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.