APPLES AND CRABAPPLES ARE BLOOMING

OLD APPLE TREE

WHITE FLOWERING CRABAPPLE

LIGHT PINK CRABAPPLE

NARROW UPRIGHT WHITE CRABAPPLE

ANOTHER PINK CRABAPPLE

Saturday, 10:00 AM.  50 degrees F, wind ENE, mostly light.  It i rainy and foggy, with about .75" of rain in the gauge.  The humidity is 94% and the barometer is rising, now at 30.02".
   Apples and crabapples are blooming in the orchards, in town and in every hedgerow.  The orchards are colorful now, and well worth a drive through.  Because commercial apples are heavily pruned to reduce the number of apples they bear, and thus increase the size of the fruit, the trees are not as floriferous as those growing wild or not pruned for production.
   Apples are probably the oldest domesticated fruit, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, their use going back many thousands of years, and from the story of The Garden of Eden and all sorts of mythology of many cultures, the apple is an integral part of human history.  Now considered more of a snack and desert fruit, apples were in the past major staples, since they could be stored for months if properly cared for.  And cider was once a primary use of apples, and cider, both alcoholic (hard cider) and non-alchoholic is still much more popular in England, Europe and elsewhere than in America.
   The wild progenitor of the domestic apple is Malus sieversii, in the rose family.  The epicenter of the species is in eastern Turkey and wild populations still exist.  Many years ago I went on a plant collecting expedition with a scientist from Kazakstan.  His home town was Alma Atta, "the mother of apples."
   The original species of crabapple, Malus sylvestris,  has been hybridized, by both nature and by man, to such an extent with the apple that it is quite difficult to determine where one starts and the other leaves off, but suffice it to say that crabapples generally are ornamentals with small fruits, and apples are grown for their edible fruits.  Both are typically grafted to retain their particular hybrid  characteristics.  The Malus gene pool is very plastic, yielding an endless variety of genetic combinations and traits.  There are many thousands of varieties of apples and almost as many varieties of crabapples, so it doesn't pay to try to go into much descriptive detail here.
   From an ornamental standpoint. crabapples are available in so many sizes, shapes, and colors, etc. and are so tough and hardy that if one is diligent the right tree can be found for almost any landscape and garden niche.
   Apple trees can live for hundred of years, a case in point being that the apple tree that Isaac Newton is said to have sat under while being inspired to develop the Theory of Gravity is still alive and well over four hundred years later in England.

OHIO BUCKEYES, AMERICAN CHESTNUT TREES, AND BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS

OHIO BUCKEYE...

SPIKE OF YELLOW FLOWERS

AMERICAN CHESTNUT, JUST STARTING TO LEAF OUT

Friday,  8:00 AM.  50 degrees F, wind NE, calm to very light.The sky has some scattered clouds, the humidity is 86% and the barometer is trending up, presently at 29.91". We had a trace of rain yesterday evening.
   Many of the roadside ditches and catch basins are still clogged with winter sand, creating a lot of standing water and subsequent mosquito habitat.  Consequently the Minnesota mosquitoes, a species as big as hummingbirds, have crossed into Wisconsin and invaded Bayfield.  We are evidently a richer sure of hemoglobin than our neighboring Scandinavians. Or perhaps we are slower moving targets. They could at least hold a blood drive for those of us requiring transfusions, "Ja, you bettcha."
   The Ohio buckeye, Ausculus glabra, on Manypenny Ave. between 5th and 6th Streets is in flower.  It's spikes of yellow blooms are quite pretty but don't stand out much against the large, palmately compound leaves.  The buckeyes make a nice, compact small to medium sized street tree and are quite interesting in foliage, flower and fruit (the "buckeye").  The fall leaf color is a burnished red. Ohio buckeye is native to much of the east and mid central US and far southern Ontario. The iconic nuts, much loved by Ohioans as good luck charms, might be problematical for some, but unless little boys take to pegging them at passersby and each other, I can't think them objectionable.  This tree is perfectly hardy in Bayfield, but after the past tough winter I have come to be wary of some of the hybrids we have planted.
   As I have noted before, there are a few healthy American chestnut trees, Castanea dentata, in Bayfield; whether they are resistant to the blight that has wiped out most of the native chestnuts, or they have not encountered the disease because this is an isolated population, is not known.  In any case, they are quite noticeable at  present because they are just coming out of dormancy, with only a few leaves sprouted.  The one pictured is on 10th Street, just south of Manypenny Ave.

