The English Yew, Taxus bacata--Ordinary and Fabled

My earliest memory of yew is from a poem. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a historical novel, The White Company, as well as his Sherlock Holmes mysteries (The White Company).  As a teen I loved the book, and remember clearly a poem from it, celebrating a company of medieval archers, which goes in part, 

"What of the bow?

    The bow was made in England:

Of true wood, of yew-wood,

    The wood of English bows;

         So men who are free

         Love the old yew-tree

And the land where the yew-tree grows." (link),

of true wood, of yew-wood

English yews, Taxus bacata, as ornamentals

Plant Story--Weeping Willow, Salix babylonica

I was four years old when my parents rented an old house in Scotia, New York. That was the 1950s; my father shoveled coal into the furnace each morning for heat. The back yard was dominated by a weeping willow tree. I think that was the first tree I learned. The tree was huge. Or, I remember it as huge. I was pretty small during the three years we lived there. The fact that I couldn't reach more than a quarter of the way around the trunk should be modified by remembering how short my reach was, at the beginning of elementary school. But my memory that the tree was taller than the two-story house is surely accurate. A big tree with dangling branches, creating a lot of fallen twigs that my father disliked. But the sticks were great for my games!

weeping willow, Salix babylonica

Plant Story--The Stately Colorado Blue Spruce

Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens, pine family Pinaceae) is native to the central and southern Rocky Mountains, in Idaho and Wyoming south to New Mexico and Arizona, from high elevations (USDA Zone 2) down to Zone 7 (lowest winter temperature, freezing). It is endemic to the United States. and more specifically, the Rocky Mountains. A beautiful tree with bluish foliage, it has been widely planted as an ornamental around the world.

Colorado blue spruce, Picea pungens

Plant Story--Mountain Mahogany, Tough Little Tree

Mountain mahogany, Cercocarpus montanus (rose family, Rosaceae) is a native shrub or small tree of the foothills of the Rockies and across the western U.S. It is not related to the tropical mahoganies (genus Swietenia, chinaberry family, Meliaceae) except in the sense that the common name reflects the color and luster of the wood.

Plant Story--The Majestic Cottonwood

The summer sun beats down, no breath of wind stirs the hot, hot air. You sweat even in the shade of the cottonwood. And,

Cottonwood leaves are almost always in motion, no matter how still the air. 

The tribes of the northern plains revered the cottonwood--big, sturdy trees found in diverse locations, often indicating water. The rustling leaves reinforced the mystic nature of the tree because winds were the path of the Higher Powers and cottonwoods always have those inexplicable little winds moving their leaves. Check for yourself.

Visiting Ontario, Canada--Plants of Toronto

In 2017, Canada is celebrating its 150th anniversary. I took a tour of Toronto with Road Scholar link

Toronto is not only the city with the largest population in Canada (2.7 million people), but it is the 4th largest city in North America, after Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles. Greater Toronto has 7 million people. It sits along the north edge of Lake Ontario, so for Canada it is in the far south. Lake effects from the Great Lakes keep Toronto's climate mild, moist and unpredictable.

For me it is always a botanic tour, so here is a brief look at Toronto's plants.

Visiting Japan--Pruned Trees and Shrubs

Gardens vary across the world. Of course. So travel leads to looking at home differently too.

Flowering cherry in Toyko park

In mid-April, I visited northern Japan (tour with Pacific Horticulture link, previous blog).

We started in Tokyo, admiring the centuries-old gardens to be found among the skyscrapers.

Plant Story--the Striking Eastern Redbud

I look forward to eastern redbud flowers every spring.

Plant Story--Red Osier Dogwood, Winter Color

Bright stems in the snow! 

red osier dogwood in winter

Color when the plants are dormant, awaiting spring.

red osier dogwood in foreground

Plant Story--Franklinia, the extinct American camellia

On a tour of gardens in Philadelphia, the local guide stopped and said proudly " this is our franklinia." It was the third different franklinia tree pointed out to us. 

Being from Colorado, my reaction was "so?" No franklinias in Colorado.

Franklinia alatamaha franklinia or the Franklin tree

Visiting Seattle--Rambling in the Forest at Bloedel Reserve

View from the Ferry, Seattle

An escape into nature in Seattle.

I was on a tour with the Denver Art Museum's  Asian Art Association in Seattle. Art tours are great fun: they feature private collections you could not see otherwise and walks through museums led by enthusiastic curators. But this one also took me to Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island for a relaxed afternoon that nurtured my love of plants close to the hustle of a big city.

If, like me, you don’t live in city with ferries, taking a water route to a destination is a treat in itself.

We landed on Bainbridge Island and took the bus (very convenient).

