so we feel a bit joyful, but then sad about it at the same time. There’s nothing really that climate change isn’t touching these days.”
