There is a family story that this particular cactus is cutting of a plant that lived in my great grandparents house in Hartford, Connecticut. This may actually be true; they can be very long-lived and I certainly have no recollection of buying it in a store. They are also popular because they don’t require very much maintenance to survive, although getting them to actually flower at Christmas can be a bit of work.

The so-called Christmas cactus is actually a member of Cactaceae, the cactus family. This is worth noting only because common names can be misleading. For example, the water lily is not a lily. But it is not a desert plant, which to some extent accounts for its more delicate appearance.  Like most cacti, it has no leaves, but instead relies on its green stems for photosynthesis. The stems are flattened into vaguely leaf-like segments joined together like links. The flowers emerge from the joints or the ends of the stems.

The genus Schlumbergera is native to the coastal hills of southern Brazil where it lives in the forest either epiphytically (growing on other plants, as many tropical orchids do) or on exposed bedrock. Both of these habitats are relatively more subject to drying out than other places in a tropical forest, which accounts for this house plants tolerance for neglect.

There are six wild species, but two of them were hybridized in the 19^th century to produce the first of a series of cultivars that are widely sold today. A decline in popularity in the early 20th century led some of the 19th century cultivars to be lost.

S. truncata gives rise to a group of hybrids that have zygomorphic flowers (bilaterally symmetrical) that are borne above the stems and have yellow pollen. The flattened stems have distinct points on their distal ends.

S. russelliana hybrids are referred to as the S. Buckleyi group (after the horticulturist who made the first crosses); the flowers of this group are actinomorphic (radially symmetrical) and hang below the stems. The stem segments lack the spines found in the truncata group.

The S. truncata group cultivars generally flower earlier in the fall and are therefore often referred to as “Thanksgiving cactuses.” The S. Buckleyi group tends to flower in December and January and so is more often called a “Christmas cactus.”

In their native Southern Hemisphere they all flower in May. The reversal of the timing in the Northern Hemisphere is due to its being induced by the seasonal shortening of days and lengthening of nights. It is the manipulation of this sensitivity that is the key to getting your house plant to live up to its common name.

My Christmas cactus spent last winter in the basement and didn’t flower at all. In fact, by the time I cleared the cobwebs off of it in May most of it was dead and even the weeds that had sprung up in it during its sojourn outside the previous year had dried up. I gently pulled off the withered stems of the cactus until it was mostly a woody stump with a few green segments remaining and put it outside.

It lived on the back deck between May and October getting full sun only very briefly (probably less than two hours) for part of the summer. It generally received only strong indirect light, which turns out to be exactly what this forest plant prefers. It recovered remarkably, with each bole of its woody stump sending a a few new stems that grew six to eight inches in a season.

I brought it inside in October before the first hard frost and put it in a cool nook that received indirect light most of the day (it faces northeast). It wasn’t particularly dark at night however, because the street lights shown into the room, but there was no overhead indoor light to turn on. In order to induce flowering horticulturalists recommend that a cactus be kept in absolute darkness for 12 to 14 hours for at least eight days in a row sometime in the fall.

It is also recommended that the plant we kept in a relatively small pot in a mixture of potting soil and either sand or vermiculite so that it never stays soaked for very long. Some sources recommend letting the plant dry out a bit in order to induce flowering, but other seemingly more scientific references suggest that there is nothing to this.

At any rate, my Christmas cactus, which is one of the S. Buckleyi cultivars is sending out several pink flowers right now. That is, it isn’t covered with blooms, but only gamely going through the motions, which given the only incidental “care” it’s received is about what can be expected.

The sacred lotus

Nelumbo nucifera is an emergent aquatic plant; it is rooted in the mud below standing water, but its leaves and flowers are borne up above the water’s surface, sometimes several feet above, on tough fibrous stems. Asian cultures found metaphorical resonance in the fact that it is easy to bend a lotus stem, but very difficult to break it. The flowers at Littletree are a luminous white tinged heavily with pink. The blossoms of lotus can vary in color from white through shades of pink and into creamy yellow. They can be 8 to 12 inches across with curved satiny petals.
When the petals fall away after fertilization an architecturally complex seed pod is revealed. The structure is a fluted, inverted cone surmounted by a flat plate dotted with large circular holes. While the flower of a lotus superficially resembles a water lily, there are several differences. The lily, for example, has no equivalent to the ligneous seed pod of the lotus. In addition, water lilies either float on the water’s surface (Nymphaea) or are held a few inches above it (Nuphar). Lily leaves float on the water surface (“lily pads”) and are not held above as lotus leaves are.

