Three Magnolias

     This week the weather door creaked open, and we experienced glimpses of early summer, with  several days in the 70's, all the way to 80 yesterday. Open windows in late February is not the norm. Friday was an exception. It barely made to 50 with cold, dank air. It never really rained, but a mist fell all day, and I never could seem to get warm. However, it made for some good photo ops on the early blooming magnolias at work. Deciduous magnolias are lovely trees, but not every year is a good one. Often they open early, only to have winter make a comeback, turning their delicate petals brown. I wish I had a garden large enough to allow space for tree that big that only blooms for a long week under the best of circumstances.

Magnolia x 'Todd Gresham'

Magnolia denudata

Magnolia × loebneri 'Leonard Messel'

     No matter the weather you may be experiencing, I do hope you will consider participating in my 2018 Winter Walk-Off. 

Early Fall on the Lower Chickahominy

     This past Saturday I took my kayak to the Chickahominy River, close to where it meets the James. This was not my first time here. When I was a child my father belonged to a rod and gun club with a cabin on a bluff overlooking one of the river's tributaries, and visits there are some of my fondest place memories. The water here is brackish, more fresh than salt, but still subject to the tides. This mix of different waters allows for an abundant diversity of animal and plant species, which made hunger a little less threatening to the native Americans who once called this place home. It was here that Capt. John Smith was captured, and taken to the chief of the Powhatans. As the flawed story goes, Smith's life was eventually spared by Pocahontas, the chief's daughter. Today the river and its tributaries remain relatively free from development, and save for a few houses and a bridge or two, it is easy to imagine what the Chickahominy may have looked liked centuries ago.

     The Chickahominy has become one of my favorite places to paddle, and after any time spent there I always come away renewed. Part of the allure for me are the trees, specifically bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), and the opportunity to paddle between their knees and underneath their canopies. At the moment this species is tied for first place with live oak (Quercus virginiana) as my favorite tree. This weekend they were just beginning to sport their fall orange color. As I rounded one clump of cypress I could hear a loud commotion created by a pair of belted kingfishers, whose calls always sound like bitching to me. They were upset by a wake of vultures and a juvenile bald eagle perched in the trees along their part of the river. The kingfishers would not rest until the intruders were gone, and the presence of a lumbering middle-aged man in a bright red kayak was enough to push the raptors on their way, quieting the kingfishers. The lone eagle joined several others further down the shoreline; the place is thick with them, almost like pigeons.

     In one area of the river some of the cypresses looked as if they had been frosted. While it made for interesting photos, the "frost" was actually a coating of guano, probably from cormorants, or egrets.

     The cypress were not the only trees with fall color. A few red maples (Acer rubrum) right next to the shore were starting to turn, as were a few sweetgums (Liquidambar styraciflua), both a little further along, color-wise, then their kin on drier land. In many of the trees poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) climbed in shades of red, orange, and yellow, proving that even one of our most reviled plants can have its moment. All over the coast here, not just along the Chickahominy, the white blooms of saltbush let you know what time of year it is.

     Eventually I had to leave the river, and as I neared the campground where the landing was, I was brought back to reality. One camper at a site right on the river was busy hanging his oversized American flag on a pop-up tent, right next to his oversized "Make America Great Again" flag so, all the other campers and everyone on the water would have no doubt as to where he stood. Who does this on a camping trip? My gut response was to yell adjectives, but that would have been just as bad as waving oversized flags in other people's faces, and I didn't want to find out if he was exercising robust second amendment rights as well. I feel like we are living in a land of multiple realities these days, with collisions an ever present danger. I think I prefer a reality full of birds, paddling on mixed waters under bald cypress.

Unfurling

     This past weekend we headed over to my parent's place on the Eastern Shore to celebrate a couple of birthdays. Spring arrives there a few weeks after it arrives here in Norfolk, especially where my parents live so close to the still cold Atlantic. This morning the low was 32.5, but the skies were a clear blue, and many of the trees and shrubs in their yard, and in the surrounding landscape, were tentatively pushing out new growth. Though largely still brown, even the marsh was beginning to show the first blush of green.

