10/02/11 BAYFIELD TREES AND BEAR BAIT

FLOWERING ASH

TYPICAL ASH LEAVES BUT SMALL

GAFTED ABOUT SIX FEET UP THE TRUNK

BLACK WALNUT TREES

LARGE COMPOUND LEAVES AND CORKY BARK

WALNUT

Sunday, 8:30 AM.  48 degrees, wind SW, calm.  The sky is clear with a bit of haze.  The barometer predicts rain but the humidity is low, so certainly not before tonight.  It will be a beautiful day.
    Bayfield, situated on the shores of Lake Superior and sheltered by high bluffs from westerly and northerly winds, has a microclimate that will support many trees and shrubs that are not otherwise hardy at this latitude, but the flowering ash (Fraxinus ornus) growing on the Chamber of Commerce grounds on Manypenny and Broad is truly unusual, as it is listed as hardy to Zone 6, according to the USDA.  It had me stumped for a while because I never would have thought it would grow here, but it is perfectly healthy, about seven inches in diameter at breast height, and perhaps eighteen feet tall.  It is a grafted tree. Although it seems perfectly healthy no one can recall it ever flowering, the buds evidently not surviving the winter, or it is a male tree, not bearing the showy female flowers.  It is native to southern Europe and the shores of the Mediterranean, and in Italy is grown commercially for its encrusted sap, called “manna,” which has herbal properties and is produced by slitting the bark longitudinally and collecting the exuded,  hardened sap.  Anyway, I thought it quite a find, and a testament to the Bayfield climate.
We do not see a great many black walnut trees this far north, but there are three growing along Rittenhouse Ave. just south of 6th St.  The long, pinnately compound (feather-like) leaves have a clear  yellow fall color, and I collected a hat full of the yellow-husked walnuts from under the trees.
    Did you hear about the Idaho rancher who has been indited in federal court for killing a grizzly bear that invaded his yard, and he didn’t know where his children were? Imagine seeing the largest, most dangerous and unpredictable carnivore in the Western Hemisphere skulking about your farmyard, your children who-knows-where;  would you grab your telephone and call the game warden, or would you grab your rifle and defend your family? He shot the bear three times and killed it.  The feds said it would have been O.K. to shoot it twice since it was a threat to human life, but not to shoot it the third time and kill it.  I would think it rather untenable to have a wounded grizzly in one’s back yard.  After all, the bear is not named Ursus horribillus for nothing.  I think perhaps a bureaucrat or two should be used for bear bait next time around.