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| COMMON ALDER |
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| CONES AND DORMANT CATKINS |
A common sight in the winter in the Northland is the shrubby or small-tree-like common alder, Alnus incana (sub species rugosa), in the Corylaceae, the beech family. It is also known locally as tag alder and speckled alder, and is a plant of wet areas and roadside ditches. In the winter it stands out because of its pendulous, hanging dormant male catkins and last season's empty, dry, cone-like fruiting structures. Its bark is quite attractive, looking very much like cherry bark; dark, smooth, with very obvious lenticels (the "speckled" name). The native alder suckers too much to be of much use in landscaping and is not easily available in the nursery trade. It can of course be used effectively in landscape restoration and native landscapes. Alders are nitrogen fixing plants, and enrich the soil where they grow,
The European white alder, A. glutinosa, is more tree-like and is being used to some extent as a small street tree but I have no experience with it. There is also a native, A. viridis, the green alder, a shrub of the shores of Lake Superior with which I am not familiar but will keep an eye out for.
We watched the opening of the Olympics last night in Sochi, Russia. It was beautiful, impressive, and interminable. Its main objective was the glorification of Putin, the Russian dictator, and the diminished but still dangerous Russian empire. It purported to tell a thousand years of Russian history, and that's about how long it seemed to take to tell it. If anyone has any doubts about the politics and direction of the Russian state, one only needs to listen to its' national anthem, the musical score of which is unabashedly the old Communist Internationale.
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