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 […]
The small, fast Telico River is a jewel of east Tennessee’s Cherokee National Forest. Its clear waters tumble past moss-covered riverbanks while mountain laurels (Kalmia latifolia) abound on the steep, rocky hillsides. My father often fly-fishes there, casting for the brook trout that sway beneath the rapids. When the Arboretum’s mountain laurels explode with flowers […]
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 […]
Among the most incongruous facts of the coronavirus era is that spring pushes forward with or without us. Our ways of life have been scrambled into unimaginable forms. Yet daffodils (Narcissus) and early blooming shrubs did not notice. Forsythia popped up like yellow raincoats on a swampy day—over in this yard, along that path—brilliant but […]
By the beginning of October 1918, the influenza pandemic was racing through Boston. Businesses had been shuttered. Schools had been closed. A local conference for the National Association of Gardeners was postponed. Meanwhile, at the Arnold Arboretum, director Charles Sprague Sargent was finding it increasingly difficult to navigate a quarantine of a different nature—one designed […]
In the summer of 1872, mere months after the Arnold Arboretum had been established, Harvard botanist Asa Gray embarked on a cross-country trip with his wife Jane Loring Gray. The trip was enabled by the recently completed Pacific Railroad, which connected the eastern and western rail networks, and Gray would disembark, at station stops, to […]
To walk in the Arnold Arboretum’s juniper collection is, in some sense, to walk among garden specimens that could have been. For many gardeners, junipers—that is, the horticultural members of the genus Juniperus—are the classic case of the right plant in the wrong spot. How many times have new owners of old homes, with justified […]
Like clockwork this December: every Tuesday has brought snow, at least for the first three weeks. If the pattern keeps up, a fresh dusting will arrive on New Year’s Eve, transforming the Arboretum landscape, on the first of the year, into a hushed and brilliant scene. I can imagine neighbors walking though, for fresh air, […]
Copper is the final shade of fall. Leaves that were once golden have tarnished, and reds and oranges have long ago quilted the ground. It is still fall, undeniably so, with temperatures hovering in jacket weather, but it’s now a latter-day version of the season, with muted tones that don’t feature as charismatically on postcards […]
The moist and moldering days of fall are upon us: wet leaves trodden into the soil, fleshy fruits turning to muck in the garden. These are weeks of surrender and senescence, although in another sense, these are weeks ripe with potential. It makes me think fondly of children’s books that I grew up with, featuring […]
Hi Sue--you are right to think that the male is pausing to (...)
I just saw the male bird sitting on my plant hanger with (...)
Great Johnathan to have given a tour of Tilia Here in UK (...)