     Golden Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Ogon')

     Fruitless Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua 'Rotundiloba')

     Ginkgo biloba 

     Contorted Filbert (Corylus avellana 'Contorta')

     Rabbiteye Blueberry (Vaccinium ashei)

     River Birch (Betula nigra)

     Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum)

     Edible Asian Pear (Pyrus pyrifolia)

     Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda)

     Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

     Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia)

     I don't know which species of hackberry this is, Celtis laevigata or C. occidentalis, but I do know the genus is underappreciated. They will grow practically anywhere (in this case with roots in the salt marsh), they have a handsome winter silhouette, sport unusual bark, provide food for wildlife, and the translucent green of their new spring leaves is something I have come to treasure.

Christmas Trees

     Years before my parents retired, they purchased a piece of land from my uncle on which they would eventually build a new house. The property was bordered by a freshwater pond, salt marsh, a scruffy brackish woodland, and acres of farmland, all within in earshot of the Atlantic. The land that wasn't wet or water was wide open and treeless. While the house was still a dream, they began planting trees, mainly pines, cedars, and an assortment of fruit trees. When I began my life in horticulture I started giving them trees for Christmas, each year something different, and something I wanted to grow myself, but didn't have the room for.

     One of the first trees I gave them was a blue Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca'). I got this tree from the first garden center I ever worked for, and when I planted the tree, it had a distinct curve in the trunk, which I thought looked artistic, but it eventually grew straighter. Over the past few years the sapsuckers have managed to put it into a bit of a decline. The tree to the right front of the cedar is a fruitless sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua 'Rotundiloba'). I came across this cultivar while working for another garden center, and thought surely it would be a great seller, but was wrong.

     Another early tree was a London planetree (Platanus x acerifolia), which was planted to shade their deck, and from which its handsome bark and bone-like winter structure could be admired. Despite a little late-summer foliage funk every other year or so, it has done very well and is now beginning to tower over the house.

     When it looked as if the garden center where I first worked was getting ready to fold, I got a job at one of the big box stores as a Plant Specialist. As it turned out, Plant Specialist meant someone who spends more time schlepping bags of mulch, fence panels, and concrete blocks from one place to another, then he does specializing in plants. While I worked there I purchased three crapemyrtles labeled as Natchez, envisioning a space, sometime in the future, underneath three mature and identical trees. The years progressed. and it became apparent that one of the trees was not Natchez. As it was, this big box store did not survive the onslaught of Home Depot and Lowe's, probably in no small part for selling mislabelled plants.

     While I was still working at the big box store, I wanted to get my parents a ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), but we had already sold all of our nursery stock at stupid low prices, and literally tossed what didn't sell into the dumpster per my boss's instructions, to make room for cut Christmas trees. So I drove way out into the country to a garden center where I was told you could get anything, including ginkgoes. I fell in love with the place and got a job there the next year.

     While I worked there I came across many unusual trees, including a dawn redwood with golden foliage (Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Ogon'). It once had a single trunk, but male deer, rubbing their antlers turned it into a multi-stemmed shrub. I still like it though.

     While at the garden center in the country, the owner had a yard sale of sorts, and I was able to pick up a variegated zelkova (Zelkova serrata 'Variegata') for a good price. Overall, it has never done that well, but on close inspection, the foliage looks nice. At my new job I am beginning to curse this species, as I am needing to pull its seedlings like so many dandelions.

     One of our big sellers at the garden center in the country was Chindo viburnum (Viburnum awabuki 'Chindo'). Technically it's a shrub, and this post is about trees, but this plant has reached a tree-like height next to my parent's chimney.

    One year at the garden center in the country, we gave away free trees with a coupon. I got in several hundred bare-root saplings from the state forestry department, and we potted them into 1 gallon pots. We had several species, but everyone's favorite were the bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). Even though I had the pick of the crop, the one I got for my parents was barely wider than a pencil when it was planted. Now it is lush and full, and every bit a healthy, still-young tree, and a fine example of one of my favorite species.

     Over the last few years, I have had to switch to Christmas shrubs and Christmas perennials. You can only put so many trees in a yard before you turn it into a forest, though that's not necessarily a bad thing.