12/05/09 FLAGS AND FLOWERS

AN EARLY WINTER MORNING
FLAGS OF OUR HISTORY
IDENTIFYING ASH TREES IN WINTER
PERSISTENT, DEFORMED MALE ASH FLOWERS

Saturday, 8:30 AM. 16 degrees, wind W, light. The channel is crawling slightly, the sky is mostly overcast but clearing, and the barometer predicts mostly sunny skies.
The city Christmas tree is up, surrounded by the flags of many of the nations most important to its history and culture (the US flag is out of the view):Great Britain, Red Cliff-Ojibwe, Canada, France, Norway and Finland. I think I have got them all right.
We have discussed ash trees and the emerald ash borer at some length previously, and another way ash trees can be identified at a considerable distance in the wild in the winter is by the persistent deformed male flowers of many trees (ash trees are dioecious, bearing male and female flowers on separate trees. The term is from the Greek, meaning “two houses”). The deformity is caused by the ash flower gall mite, and apparently does little damage to the tree itself, but of course decreases the pollination of nearby female ash trees, so there are probably fewer of the also characteristic winter seed clusters on nearby female trees.