The grassy slope above Boothbay Harbor’s Oak Street has blue patches.

For me, this has been an annual mystery. This year, I asked friends, strangers, neighbors and business people what flowers created that fleeting spring carpet.

“I don’t know,” most of them replied. The tiny flowers don’t last long, and then — pffft — they’re gone, to be forgotten until next year’s early spring.

Then: “I asked my mother,” Marnie told me. “They have a Russian name.”

Could they be Puschkinia? These are tiny, starry light-blue flowers, named for Russian plant collector Count Apollo Mussin-Puschkin, an 18th-19th century chemist who found a way to process platinum. A cousin of two other early flowers, it hates winter dampness.

Chionodoxa, or Glory-of-the-snow is another early flower. (KY-on-o-doxa.) Snow Glory is a deeper blue with a white center. It’s slightly larger than most of what we see; some may have been planted on that bank. It’s another cousin of Puschkinia and ... Scilla sibirica or siberica (take your choice). The explorer who discovered Siberian squills had chanced to find some in eastern Russia but really, they originated in the middle East.

On that grassy slope, each Scilla springs from a bulb. Slender leaves encircle three flower stems, each topped by six pale blue petals and six stamens. The plants multiply without being pests and in time,will spread that light blue mass into a carpet.

The display will vanish, usually before a lawnmower gets to it, to appear next early spring. Plant some underneath any leaf-losing tree and flowering will be finished before the trees’ new leaves shade the ground. 

Anyone planting squills next mid-autumn may want to wear gloves: some people are allergic to the bulbs. When plants set seeds, do not snack on them as they’re poisonous.

Squills may also lead long lives. I remember a Canadian front lawn, blue as an April sky, which had been started by a Canadian government botanist decades before the ‘80s when I first saw it.

Other scilla relatives may be larger or blossom at different seasons or in various climates. Right now, enjoy the fleeting beauties as heralds of our northern spring.