Bloedel Residence, Bainbridge Island

Plant story-- Holly, holy and Hollywood, a Holly Postscript

In researching English (or European) holly Ilex aquifolium (holly family, Aquifoliaceae) I generated questions and here are the answers to two that puzzled me:
1) Is the word holly derived from holy?
and
2) Is Hollywood, California named for a grove of European holly trees?

Plant Story -- European Holly - Not Always with Spines and Red Berries

European holly, Ilex aquifolium

European holly, Ilex aquifolium is widely recognized by its spiny leaves and red berries (drupes) (see post on holly folklore). Curiously, not all the leaves on European holly are spiny and not all the plants have fruit.

First, holly trees vary in the number of spiny leaves. You can see it in any of the photos--some leaves are smooth and others have spines on the edge.

All sorts of people have thought about the variation in the spines. Young plants tend to have mostly spiny leaves. (photo below) On a big tree, the lower branches have more spiny leaves than higher branches.

Plant Story -- Holly (Ilex aquifolium) Celebrating the Solstice--and Christmas--for Millennia

European holly, Ilex aquifolium

We sing "Deck the halls with boughs of holly" at Christmastime, often without thinking about what we are saying. 

I live in an area where the traditional holly cannot grow, and yet everyone knows what holly looks like.

Why?

Plant Confusion--Hemlock, Both Umbels and Conifers

“The leaves were long, the grass was green

 The hemlock-umbels tall and fair

 And in the glade a light was seen,

 Of stars in shadow shimmering.

 Tinúviel was dancing there

 To music of a pipe unseen,

 And light of stars was in her hair,

 And in her raiment glimmering."

(Tolkien The Fellowship of the Ring p. 204)

As a child in upstate New York, I read and reread J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings until I had memorized a dozen of the poems. This one was one of my favorites. I imagined Tinúviel dancing in a forest under towering hemlock trees.

But that was not Tolkien’s image.  He meant, dancing among plants Americans call poison hemlock.

Plant Story--Aspen, Populus tremuloides, widespread and speading

Quaking aspen, usually just called aspen, Populus tremuloides, is a familiar plant, which is part of what makes it remarkable. A member of the willow family, Salicaceae, it is related to willows and cottonwoods, and more closely, to aspens of Europe and bigtooth aspen, Populus grandidentata. 

Though you may also know some of its relatives, in North America you are likely to know it as well. Quaking aspen is the most widespread tree of North America. Of something like 1,000 trees in North America, it is Number One. Aspen is found from northern Canada to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts (map at USDA Plants). The elevational range is also great, from sea level to 10,000'. 

Plant Story -- Osage-Orange and the Animals of the Pleistocene

Osage-oranges
 on the ground

Osage-orange, Maclura pomifera, is a tree endemic to (native only in) North American. Its range. when Europeans first encountered it, was small: the area where Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma meet. Its habitat is described as woods, forest edges and streams. Widespread planting of Osage-orange for fences in the 1850s-1870s has greatly expanded its distribution.

I talked about Osage-orange's interesting wood previously (link). But Osage-orange has memorable fruits. See Osage-orange fruit They are bigger than oranges. The outer rind is warty. Inside it is more solid than an orange, with a row of small seeds. (Gray's Manual of Botany calls the fruits "disappointingly dry and hard" inside). Not much of anything eats them. People don’t eat them, some horses like them, deer eat a few and determined squirrels will tear them open and eat the seeds, but still the big fruits pile up at the base of the tree. 

Mostly we don't think about what we see and ask "why?" But why does Osage-orange make a huge fruit? Plants are rooted. To get to new areas, something (wind, water, an animal) has to carry the seeds away. Osage-orange fruits seem horribly inefficient at dispersing the plant. 


The current answer is: the fruits evolved to be eaten by animals that have gone extinct.

Visiting Northern Florida--ooh! Magnolias!

magnolia flowers emerging from Spanish moss

At the end of February, I visited Tallahassee Florida. Tallahassee gets frosts and snow every decade or so--including this year, so in many ways it was still very early spring, but some magnolias were in full bloom. I was enchanted. Here are pictures of magnolias in flower in Tallahassee and especially at Maclay Gardens. 

a single magnolia flower

Visiting Iceland: A Botanist's Quick Look

Fields of west central Iceland

In July of 2012 I visited Iceland for a week. I expected green hills and Viking-era history. I found a whole lot more.

Iceland is an island of 40,000 square miles (the size of the state of Kentucky) in the North Atlantic just barely south of the Arctic Circle. There were no humans until 860 AD when a ship from the Faroes stumbled on it. A few years later a ship captained by Raven Floki came to explore. He found it cold and dangerous and named it Iceland. Settlers arrived in 870. They spread across the land, trying to raise crops on an island with shallow soils and a short growing season. Eventually they gave up growing grains and simply raised livestock on the green fields.