Trees normally like to stay put. Some grow as colonial masses, pushing up new stems feet away from the original trunk, even covering a whole mountainside (as with the quaking aspen, Populus tremuloides)—all one plant, slowly spreading—yet it scarcely takes an experienced field botanist to know that tree locomotion is primarily the realm of whimsical […]
As a rule, trees are always redder on the other side of the fence—the next town over or several hours north. Maples (Acer) are beginning to turn extravagant shades at the Arboretum, yet the leaf-lorn, like myself, always wonder whether the show will completely materialize, or whether a storm, like the one that whipped through […]
On the morning of the fall equinox, I awoke at a Maine campsite, where the ground was sheathed with frost. The calendar page had officially flipped from summer, and when I returned to Boston, rain and cool evenings followed suit. Although most trees are still green, homeowners must be stocking up with leaf bags at […]
At this time of year, the mind starts turning towards decay. Small pears lie smashed on the pavement, picked over by insects and birds. Leaves have fallen from some trees, which now stand almost completely denuded, as though asleep before the party even started, or certainly before the dessert course came with fanfare and panache. […]
As we continue on through the dog days of summer, a botanical event is underway in the Explorers Garden on Bussey Hill: the flowering of our Franklin trees (Franklinia alatamaha). Two sprawling accessions of the species, 2428-3*A and 2428-3*B, date to 1905 and are among the largest specimens of Franklin tree in North America. Both […]
As a kid, I was obsessed with seed catalogues. My mom read them with a highlighter, selecting tomatoes and marigolds, zinnias and cucumbers for the summer garden, and I would imitate her, arraying the catalogues around myself on the couch, scrutinizing the photographs, and imagining a garden filled with lurid oddities. Eventually, however, I discovered […]
Something about a linden tree (Tilia spp.) seems to wish to be secret. The leaves resemble lopsided hearts on many species and are decidedly green. No pretention, no drama, and even the most esteemed examples—I’m thinking, for instance, of the littleleaf linden (T. cordata) growing behind the Longfellow House in Cambridge, which was purportedly planted […]
I say “fuchsia,” you say “mauve.” I say “cotton candy,” you say “pink.” Little can leave a horticulturist scrounging in the glossary of color terms as desperately (and as fruitlessly) as a collection of ten or fifteen rhododendrons (Rhododendron spp.) in full flower, not to mention a collection with almost one hundred unique selections like […]
At the grocery store, it’s easy to take fresh blueberries for granted. Packed within plastic cases, the jewel-like fruits are available year-round, almost without question. But a collection of blueberries at the Arnold Arboretum—that is to say, highbush blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum), which are now flowering—provides a reminder of the not-so-distant time when blueberries were just […]
Now begins the season when we all flock in sweeping formations towards flowering cherries (Prunus) in the Bradley Rosaceous Collection—in fact, the Arboretum spotlights the genus with a Collections Up Close event on Sunday, April 29. Already the Fuji cherry (Prunus incisa forma serrata, accession 172-95*B) prominently situated along Meadow Road is as irresistible as […]
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This posting got me right out to look at samaras on the (...)