RED OAKS AND SPIRAEAS IN BLOOM

RED OAK MALE CATKINS

GREFSCHEIM SPIREA

'Thursday, 8:00 AM.  47 degrees F, wind NE, very light.  The sky is clear, the humidity 82%, and the barometer has started to trend down, now at 29.95".  I pulled  the weeds in the perennial garden yesterday and it looks pretty good, but now that the tulips and daffodils are over, also pretty green, except for the candy tuft, some early Iris, the creeping phlox and a few other things.  The Peonies, tall Iris and Oriental poppies will start blooming shortly and it will be colorful again.

   Red oak trees, Quercus rubra (Q. borealis by some authorities), in the beech family, are blooming heavily.  The trees are monoecious, both male and female flowers produced separately on the same plant.  The female flowers are so tiny as to be  difficult to see, but the small male flowers are produced in catkins 3"-4" long, often clustered in groups of three, and are quite noticeable.  The acorns of red oaks take two years to ripen, so they are always present on the tree in some stage of development. The trees  are flowering so heavily this year that some red oaks look as though they are hung with Spanish moss.
   Spiraeas are woody shrubs in the rose family, native to the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere. Many have significant  blooms of small flowers that grow in large clusters.  There are several North American species, but most of the horticulturally important species are Asian.  There are many species and numerous hybrids, that pictured above is Spiraea x cinerea 'Grefscheim', which is particularly beautiful in flower.

WILD PLUMS

LARGE THIKET OF WILD  PLUMS... 

...FLOWERS BLOOM MOSTLY BEFORE LEAVES EMERGE...

...VERY FLORIFEROUS...

BEARING LARGE, RED FRUIT (photo from Trees of Wisconsin)...

...AND THORNY

Wednesday, 8:00 AM.  46 degrees F, wind NE, variable.  The sky has a few clouds but it is mostly clear and sunny.  The humidity is 91% and the barometer is trending up, now at 29.91".  Our Texas family left for home yesterday and it is far too quiet. I have a lot of yard and garden work to catch up with, if I can fight off the mosquitos, which are enjoying a population boom due to all the rain and humid weather.
   Wild plums, of the species Prunus americana, are blooming along roadsides and in fencerows.  Closely related to each other and both in the rose family, the white blossoms of plums and cherries look quite similar.  The differences between the fruit of cherries and plums in size, shape, color,  and taste is obvious, but when fruit is not present the plants can easily be confused.
   These are some other simple defining characteristics of wild plums: they are mostly shrubby and usually grow from suckers into large, sprawling thickets which are very prominent when in bloom; the clusters of flowers appear mostly before the leaves, and are quite fragrant; the branches usually have stout, blunt thorns (not needle sharp, like hawthorns). Similar to many of the cherries, wild plum bark is often dark and shiny, and has lenticels.  There are other species of plums native to other regions of North America, but I would think P. americana to be the one most encountered and thought of as "wild plum."
   When fully ripe wild plums are delicious, and large enough to be really useful for eating, and for making jams and jellies.  The trick is to get to them before the bears, raccoons and birds do.  Bears can be very destructive, often flattening whole shrubs to get at the fruit. Wild plums are sometimes cultivated, but are difficult to grow since they are quite uncontrollable, and are insect and disease prone. They are, however,  well worth preserving and encouraging  in the native landscape.
   Prunus americana is native to most of the middle region of the US east of the Mississippi river, and in Wisconsin to most of the southern two-thirds of the state and the Apostle Islands and the adjacent shoreline of Lake Superior in the north.

