In many gardening circles, the mere mention of bamboo is enough to cause nightmarish shivers. Visions of voracious overgrowth devouring shrubs, birdbaths, and toolsheds inevitably haunt the mind. Here at the Arnold Arboretum, our largest stand of bamboo (Phyllostachys dulcis, accession 1019-89) covers a slope on Peters Hill, where it was planted thirty years ago. […]
After you’ve sung “Auld Lang Syne” and shot confetti scraps into the air, eaten the silvery herring or popped the twelve grapes (whatever your auspicious New Year’s traditions may be), it’s time to start humming “Pomp and Circumstance.” One hundred years ago, the Arnold Arboretum received the final seed shipments from Ernest Henry Wilson’s sixth […]
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 […]
What a wonderful gift for that family. Too bad we are two (...)
Bamboos native to the U.S.A.! Who knew? Thank you for this (...)
Ginkgo fruits are not known to be toxic to pets. The ASPCA (...)