Nelumbo lutea seed pod

The lotus suspended above the water of life.

There is a North American lotus (Nelumbo lutea), which is native to the southeastern United States and the Caribbean. The flower is smaller than the Asian species and more delicate. Like the Asian species all parts of the plant are edible, so tribal people extended its range northward during the pre-Columbian period.
The lotus is prominent in Asian religions. Much symbolic meaning is imputed to the lotus based on its growth habit.  The differences between lotus and water lilies were noted; the way the lotus leaves and flowers are held so regally above the water. “In Buddhism, lotus flowers mean purity of speech, mind and body rising above the waters of desire and attachment.” Buddhism holds that there are five different colored lotus flowers, pink, blue, red, white and purple, with red being an overstatement of their natural variation and the purple and blue referring to the Egyptian lotus (Nelumbo caerulea), which spread across south Asia from the Nile to Thailand in early historical times.
The white lotus “symbolizes Bodhi, the state of total mental purity and spiritual perfection, and the pacification of our nature.” The red lotus “symbolizes the original nature of the heart (hrdaya). It is the lotus of love, compassion, passion, activity and all the qualities of the heart.” The pink lotus “is the supreme lotus, generally reserved for the highest deity, sometimes confused with the white lotus it is the lotus of the historical Buddha.”
The blue lotus “is the symbol of the victory of the spirit over the senses, of intelligence and wisdom, of knowledge. It is always represented as a partially opened bud, and (unlike the red lotus) its centre is never seen.” Some references do not even mention the purple lotus. “This is the mystic lotus, represented only in images belonging to a few esoteric sects. The flowers may be in full bloom and reveal their heart, or in a bud.”
The physical grace and size of the lotus, and that it appears to be almost suspended above the water, inspired the spiritual meaning given to the flowers. This combination of beauty and symbolic weight makes the plant a popular one to cultivate.  It can be grown from seed or from the rhizomes that allow it to spread invasively once it is established.
Famously lotus seeds are viable for a very long time if they are kept in a cool dry place (which only adds to the mystical reputation). Seeds over a thousand years old have been found in Chinese tombs and been made to germinate.
The procedure associated with getting the seeds to grow are specific but not particularly onerous. One interesting aspect of the process is the necessity for abrading both ends of the seeds in order to break through the tough outer hull and allow water into the germ. Once treated the seeds are placed in a glass of water, and the fluid should be replaced daily (it will become cloudy). They should begin to grow in less than a week.
Once the seed has started to grow it can be treated in a couple of different ways, depending on whether or not  you have a water garden. The seedlings can be transferred to large pots filled with “gardening media.” These pots should not have holes in them; to say that this plant likes wet feet is an understatement.
But the proper place for a lotus is in a pond. After they are planted in pots or tubs these can be sunk into the water body. Unlike water lilies, lotus roots do not like to be very far below the water’s surface, only about 6 inches.
They will die back completely in the fall and may take some time to begin growing again in the spring (again with the mystery), but has the Newfield lotus pond shows, the Asian lotuses can be grown in temperate climates.

Just a little Gothic: Princeton

The “Ivy League” was originally a sports arrangement, existing unofficially in the 19th century, getting its name in the 1930s and finally coming into formal existence in 1954. The seven of the eight schools included – Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Brown, Yale , Columbia, Princeton, and Cornell universities – were founded during the Colonial period (Cornell as founded immediately after the American Civil War). Their campuses were indeed distinguished by buildings covered with ivy. There were even annual ceremonies during the 19th century during which ivy was planted next to the walls of academic buildings.
Although the Ivy League is technically a sports agreement, because it was made among the oldest, most prestigious schools in the country the term ‘Ivy League’ has always connoted social elitism and a high standard of academic excellence. At various times Fordham, Georgetown, Rutgers, Syracuse, the University of Pittsburgh, and even the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) and the naval academy (Annapolis) were grouped with what are now considered the canonical eight.
Apparently if a building was covered with ivy, it meant that it had been there for some time and that implies continuity, stability and, by virtue of these characteristics, quality. Perhaps letting ivy grow all over your infrastructure also suggested a certain indifference to worldly concerns.