TROUT LILLIES AND COAL FIRED ELECTRIC PLANTS

COLONY OF TROUT LILIES...

...NODDING YELLOW FLOWERS AND MOTTLED LEAVES

Tuesday,  9:00 AM.  61 degrees F, wind WNW, very gusty.  The sky is partly cloudy, the humidity 74% and the barometer is on the rise, now at 29.81".  It is a very, very fine day.
   Joan said she saw a wolf lope across Hwy. 13 yesterday as she was returning from Ashland. She described it as a very large canine, tawny in color with a long tail, held upright.
   The pretty yellow flowered trout lilies, Erythonium americanum, in the Lily family, are in bloom in our northern deciduous and mixed deciduous-coniferous woods.  Also known as dog-tooth violet, this interesting little woodland ground cover plant is as welcome a sign of spring as any.  Native to eastern Canada and the US west to the Mississipi River, it grows south to Florida in the mountains and other suitable locations. It is a plant of woods and woods openings and prefers moist, rich, acidic soils, such as are found in mixed oak and coniferous forests.  Its yellow flowers are nodding, and one must hold the flower up to see it best.  It has mottled leaves reminiscent of the spots on brown trout, thus its most common name.  The trout lily is colonial, and can form large,  dense mats that can be hundreds of years old.
   Coal fired electrical plants have nothing in particular to do with trout lilies, but I can't help but comment on the Obama Administration's "war on coal," which I consider not only unwarranted but also dictatorial, as it is now being carried out by executive fiat.  Virtually everyone in America, myself of course included, wants "clean air."  But to destroy a significant part of the US economy to obtain lesser and lesser degrees of "cleanliness" borders on insanity.  I remember when air was actually dirty; you could see it, smell it, choke on it, wake up in the morning with soft coal soot on the sheets and in your nose.  Now we have to rely on the most sensitive of monitoring equipment to determine if the air is "dirty."
   All good progress, but especially when it comes to carbon dioxide, which is absolutely essential to plant growth and life on earth, it seems to me we have taken the fight a tad too far. The coal, oil and natural gas that we use for fuel was deposited by plants that lived millions of years ago when the air was much richer in carbon dioxide.  I have always thought calling carbon dioxide itself a pollutant to be a most egregious misuse of language, as it is only toxic to life in amounts far, far greater than that currently found in the atmosphere.  That is akin to calling water a pollutant because one can drown in it. And as far as "global warming" is concerned, I rest my case.
   Carried to the extremes that other environmental policies of the current administration have been enforced, I can envision a future when carbon dioxide, so fundamentally essential to life on earth, becomes a scarce, life-limiting commodity.     Would it then be necessary to burn coal in open pit mines to replenish the atmosphere with carbon dioxide?
   Even if we stop using carboniferous fuels, other countries will still use them. Carbon fuels from Canada, Mexico and Central and South America will continue to be exported to other regions anxious to buy them.  If we use our own resources responsibly we can continue to lead the world in the development of clean air technology.  If we kill our coal industry through unreasonable legislation that won't happen.  
   ln this matter as in so many others, extremist ecological ideology has become the enemy of common sense and economic sustainability.
 

RED ELDERBERRY: I'VE GROWN RATHER FOND OF IT

EUROPEAN ELDERBERRY 'BLACK LACE'

RED ELDERBERRY IN FLOWER

AMERICAN ELDERBERRY FLOWER HEAD

Monday, 9:00 AM.  43 degrees F, wind NE, calm to very light.  The sky is completely overcast and it is raining, and we have gotten a third of an inch of rain thus far.  The humidity is 98% and the barometer stands at 29.66".  It looks like it will be a rainy day.  The tree board was to have a work day today but it will be too wet for that.  

   American elderberry, Sambucus canadensis,  is a common, widely distributed shrub of North America to Central America, fairly well known because of the use of its blue- black berries for wine, jams and jellies.  Even the flowers are edible and tasty when dipped in pancake batter and fried.

