Venerable Tree April 17, 2010

Out for a stroll the other morning, I spied an unusual traffic mediation on one corner:

I had come from the other side of the street, and didn’t notice at first that the mini bollards were to protect a massive specimen tree. Huh, the city getting involved to protect a tree from getting bonked into by negligent motorists? Must be a special one…

Then I saw the plaque:

I had heard about Seattle’s Heritage Tree Program, initiated by Plant Amnesty and now co-run by the City of Seattle. But I don’t know that I had ever seen one if its beneficiaries/honorees before.

As you can see from the sign, the Scarlet Oak (Quercus coccinea) is not native to the Pacific Northwest, but this particular tree has thrived in our climate. I hope that future generations of Seattle residents continue to protect and enjoy it. If all of our parking strip street trees lived so long, we would be the greenest city around!

As all gardeners know, every day is Earth Day. But I hope you have/had a happy one today anyway!

(I should add, after seeing some of the comments, that it’s true that this is probably this tree’s least showy season, and that no photo can truly capture its magnificence, but I thought that its massive arm-like branches and immense trunk were still impressive enough to show. Great idea to go back when it’s leafed out and again in the fall to see the scarlet leaves. I will try to remember to do so!)

Top That!?! January 9, 2010

No wait, please don’t! Topping is a popular but damaging method of controlling a tree’s height. Certified arborists and anyone with half an iota of aesthetic sense rail against this practice, and yet it persists. Why? Ignorance, most likely.

Sadly, these young-ish trees in my neighborhood, in no danger of growing into power lines or falling over onto anyone’s house, were recently topped (i.e. butchered), by “professional” gardeners no less. It makes me so sad and angry to see them when I pass by, to think of how nice they used to look and how ridiculous they seem now.

Trees for the parking strip need to be carefully chosen with the site’s limitations in mind. Of course, this is true of any site, and any tree. If you don’t want a tall tree, plant a dwarf variety! You can’t just hack off the top every few years and expect it to look, and be, fine.

Grrrrrrrr.

I will freely admit that I know next to nothing about correct pruning and always make a hash of anything I try to shape. For trees, I leave it to the pros, the real ones, certified arborists who really, truly know what they’re doing!

In other tree-pruning news, did you read this squib in the New Yorker about “citizen arborists”?

The Curtain’s Going Up December 28, 2009

… on the annual Witch hazel show! Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Jelena’, with its unusual orange flowers, takes pride of place in my garden every January and I noticed while passing by it yesterday that the very first blossoms have begun to unfurl. They will slowly cover the tree and if all goes well, should be in full flower by mid-January. I didn’t plant this tree, but am grateful to the previous gardener here who did.

Is it showtime, or almost, for any of your favorites yet this winter?

The Ravages of Wind December 2, 2009

A few weeks ago, Seattle was ripped by a series of powerful wind storms. Still nothing to match our legendary Hanukkah Eve blowout of 2006, when everything from telephone poles to Douglas firs went belly-up overnight, but still some pretty strong gusts that knocked out power and did some damage to the unsteadier trees.

Just up my street, this one met its end:

The trunk just snapped off, luckily missing any humans or property. I’m not sure what kind of tree it is, or if it’s on the city’s list for approved parking strip trees. If anyone has a guess, please speak forth. It was planted in a group, which is often the MO for street trees that come free from the city.

Another breakage point, showing the leaves closer up for you ID experts:

Bark detail – does it look like the inside of the trunk was diseased?

Poor thing. I always mourn the death of a tree. I’m glad nobody was hurt – this would have made a pretty big dent in anyone’s head:

One unlucky fellow did lose his life during this set of storms. He was just out with his wife, walking their dog, when a big limb in a local park came down and that was it. I admit I’m a chicken – when the winds start to blow, I make a dash for the house and try to stay in until it’s all over. I try not to look at our big cedar too closely, although I’ve heard they tend to be pretty good at staying upright.

I will be curious to see what, if anything, is chosen to replace the poor broken tree on my street. If it were me, I’d go for something different!

(For those curious about Seattle parking strip tree planting procedures, permits, and lists of approved street trees, click here.)

Skywatch Friday – May 22, 2009 May 21, 2009

In the sky over Seattle, a clash of the titans, tree vs. clouds:

And the winner is… clouds!

To see more skies all over the world, click here to check out Skywatch Friday.

Skywatch Friday – Another Tree April 23, 2009

I just can’t seem to resist putting a tree in my sky shots. I know there are plenty of great sky views with no trees in them, but I seem not to look up unless I’m examining branches, a canopy, leaves, twig-borne flower petals, or other arborific views.

