Farmers can adjust to earlier planting times, perhaps avoiding some extreme temperatures during the sensitive flowering period, and lengthening the growing season.

CNN: Extreme heat and droughts -- a recipe for world food woes

Some speculate that the tabloids' flowering is really just a relic of the Clinton years: a more upright (and less charismatic) president will be the death of them.

ECONOMIST: The tabloid press

That history reveals patterns, some of which, the domination of terrestrial flora by the flowering plants, for example, are vast in space and time.

ECONOMIST: A master of evolution takes a last long look at Darwin

In warm weather, some leafy greens need to be replaced because they "bolt" flowering, going to seed and acquiring a bitter taste.

WSJ: Who Put Lettuce in My Daffodils?

The federal project joins efforts by groups such as Project Budburst, which has collected seasonal data from more than 15, 000 volunteers across the country, and an educational project called Journey North, funded by the Annenberg Foundation, which every year mobilizes students in some 6, 000 schools to report sightings of migrating birds, butterflies and flowering plants.

WSJ: A Science of Signs of Spring