   Not nearly so well known is the red elderberry, a more northern species that also is an important part of the western montane flora.  It is almost as attractive in flower as the American elderberry, the minute flowers occurring in more compact, cone-shaped umbels than the umbrella-like compound flowers of American elderberry.  And whereas the fruit of the latter species is blue-black, the the fruit of the former is bright red and also edible, although it is quite acid to the taste.  Both species are important wildlife plants, both for browse and for their fruits.  There is some evidence that leaves, stems and roots of both species can be poisonous to humans, but I doubt people would eat those parts so it is not much of a concern..  Elderberry plants have medicinal properties, and were used in a variety of ways by Native Americans.  The central pith of stems and branches is very soft and can easily be removed to make whistles and other useful objects and were so used in the past.  

   Both American and red elderberry are attractive in flower and fruit, as are their pinnately compound leaves.  However, both spread by root suckers and are hard to control in the smaller landscape.  My rule of thumb is, appreciate them in nature if they can be controlled but be careful introducing them.   A case in point is the red elderberry that I have in the backyard.  It grew up between the crevices of a small rock wall and it was so persistent I finally decided that I would let it grow and make use of it rather than to unsuccessfully try to eliminate it.  It is something of an oddity there and I have grown to be rather fond of it.
   The European elderberry, Sambucus nigra,  is also useful for food, wine, and as an anti-viral concoction (long used in folk and herbal medicine) , and there are some very attractive horticultural selections, some with purple leaves and pink-purple flowers, such as 'Black Lace'.
   All in all, the elderberries are interesting and useful plants.

CHOKE CHERRY

CHOKE CHERRY IN BLOOM...

...ATTRACTIVE PAN ICLES OF FLOWERS...

RED-BROWN, SHINY, DOTTED BARK

Sunday, 9:00 AM.  Wind WSW, calm at present.  The sky is mostly cloudy and hazy, but clearing from heavy fog earlier.  It rained about .5" last night and it looks like it will be a drippy day. The humidity is 97% and the barometer is trending down, now at 29.82".  I got all the annual plants for the porch and deck potted yesterday, and got some of the "herb garden" planted, including a coupe of tomatoes.  It isn't finished and the perennial garden needs a lot of weeding, but I am making progress.  All in all, things look nice.  Our Texas family is leaving on Thursday and we still haven't done all the things we wanted to do, but have had a good visit anyway.  Spring is a really busy time for me and I haven't been a very good host.  But we are going to the Legendary Waters Casino at Red Cliff for brunch; at least we feed everyone well.
   Continuing the discussion of native cherries, the choke cherry, Prunus virginiana, is blooming now in our woods edges and along roadsides. It is a suckering shrub or small, multi-trnked tree native to most of North America.  Its flowers are borne in attractive, cylindrical panicles.  The fruit is at first bright red, then ripens to dark red and purple.  The cherries have an acid, sour to bitter taste (thus the name "choke cherry") but become somewhat more palatable when fully ripe.  They are an abundant source of wildlife food but little used for human consumption except occasionally in jams and jellies.  The smooth bark is reddish brown, with many lenticels (small horizontal slit and dots in the bark which function in the exchange of atmospheric gasses). The bark is a distinctive identification characteristic, although it is quite similar in appearance to  the invasive buckthorns.  The buckthorns, however, do not have significant flowers, and their fruit is a blue-black drupe that has three seeds, rather than a single stone as do cherries.
   Wild cherries are quite pretty in bloom, and can be used in a naturalized landscape but are in general difficult to use and to control.  An exception to this statement are the selections of Prunus virginiana 'Canada Red', and 'Schubert', which have purple leaves and have been much touted as street and landscape trees for tough western and northern climates.  I have not had good success with them as they seem to be very prone to black knot of plum, a disfiguring and eventually deadly disease of plums and cherries.  They also sucker from the base of the trunk a lot when young, requiring much pruning.