Hedera helix, English ivy

The “real” ivies, the genus Hedera, are members of the ginseng family, Araliaceae, and they are widespread in Europe, Asia and the “Macaronesia” islands off the coast of Europe and North Africa. Hedera species are evergreen and will grow up any vertical surface was extending aerial roots that attach to the surface. Stone surfaces are actually slowly torn apart by the ivy and it isn’t really a very good maintenance plan to allow Hedera to grow on built structures.

Parthenocissus tricuspidata, Boston ivy

Landscape designers very much discourage the use of Hedera, and instead advocate planting of Parthenocissus species if one desires greenery on a wall, pergola, or arch. P. tricuspidata or Boston ivy is deciduous and attaches to surfaces with small circular pads at the end of tendrils. The pads are glued to the surface by calcium carbonate secreted by the plant. While this makes white deposits across the surface of the building stone or brick, it doesn’t not disintegrate it.
Although called Boston ivy for its ubiquity in that city P. tricuspidata is native to eastern Asia and is not a true ivy, but instead is related to grapes. It’s leaves somewhat resemble those attached to grape vines, but they are three-lobed rather than five-lobed. Hedera helix (often called English ivy) has five leaflets on young shots, but has smooth, almost leathery five pointed leaves arranged alternately on mature stems.

Parthenocissus quinquefolia, Virginia creeper

The native Parthenocissus quinquefolia or Virginia creeper has five leaflets and is sometimes confused with poison ivy, which has three. The leaves of both vines turn a brilliant red in the fall before they drop. Like P. tricuspidata Virginia creeper attaches to surfaces with adhesive discs and doesn’t damage structures. Both vines, however, grow rapidly and may become too heavily to be supported by some trellis. Maintenance experts recommend killing the vines by cutting it off at the base. The carbonate on the discs will dissolve after the plant dies, making it easier to remove and preventing damage to the supporting surface.
All three of these vines produce berries that are consumed by birds and this is their primary means of distribution. Hedera actually flowers very late in the autumn and into early winter. The small five-petaled flowers are borne at the end of stiff pedicels that radiate out in all directions from a central stem. The berries are greenish-black and poisonous to humans.
Parthenocissus flowers are greenish, small and borne in clusters. Unlike Hedera, it flowers in the spring. The berries are small and bluish, betraying the genus’s relation to grapes.

Hedera gone wild in Maryland

Hedera is considered an invasive species where it grows in the United States. It is actually banned from the state of Oregon. Because it grows rapidly and is an evergreen, it tends to shade out all other plants, creating ‘ivy barrens.’ Even so, landscapers looking for a low-maintenance ground cover may plant it to fill a space and cut down on their weeding.

Staghorn in the fall

The most common sumac in the northeastern United States is the staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina). The leaves of staghorn sumac are pinnately compound and each leaflet is coarsely toothed. It is an early succession species that is common along roadsides and in old fields and clearings. Staghorn sumac is dioecious (separate male and female plants) and the female plants carry clusters of drupes that are collectively referred to as “bobs.” They give the staghorn species its name; R. typhina bobs are particularly dense, erect, resembling a buck in velvet, albeit bright red.

The seeds are eaten and distributed by birds. Once a plant grows from a seed it will often spread vegetatively in every direction from rhizomes. These clonal copses are particularly striking in old fields where they may expand radially in a nearly perfect circle. The plants decrease in size toward the periphery (because they are younger), giving the whole clone the appearance of a leafy dome in the warmer months.

Bob

Like many early succession species, sumac grows rapidly, often adding a couple of feet in height during one growing season. The wood is soft, weak and greenish-brown. The central pith in smaller trees and large branches in a punky substance that can be pushed or scraped out with a fingernail. It’s frailty makes the wood commercially useless, but the strong banding of the annual rings gives the wood a striking appearance when it is turned into bowls or carved to make ornaments and tool handles.

Many people are leery of sumac because its similar cousin Rhus vernix, poison sumac, is well known for the nasty rash it imparts upon contact with skin. The “poison” members of Rhus are sometimes placed in their own genus, Toxicodendron, and these include poison ivy (Rhus toxicodendron, or Toxicodendron radicans) and poison oak (R. diversiloba).

