Kindle Notes & Highlights
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July 1 - July 7, 2019
red cedar seeds that have passed through the digestive system of a bird are 1.5 to 3.5 times as likely to germinate as seeds that have not.
“fruits may compete more heavily for birds than birds do for fruit,”
Juniper berries are sold in the spice section of the grocery store and are used to flavor gin
(the word gin reportedly derives from genievre, the French word for juniper),
red cedar berries (and sometimes even common juniper berries) are actually listed as poisonous by many poison control centers,
Much less visible than mature red cedar berries are the developing structures—sometimes called flowers—that precede them.
“Among Gymnosperms, the Red Cedar, next to Ginkgo, offers perhaps the flower hardest to recognize as such.
an immature cone, not a flower, since this is a conifer) must precede the red cedar’s mature berries (seed-bearing cones), but what kind and when?
Although it is not impossible to see them with the naked eye earlier, I don’t think I’d try to show anyone the developing ovulate cone (“flower”) of the eastern red cedar until late March, and even then we’d need to use a magnifying device.
by midspring, prepare to be flabbergasted, because, at this stage, the developing red cedar berry is a knockout.
look for dots of pale blue color at the tips of the red cedar branchlets about a month after the male trees’ pollen has been dispersed, then get out your loupe and look closer!
the tree’s bark and manifestations of the fungal disease called cedar apple rust. Long, narrow, vertical strips of red cedar bark peel off the tree in ribbons
create the smell by abrading red cedar foliage between your fingers.
Cedar apple rust, a fungal disease that affects eastern red cedar and its alternate host, apple trees, requires two hosts—the cedar tree and the apple tree—to complete its life cycle.
Spores discharged from these tendrils and then carried by wind to developing apple leaves and fruit are so destructive that red cedars are about as popular in apple-growing country as bears in a beehive.
A red cedar associate I hope to see, but haven’t yet, is the olive hairstreak butterfly (Callophrys gryneus).
they have persisted into the modern era relatively unchanged since the Triassic Period 200 million years ago.
Europeans thought the entire plant family extinct until the late seventeenth century, when ginkgos belonging to the one remaining species, Ginkgo biloba, were found growing in China.
The Ginkgo Pages, edited by Dutch teacher Cor Kwant, where you will find a list of “special” ginkgos and where they grow worldwide.
In the fall, ginkgo leaves are a bright clear to golden yellow, and they are among the latest leaves to fall, in November in my neighborhood.
The ginkgo has a naked seed with a fleshy outer layer, not a seed embedded in a ripened ovary wall like a plum or a peach, but many naturalists and most ordinary observers refer to it as fruit.)
Ginkgos bear their male and female reproductive structures on separate trees, and because of the offensive odor of the female fruit, people plant more male than female ginkgos. Or they think they do.
look on a male tree for tight, elongate clusters of pollen-bearing structures that grow from the tree’s spur shoots under the leaves.
On a female tree, again in early to midspring, as the leaves are emerging, look for slender, yellow-green stalks supporting a pair of tiny, round, green orbs.
By the end of May, the green orbs are about the size of a marble, by the end of the summer they are about the size of a persimmon, and they have changed color from green to light yellow-orange to orangey tan.
After they have been shed (typically between August and November, before the leaves fall) and after they have begun to rot, they develop the objectionable odor they are famous for, and that lends the tree its common name “stink bomb tree.”
(Male clones, grown from cuttings, have the exact same DNA as their male parent, whereas offspring grown from seed are a genetic mix of both parents.)
The problem with growing exclusively male trees is that the more male trees we grow, the more pollen we are exposed to, and this is not a positive development for allergy sufferers.
The red maple’s flowers and its young twigs are more consistently red than its fall foliage, which can range from dull yellows and maroons to bright yellows, oranges, and reds.
any tree that blooms in February or early March is worth fifty blooming in May.
Some ecologists are worried that red maple, which is an opportunistic species, may overtake the oaks and hickories that have dominated eastern hardwood forests for the past 10,000 years.
they “bloom when night temperatures are still below freezing,” and my observation of red maple flowers encased in ice is not unusual.
red maples bloom early, drop their seeds the same spring, and germinate quickly.
website (Project Budburst) where you can track the progress of red maple flowering across the tree’s range.
Some red maple trees are male (bearing primarily male flowers), some are female (bearing primarily female flowers), and some are both male and female (with flowers of each sex appearing usually on separate branches).
Flower parts that look intriguing to the naked eye become startling when magnified.
With their 8- to 12-inch petals, southern magnolia flowers are among the largest flowers native to North America,
Plants identifiably belonging to the Magnolia family existed 95 million years ago (a mere 92 million years or so before people), and primitive flowers like the magnolia’s were among the first flower types to appear on earth.
Among the easiest tree buds to recognize in winter, the tulip poplar’s fat, green terminal buds (as well as its lateral buds) turn from bright green to a dark red, and some of them have a smoky white coating that makes them look as if they’ve been sprayed with a powdery antiperspirant.
smooth bark is marked with highly visible lenticels (white dots indicating the locus of air exchange). Such twigs have a really nice fragrance—sort of a musty menthol—if you abrade the bark with your fingernail.
tulip poplar leaf shapes vary more than most people realize.
The fall foliage of the tulip poplar is often described as “buttery yellow,”
for forest tree flowers, they are huge. You just don’t expect to see 1¾-inch flowers on a common, temperate zone tree that grows to be 100 feet and sometimes 200 feet tall.
Look for tulip poplar flowers between April and June, then look for the cones (technically samaracetums) that follow them.
It seems that very few tulip poplar samaras contain viable seed (only about 10 percent).
Tulip poplars have the genetic potential not only to get tall but also to get fat:
The tulip poplar’s average age at natural death is 200 to 250 years, and some individual trees may live to be 500 years old.
tulip poplars in Shenandoah National Park, I noticed similar pocked surfaces on the lowest portions of their trunks and realized this must be a characteristic of old tulip poplars.
what I did see was remarkable enough to turn me into an evangelist for tree-watching from the perspective of a hammock.
White oaks, which can live 600 years, are said to be 200 years growing, 200 years living, and 200 years dying,
