Kindle Notes & Highlights
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July 1 - July 7, 2019
female cones are located higher in the crown than the male cones.
may improve the chances of cross-fertilization, since pollen is unlikely to be blown vertically upward in the same tree.
only the true cedars (members of the genus Cedrus) produce pollen in the fall.
cauliflory, which refers to flowers that develop directly from the trunks, limbs, and main branches of woody plants. Evidently, such “stem flowers” are much more common in tropical rain forests than in temperate regions,
most reserve the “fruit” designation for the seed structures of flowering plants, which excludes the conifers.
To describe tree fruits accurately, botanists use words like pome, drupe, follicle, capsule, samara, strobile, and achene,
Questions to consider when looking at a tree fruit include: What does it look like? When does it mature? How does it travel? When and under what conditions do its seeds germinate?
Predator satiation is another. This term relates to the “mast years,” or boom years, we witness when trees, particularly oaks, produce a significant abundance of fruit.
the Osage-orange was eaten regularly by large animals like the woolly mammoth, mastodon, camel, and giant ground sloth,
Resting buds also provide one of the best ways to identify trees in winter, because their designs are unique to each tree species.
leaf scars—the areas, usually below the buds, where the previous year’s leaves have fallen off—also vary among tree species and are equally useful in identifying trees in winter,
Bundle scars are the tiny, raised spots, usually looking like dots or bars, that occur inside a leaf scar and that mark the places where the leaf’s “pipes” have been broken.
Everywhere you see a leaf scar and its accompanying bundle scars, you are seeing a healed-over spot where a tree has, in order to keep itself alive, discarded a leaf.
lenticels, or breathing pores—openings gases pass through to the tree’s internal tissues.
Twig structure or pattern of branching is another tree trait to be alert to, especially in winter
A tree that has an opposite leaf arrangement will also have an opposite twig arrangement,
Abrade the twig bark of black birch for the fragrance of wintergreen, sassafras for root beer, wild black cherry for almond, and ailanthus for peanut butter.
Because its shallow roots dislike soil disturbance or compaction, this tree doesn’t do well in urban or suburban situations.
American beech
Young beeches are typically understory trees, germinating and growing slowly in the shade of other trees until they become the dominant (climax) tree in the forest.
common natural wonders of the world, the unfurling of the beech leaf would be included, not only because the phases involved are so exquisite, but because the process is so complex.
All along the twig, you can find such bands, which represent the beginning of a year’s growth and can be counted to determine the age of the twig.
gravid
Male and female flowers occur on the same tree but in separate clusters.
Monoecious
They ripen in the fall (between September and November where I live) and usually split open, spilling their nuts, after a hard frost.
One is the way the sycamore leaf stalk is attached to the twig. The base of the sycamore leaf stalk, where it attaches to the twig, is enlarged, like the cup of a candlesnuffer.
On the American sycamore, the stipules are often fused into a short tube with a 1- to 2-inch, collar-like appendage on top.
The fruits, tan to brown balls about 1 inch in diameter, are easy to spot, especially in late fall and early winter when the tree’s leaves have fallen off.
On the American sycamore, they usually dangle one to a stalk, whereas on the London plane tree they are usually borne two to a stalk.
Sycamore trees have both male and female flowers on the same tree, but they are borne in separate spherical clusters.
American sycamores grow fast—as much as 2 feet a year in a congenial location—and their trunks, which are often hollow, grow to prodigious proportions.
these trees are famous for exuding juglone from their roots, leaves, and nut husks, a chemical that can inhibit the growth of some other plants.
In Kyrgyzstan, the walnut forests are large and historically significant—over a million acres of some of the oldest wild walnut forests in the world.
dark brown twiggy leaf stalks they drop in August.
Black walnut leaves also have a distinct fragrance,
The round fruits ripen between September and October,
Digging up walnut seedlings also reveals just how impressive their taproots are.
black walnuts: they like full sun, so you’ll almost always find them growing in the open;
walnut is one of those trees that has a mechanism for preventing self-pollination.
eastern red cedar isn’t really a cedar (member of the genus Cedrus); it’s a juniper (member of the genus Juniperus), and other junipers, including the California juniper, the Chinese juniper, and the common juniper, share some of its traits.
One reason eastern red cedar is so common is that it is a pioneer species:
In the southern part of the red cedar’s range, young trees are usually columnar, older trees more pyramidal; in the northern part of their range, red cedars tend to stay columnar.
foliage of mature red cedars is quite different; it looks more like scales or the overlapping shingles on a roof than it does like needles. Pressed close to the stem, it is textured in a way that reminds me of a braided rope or lanyard.
Contributing to the bronzy look of red cedars are the yellowish brown pollen-producing structures on male trees.
strobili. About the size of rice grains and looking scaly or shingled like the foliage, these pollen-bearing structures are so small and so numerous (there’s one on the tip of nearly every branchlet) you’re unlikely to immediately recognize them as such, but male cones they are.
“This morning [March 18] I saw numerous ‘puffs’ of pollen escaping the red cedars, mostly from gentle winds,” a friend once wrote me, “but in one case a small bird took off and shook the branch enough to make it look like there was a small fire smoldering in the tree.”
red cedars are dioecious, which means some trees are male, some female. The distinguishing feature of female trees is their blue “berries”
red cedar berry is technically a cone with fleshy scales that give it the appearance of a berry.
they are an important food source for birds. Think of them as fast food for frugivores (fruit-eating birds).
Red cedar berries ripen just when many birds migrating south need them (August through October),
If you’ve ever noticed how often red cedars line a fence row, or cross a field in a straight line where a fence used to be, you are witnessing the result of red cedar seed dispersal by birds, who have excreted the seeds while sitting on the fence.