In my own experience poison sumac is more virulent than poison ivy. I accidentally touched a poison sumac plant being grown in a botanical garden on the campus of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, and the reaction was an immediate tingling sensation that lingered for hours even though I immediately drench the hand in cold water from a nearby tap. In contrast, a poison ivy rash may not manifest for hours after contact.

Poison sumac

Luckily, poison sumac is rare, confined to extremely wet areas in swamps, marshes, and along the banks of slow rivers. Although its leaves are also pinnately compound, the fruit is white instead of red and the bobs are not as compact as those of R. thyphina.

The global distribution of Rhus is interesting in that the highest concentration of species are in North America and Africa (rather than on adjacent continents). In the Middle East the bobs of R. coriaria are used to make a spice that is used somewhat like paprika, sprinkled over fish, chicken, and hummus, giving it a tart flavor. In North America, staghorn sumac bobs are soaked in cold water and then squeezed to create a tart liquid. When sugar is added it called “Indian lemonade.” North American tribal people mixed pieces of the drupes with tobacco to create smoking blends.

Because of its impressive fall foliage, architectural manner of growth, and its tendency to rapidly fill a space provided, sumac is sometimes used in designed gardens. The individual flowers are small and greenish-white, but the spikes are several inches long and often abundant on the plant, making an impressive show, especially from a distance.

However, the clonal nature of the growth can cause the plant to become invasive and it is difficult to eradicate once established. Every piece of the clone has to be dug up and removed or growth will resume soon and rapidly.

]]> http://flowers4u.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/bobs-your-uncle-sumac/feed/ 0 flowers4u staghorn-sumac-fall staghorn_sumac_fruit tove4969 http://flowers4u.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/the-strangling-stranger/ http://flowers4u.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/the-strangling-stranger/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:54:34 +0000 Bill Chaisson http://flowers4u.wordpress.com/?p=651 Continue reading →]]> The bittersweet vine turns out to be one of those plants that you would like to love, but really shouldn’t. The native species Celastrus scandens has been declining in abundance for many years, and it is in danger of being replaced by an introduced foundation plant called C. orbiculatus.

American bittersweet in natural habitat

The native, which is sometimes known as “false bittersweet” to distinguish it from a nightshade (Solanus dulcamara) that also has red berries, is associated with riparian (riverside) habitats. Both the false and the true bittersweets are poisonous to humans if eaten.

Articles in the popular press have attributed the decline of the native to greater hardiness of the invasive species, which produces more berries, more often and are even a brighter shade of red than those of C. scandens. All of these factors make it more likely to be eaten by birds and dispersed to new locations.

Once C. orbiculatus has been transported from the managed to the unmanaged landscape it out-competes the North American species through its ability to absorb a broader spectrum of light and photosynthesize more effectively, and – in the final insult – to cross pollinate with the native, producing fertile hybrids that dissipate the gene pool of C. scandens.

The two species (in their unhybridized form) can be told apart by the presence of small thorns on the stem of the introduced taxon. They are not sharp and are distributed at wide intervals along the vine. The leaves of C. scandens and C. orbiculatus are similar, but in addition to having brighter red berries, the Asian vine carries fruit along its entire length, while the American vine has berries only at the ends of the branches.

Asian bittersweet with axial flowers (eventually berries)

Both bittersweet vines twine around whatever they are growing on. Eventually, like most woody twining vines, they will strangle and kill their host.

In our meadow garden, which is now five years old, bittersweet (the exotic) appeared two years ago. This year the plants have grown two or three feet, twining around the nearest herbaceous forb (which in most cases is a goldenrod plant in this meadow). Since I scythe the entire area and then mow it each November, nearly all the growth of these fast growing vines is accomplished in one growing season.

The extraordinary amount of rain that we received in April and May, followed by the record-breaking heat in June and July, has caused the goldenrod to stand taller this year than in any previous year. The goldenrod is the only forb that is not cropped by the deer, so it has grown unhindered and some species are now over five feet tall. The bittersweet at one location as actually climbed nearly to the top of the goldenrod and then started to grow laterally across the “canopy.”