Afternoon sky through unknown tree and red monkey bars at Meridian Park playground, Seattle, WA, USA in April, 2009. Head over here to see the many lovely and varied views of the sky from all over the world this week.

Blossom Time March 30, 2009

Spring in Seattle means many things – rain of course, more cyclists on the city’s bike paths, a plethora of flower bulbs adding color to the landscape and, my favorite of all, blossom time for the city’s multitude of flowering trees.

It seems like the first to bloom are normally the ornamental plums, but due to the longer and colder than usual winter, this year everything’s getting going at the same time. Plums, cherries and apples all seem to be bursting into bloom at once, so maybe the usually-later ones are playing catch-up with the slowpokes.

I pass this particular tree many times a week, and had always marveled at its odd shape. It’s a small flowering cherry currently covered with ginormous blossoms. I don’t think it’s been well cared for in a while, since it has a lot of suckers (all flowering!) near the base. But even the strangest pruning can almost be redeemed by masses of fragrant blooms. I wish I could post these in Smell-O-Vision!

The Prius has become the car of Seattle (replacing the Volvo 240 – what can I say, I’m behind the times, I still have one of those but no hybrid yet), so I left it in the shot to epitomize this part of the world in spring – a parking strip flowering tree and a PC vehicle. What could be more Seattle? I guess I could have posed someone there with an REI fleece vest on, holding a latte. That might have been a bit too much, though.

What most signifies spring to you?

Burly Birch March 20, 2009

Walking down the street near my house the other day, I did a double-take when I saw this strangely-shaped white birch tree.

It’s a super tall tree, and it stands in front of one of the most stylishly maintained Craftsman houses in the neighborhood, so it made me wonder what was going on. Presumably, if the tree was diseased they would have taken care of it or had it taken down.

Looking more closely, I wondered if these could be burls, the poorly understood alterations in a tree’s regular growth pattern that produces giant, round protrusions that are intricately whorled inside.

There seems to be some difference of opinion among scientists as to how burls are formed. Some believe they are produced when some injury or other stress affects the bark; others think they are basically failed twig buds that result in an abnormal growth pattern. The spherical growth happens over a long period, in concurrence with the tree’s vertical growth, but the wood of the burl is much softer. Burls apparently have some similarities to cancer in humans, although in the case of trees the burls are not usually fatal. Woodworkers prize them for their unusualness, and anyone who has traveled Highway 1 through the Northern California redwood forests has encountered “redwood burl” shops selling everything from incredibly beautiful table slabs to awful tacky eagle/bear nightmares. I wonder what a birch burl would look like on the inside? This tree has them going all the way up.

Here is a short article explaining burls.

This PDF from the National Park Service is all about redwoods and their wacky burls.

Michael Combs is a craftsman who works with burls to produce treen, i.e. objects hewn from trees, but in his case table and other historical kitchen items. Pretty fascinating site he’s put together here.

It’s a kind of extreme ugliness that almost becomes beauty again, or at least it conceals something that in a woodworker’s expert hands can become something worth looking at. Now that I’m pretty sure it’s not going to fall on my head as I walk by, I’m going to enjoy this burly birch a lot more.

Party Palms January 31, 2009

I considered titling this “Parking Strip Oddities – Xmas in January Edition” but it was too long to fit. Suffice to say that I have never seen this in any of my Seattle Greenwalks before…

I think that the whole lights-on-a-tree thing can be really magical if the lights are little and twinkly (and white, in my opinion) and the tree is a graceful arching shape. I’d also have to say that I subtract aesthetic points for giant visible extension cords.

Poor palms, they don’t seem to have weathered the winter very well. Maybe their festive girdles didn’t manage to keep them very warm. If they survive, perhaps the owners should wrap them in Santa-print burlap next year?

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day January 2009 January 15, 2009

This is my first time participating in GBBD, hosted by Carol of the wonderful May Dreams Gardens blog. I am a bit late to the party, but hope I can still join in.

January is not the finest month for showing off flowers in many climates, but most of us are lucky enough to have at least something nice to look at despite the winter blahs.

For me, January is always brightened by the arrival of my witch hazel’s flowers. I didn’t plant this tree (or is it a shrub? does anyone know how to tell the difference??), but it is the best thing I inherited from the previous gardener here. It is situated right outside our dining room window and gives me so much joy throughout the year with its multi-season interest.

Many witch hazels have cheery yellow flower tendrils, but mine are a deep orange, which I think I am very lucky to have. I couldn’t decide which photo to use, so I am including a few.

I look forward to seeing what others have found peeking out from under or floating above the dead leaves and snow today! And it’s always fun to see what the warmer-climate folks have going on too – it gives me a little hit of much-needed mid-winter warmth.