September 10th, 2009: Redwood Weekend

I spent this past weekend travelling with friends. We drove north. North to Eureka. We made plans too close to the holiday, and so instead of camping in a pristine redwood forest we ended up really roughing it at a KOA. Ping-pong, tetherball, and $6 for a bundle of wood. The forest from which we could have obtained logs were kept out by a high fence. Made out of wood. It was strange.

Outside of the KOA fence and slightly north and south on the 101 there were some real trees. Real big ones. We spent a small amount of time putzing around Humboldt Redwoods State Park, home of the Avenue of the Giants.

One of the days we sallied up the 101 to Arcata Community Forest. I must say, it was a real hidden gem. I was thinking originally that we would truck it to Redwoods National Park, but I’m so happy that we ended up at the much less famous community forest. Winding loops of trails were enough to get us into areas where we hardly saw anyone else. It was a small forest in comparison to some other regional ones, but large enough for 6 fairly competent (?) people to get slightly lost in.

It was my first time in the presence of the mighty coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens). It was impressive and stunning. It was hard to understand. Sometimes I feel like a stranger in the wilderness, and sometimes I feel as though I am a part of it. This experience was the former. The redwoods were beautiful, but also somewhat alienating. I felt like a small town girl in the big city, but I was really a prairie girl in a towering redwood forest. There was so much going on above my head it felt as though I was being looked down upon. And I don’t mean all of this in a bad way. It was humbling to be in the presence of such ancient giants.

January 10th, 2009: Catalpa!

My friend Lindsey and I took a stroll at the National Arboretum. Our mission: to start a twig collection! For the most part it was harder than I thought it would be. Both of us assumed that native trees would be prevalent and that many would be labeled. Well, a lot of trees were labeled (although often not the ones we were really curious about), but the arboretum was probably just more than half-full of native trees. The other trees were Asian ornamentals, European hybrids and the like. We were also surprised at the lack of “big” trees—most of the trees seemed to be adolescents at best, not in the tallness of their prime.

 

But times are a-changing. Wouldn’t it be great if the arboretum made a move towards more native plants?

 

As Lindsey and I added to our fledgling collection we stumbled upon a familiar tree, the Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa). It’s a close relative of the Southern Catalpa, but as my tree-guide Lindsey pointed out, a Southern Catalpa’s bean pods (aka “Indian cigars”) won’t be longer than the length of a pencil. Northern Catalpa has much longer pods and larger flowers in spring. Overall it is a much hardier plant, which is why it is sometimes referred to as “Hardy Catalpa”.

 

I’m excited to learn my trees!

December 5th, 2008: Eastern white pine (I think)

I have big old pine trees on my block. My neighborhood used to be a tree nursery, which is where we got the name and why all the streets are named after trees. But much cooler than all that is that we have beautiful trees all over the neighborhood. They look beautiful covered in snow and towering over the houses.

Over summer while I was in West Virginia we had a microburst in the middle of an already bad storm. Huge gusts of wind ripped through our town (or rather, homestead…it consisted of about 15 trailers and the converted schoolhouse I shared with my coworkers). Most of the trees that fell over were Eastern white pines (Pinus strobus). After one such tree smashed our field vehicle into a pancake with its massive trunk, I learned that white pines are fairly weak trees. Weak when it comes to standing up in storms of course, very strong when it comes to smashing cars.

November 10th, 2008: Fossils outside my office

I took this one on my coffee break. Because yes, now I have coffee breaks. Sigh.

A crisp and sunny fall day yields beaugeous (beautiful/gorgeous) colors. Behold, Ginkgo biloba. The ginkgo tree. It is so pretty and yellow right now. The street I work on is lined with these suckers. Their leaves carpet the ground quite nicely, forming a beaificent (beautiful/magnificent) yellow brick road guiding me to and from the office.

Ginkgo trees are living fossils. They are the only surviving species in a formerly widespread family, Ginkgoaceae. Waaawrarrrrrr! …is the sound that a fossil makes.

These lovely trees come in two forms, male and female. Nobody likes the female trees because they produce a rank smelling fruit. In high school one of my best friends had several female ginkgo trees in her front yard that fruited every few years and dropped the fruit all around the house. I remember walking to her house and getting hit in the face by a wicked smell as I approached her driveway. Not knowing where the odor originated from, I walked up to her house with a total disregard for the offending ginkgo fruit, which dastardly clung to my gym shoes.

I unknowingly tracked the fruit into her house, and upon discovery of this her family broke into a flurry of frustration and chaos. Damn. They rushed like mad rabbits to clean it up, and I learned that some ginkgoes are worse than others. Nevertheless, I still think ginkgo trees are the bomb, males and females alike.