Fast growing vine in a meadow garden

According to one source, C. orbiculatus was first planted in the New York Botanical Garden in 1897. It has spread throughout the New York City area from there by natural dispersal, but it is present across the northeastern United States because it has become a very popular ornamental.

The berries are undeniably beautiful and the rate of growth insures that the homeowner will have an impressive amount of vegetation covering an arbor, pergola or other structure in no time at all. The berries remain on the plant through the winter providing a welcome spray of color when there are few other natural sources of it.

Wreaths made out of bittersweet are a popular autumn and winter decorative item. They are commonly hung on front doors, over mantles, or wrapped around table centerpieces. The Mother Earth News (“the guide to living wisely”) surprised me by giving its readers instructions as to how to harvest bittersweet. This lengthy article included no admonition to harvest in a sustainable manner or to “forage” only where you had permission to do so (i.e., not in state parks). Oddly, it was a penny-pinching site that counseled the reader to harvest vines from their own gardens.

Although I didn’t find reference to over-harvesting as a contributing factor to the decline of native bittersweet, this is often the case with other plants that are used either in the ornament-making trade or in the herbal medicine business. So if you decide to make a wreath from bittersweet, learn to distinguish the Asian from the North American species, use the former, and rip the rest of the vine out of the ground.

Fairy thimbles; harebell at far right

Harebells (Campanula rotundifolia) got this vernacular name from the folk belief that the flowers actually rang like bells to warn hares against approaching predators. Other names suggest a connection to magic: witch’s thimble or fairies’ thimbles, fairy bells or devil’s bells. The association with the “Good Folk” means that harebells were rarely used for herbal medicine because disturbing the plant in any way could offend the fairies.

The old vernacular names for Campanula (probably) represent actual pre-Christian pagan beliefs, but interestingly at least one source refers to the Victorians’ belief that fairies slept in the bells. The Victorian return to pagan beliefs came in the wake of the Romantic revival of the early 19th century that also expressed itself in the emergence and popularity of Pre-Raphaelite painting with its frequent depiction of Classical mythological figures and Arthurian personages, who while nominally Christian, seemed to live a world full of pagan hangovers like Merlin and the Lady of the Lake.

"Bluebells of Scotland"

In Scotland it is called the “bluebell” and the plant is closely associated with the clan MacDonald, which even uses it to make a dye for one of the colors of its tartan.

There are so many species introduced to North America from Europe that it is almost surprising to run across a Holarctic species like C. rotundifolia; it occurs naturally in both the eastern and western portions of the northern hemisphere. Although plants introduced to North America by early colonists sometimes worked their way into tribal lore, the harebell has a place there because is was already present when the first North Americans walked over the Bering Land Bridge during the last Ice Age.

The Haida, a tribe of the Pacific Northwest, call the harebell “the blue rain flower,” telling their children that picking it would make it rain. Given that the Haida’s homeland (the Haida Gwaii) is the site of a temperate rainforest, there seems to have been a lot of flower picking going on. A similar effect was attributed to the Haida’s “red rain flower,” more widely known as the columbine (Aquilegia formosa).

The Dine (Navajo) have no fear of the fairy folk but, as any reader of Tony Hillerman novels knows, they are afraid of witches and suspect their presence whenever things go awry in an inexplicable way. According to Alchemy Works (alchemy-works.com), the Dine picked the plant and rubbed it on their bodies to ward off witchcraft. Interestingly the Dine also believe in shape-shifting, which is also a part of the pagan tradition of the British Isles, where the sap of harebells was used by witches to turn themselves into hares.

Harebells are also called “round-leaved bellflower,” which at first glance is an odd name. The plant often grows in meadows, so usually only the top two-thirds of it is visible. These leaves are narrow, almost needle-like, on this part of the plant. It is only the basal leaves that are bluntly toothed and rounded, resembling miniature colts-foot leaves.

The flowers begin to appear in June and the blooms continue through September. They are more conate when they first open, the teeth at the end of the fused petals pointing straight out. As the flower ages the tips of the teeth curve outward and backward.

The invasive bellflower

This is an adaptable plant, growing in a variety of habitats over a wide geographical range. But in suburban or more disturbed settings the European or rampion bellflower (C. rampuncoloides) is likely to be found instead. The flowers are a similar color, but the teeth are longer and narrower. The leaves are broader than the needles of rotundifolia and are more clearly arranged in a helix going up the stem. The flowers wind up the stem as well and are mounted closer to it than those of the native Campanula. Rampion bellflower is apparently thought of as invasive and is difficult to eradicate because it has an 18-inch long taproot.

Elderberry flowers

The flowers of Sambucus Canadensis (in the older convention of  Latin names for plants, if the trivial name is a proper name, the capital is retained, but for the names of animals it is not; this is not always observed and may be arcane), the common elderberry of the eastern United States are flat, white, corymbs.

The geometry of inflorescences is one of those things that some people can keep track of and some people can’t. I am in the latter camp. I am forever forgetting the difference between a corymb and an umbel. Both form flat flower heads, but the umbel sends up unbranched pedicels to the flowers. In a corymb the pedicels are branched.

The genus Sambucus in North America is divided into black-berried species and red-berried species. The black-berried taxa tend to live in warmer climates and flower in corymbs, while the red-berried taxa are found in colder climates and carry their flowers in panicles.

Both panicles and corymbs are indeterminate inflorescences, which is to say that there is no terminal flower. In a corymb the more basal pedicels grow longer than the more distal ones, so they all end up shooting out flowers on more or less the same plane. Not so the panicle, which takes a more cylindrical or globular form.

S. Canadensis is thought by some systematists to be conspecific with S. nigra, the common European elderberry. Both of them are widely used by folkloric herbalists for a variety of purposes, but all parts of the plants except the flowers and the ripe berries are poisonous, containing cyanogenic glycoside sambunigrin. The bark harbors calcium oxalate crystals, which cause sores and numbing if ingested and can be fatal.

Fanta Shokata

The edible portions of the plant, the flowers and berries, are more popular in Europe, where soft drinks are actually made from the flowers. Oddly, I found conflicting information as to whether Sambucus is used to make the Italian liqueur, Sambuca. The principle flavor of this apertif is star anise and the website of the Molinari company, which has made the liqueur for generations, makes no mention of elderberries as an ingredient.

On the other hand, Romana Sambuca is quite clear about the involvement of Sambucus: “Romana Sambuca is made by taking a root of a liquorice shrub (a shrub that grows native to Asia and southern Europe) and extracting the glycyrrhizic acid, this is then infused with Witch Elderbush.”

The name “witch elderbush” refers to the folkloric medicinal uses of the shrub. All the advice at this blog refers to using the berries themselves and it specifically warns readers not to use the roots, leaves or bark of the plant, even if your reading of Indian herb lore suggests that you do so.

Elderberries

The cyanide that is produced by metabolizing the glucoside is apparently so abundant in the wood that one source cautions against the practice of using hollowed out stems to make whistles for children. Another source suggests using ointments and poultices made from the bark and leaves on burns and other topical problems, but most of the information conveyed concerns the use of the berries and flowers, which are generally thought to be helpful in digestion and dermatological problems, respectively.

Compared to Europe, in the United States the use of elderberries to make jams, preserves or wine is considered somewhat bucolic. Elderberry wine is almost the byword for sweet homemade jugged beverages, and I have always found the jams to be very seedy and to have a very mild flavor, albeit a beautiful red-tinged blue color.

Large landscape tree

Most of my customers were retired people who had simply aged out of taking care of their own lawns. One exception to this was the doctor that my mother worked for, Pat O’Daly. He owned a large Modern house set on a steep hillside in Garrison, New York.

The driveway wound up the side of the hill between two terraces of lawn. The lower terrace along Rt. 9D was nearly an acre and the smaller one directly in front of the house was perhaps a quarter of an acre. About once a week through the warmer months I would ride my bicycle the nine miles down to Garrison, push a mower around this mammoth lawn (it was too steep in places to use a riding mower) for about six hours, and then ride back. I was in pretty good shape back then.

Tulip like flower

At the south end of the larger lawn stood a tall, statuesque tree with furrowed gray bark and palmate leaves rather like a maple’s, but with four lobes instead of five. One week arrived to find it covered with greenish-yellow flowers shaped like tulips with orange centers. I had encountered my first Liriodendron tulipifera, also known variously as the tulip-tree, tulip poplar, yellow poplar, whitewood and about a dozen other regional names.

As it turns out the tulip tree is a significant canopy tree through much of its range, reaching its greatest size in the Ohio Valley and the foothills of the Appalachians in North Carolina. It can grow to be over 150 tall, which is tall for an eastern hardwood. It has an interesting northern boundary to its geographic distribution; it creeps into the Ontario lakeplain from the west along the lowlands and ranges across central Pennsylvania to New Jersey, but is not found on much of the Allegheny Plateau with the exception of the relatively broad valley associated with Cayuga Lake. (We have them here in Trumansburg, at least one in the “old growth” stand called Smith Woods.)

In New England the northern edge of the range corresponds almost exactly with the Massachusetts-Connecticut boundary, but it manages to range halfway up into Vermont along the Hudson-Champlain lowland. There is apparently pollen and fossil leaf evidence that Liriodendron was more widespread before the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene Epoch.

Palmate leaves

Most tulip trees (as I tend to refer to them) have very straight trunks and in a forest setting their lowest limbs tend to be very high, even relative to the trees around them. For this reason it is unusual to see the “tulip” flowers unless the tree is a landscape planting like the one that I first encountered in Garrison. There, in the open grown setting, the lower limbs were low enough to the ground that I had to duck under them as I mowed the grass. In the winter the crowns are distinguished by the upright, cone-like fruits, which develop from the flowers.

The flowers themselves are about three inches across with six waxy “tepals.” (Magnolias are primitive plants and don’t have differentiated petals and sepals.) The pistil (which, upon pollination turns into the winter cone) is large and resembles those of other members of the magnolia family. The fruits of the tulip tree also resemble those of many tree magnolias (e.g. Magnolia grandiflora). Magnolias have been around longer than bees, and their flowers are adapted to pollination by beetles. Bees, however, do pollinate tulip trees and the honey produced from the flowers is said to be better for baking than for “table honey.”

Tulip trees grow rapidly and will sprout readily from seeds. This quality, in addition to its flowers and erect geometry make it a fairly popular tree to plant in designed landscapes. At the northern edge of its range it is not a particularly common tree in the forest, but apparently pure stands of it occur in the south, where it is an important lumber tree. The wood is soft and similar to that of white pine in terms of strength and easy of working.

Taisia Alfonina still life (Russian; 1964)

The pussy willow is generally associated with early spring, but for the British, Russians and the Poles, more specifically associated with (the greater sense of) Easter, and most of all with the ritual of Palm Sunday. Palm fronds were hard to come by in northern Europe in the days before people ate oranges out of season, and from Baltic Russia to the British Isles pussy willows “bloom” roughly synchronous the Sunday before the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (i.e. Palm Sunday), so they were at hand and attractive.

In addition to subbing for palms on Palm Sunday, willows figure in Easter Monday tradition in Poland (and in the United States where there are large Polish populations). In a holdover from their pagan past, the Poles practice a courting ritual on the day after Easter, which involves boys dumping water on unmarried girls and switching them with willow wands. Dyngus and Smigus were twin pagan gods associated with water and lightning, respectively. The dumping of water is the predominant tradition, which led to calling the holiday “Dyngus Day.” (Happily for young women the Smigus part of the “game” – the aggressive brandishing of willow wands – has not widely persisted.)

Male catkins

“Pussy willow” is not a single species of willow, but rather a group of taxa that produce densely fibrous, gray catkins immediately before blooming. In Europe Salix caprea, the “goat willow,” is the species most often referred to as the pussy willow, while in North America it is Salix discolor. Several other species, however, produce similar looking catkins.

Willows are dioecious (“two houses”), which is to say that male and female flowers are carried on different plants in a population. The “pussies” are the male catkins in Salix species. “Catkin” itself is borrowed from the Dutch katteken, or kitten.

French pun

Pussy willows grow as many-trunked shrubs, generally in wet places. They are probably most noticeable during the catkin stage, which are visible before leaves emerge on the willows or on anything around them. Depending on the warmth of the days, the catkins can remain gray and furry for days to weeks before the golden flowers burst out of them. On the male plants these are staminate flowers; they have only stamens, no pistils. The reverse is true on the female plants.

After they leaf out willows turn into a fairly anonymous mass of foliage lining streams and creating islands of greenery in wet meadows. Without their distinctive catkins, they are unlikely to be referred to as “pussy willows,” but instead for the rest of the year the same plants will be called “goat willows” or whichever species they may be.

Dried arrangements

In March and early April the pussy willows can be collected and brought inside as a spring display. They are weedy shrubs and will last quite a while in a vase full of water. In fact, they may eventually burst into bloom in a warm house. If you have a case of spring fever in January or February, you can even bring dormant branches indoors and force them to produce catkins well before they appear on the shrubs outdoors. They can also be put in vases without water and will make attractive dried arrangements as well.

Pussy willows may even begin to send out roots in the vase. If you had to go over hill and dale to collect your bouquet and would rather have the source near at hand in the future, simply stick the wands in the ground and they are likely to grow. If this is done in the early spring, then it isn’t even necessary to wait for roots to form. A foot-long pencil-thick cutting from the most recent year’s growth will readily start a new plant if stick in the ground.

This is a potentially invasive shrub; they spread by their roots and will form a dense clump above the ground and invade septic systems and water mains below ground. On the other hand, the catkins are a preferred source of food for several bird species, including ruffed grouse, and with proper pruning can form a dense barrier very quickly (even during the leaf-less winter) for those looking for a “green fence.”

Ryukyu Islands

The natural habitat of what has come to be known as the “Easter lily” is along the rocky shorelines of a subtropical chain of islands that forms the eastern boundary of the East China Sea. The Ryukyu Islands arc between Kyushu in Japan and Taiwan with the largest and most well known of the chain being Okinawa. (The Chinese refer to them as the Liu-Chiu archipelago.)

The cult of the Virgin Mary, which took hold in the Byzantine Empire after the 5th century, blossomed in western Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries, when her more regal attributes were emphasized. In the later Gothic period of the Middle Ages the depictions of Mary shifted to emphasize her role as the mother of God. Coincidently it was during this period on the other side of Asia that China under the Ming Dynasty invaded the Ryukyu Islands and turned them into a vassal state.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Mary Nazarene"

Depictions of Mary often feature white lilies. It was written that the tears she shed during the Passion of Christ fell to the ground and sprang up as lilies. The lily in Mary’s arms or at her feet is, of course, not Lilium longiformis, which was still growing unknown a world away in the western Pacific. The white-blossomed wild lily of the Middle East and southeastern Europe is Lilium candidum, also known as “the Madonna’s lily.” The plant explorer Carl Peter Thunberg brought L. longiformis back to England in 1819. By that time the Ryukyus had been paying tribute to the Japanese shogun for nearly 200 years. In 1853 L. longiformis was carried to Bermuda and cultivated extensively. On March 31, 1854 (157 years ago today) Commodore Matthew Perry sailed U.S. naval ships into Tokyo harbor ending 215 years of isolation. Later in the 19th century under the Meiji government Japan would annex the island chain.

In the 1880s Mrs. Thomas Sargent of Philadelphia visited Bermuda and fell in love with L. longiformis. She brought bulbs home with her and gave them to William Harris, a local nurseryman. Harris began forcing the plant – which naturally blooms in mid-summer – to flower in the spring to coincide with Easter. The white lily of medieval portraits of Mary now had a stand-in, the “Bermuda lily,” to symbolize the miracle of the Resurrection in the drawing rooms of the United States.

Lilium longiformis

In 1898 a virus wiped out the commercial growers of L. longiformis in Bermuda and the Japanese, in what would turn out to be the waning days of the Meiji oligarchy, took over commercial production of this plant from their southern annexed territory. The plant is often described as “native to Japan,” the Ryukyu Island tribal people would take umbrage to this remark. This is rather like describing a plant found in Hawaii as “native to the United States.”

In 1919 Louis Houghton, a U.S. soldier stationed in Japan during World War I, returned home to Oregon with a suitcase full of L. longiformis and distributed to growers in the region along the coast on the border with California. The cultivation of what had come to be known as “Easter lilies,” spread in the United States, but sales were still dominated by Japan until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Harbor-Brookings bench growing area

Many American hobbyists became commercial growers and the cultivation spread from Vancouver to San Diego. Since the end of World War II the number of growers dwindled and their extent has focuses to the original area on the California-Oregon border, namely the Harbor-Brookings bench of Southwest Curry County, Oregon and the Smith River area of Northwest Del Norte County, California, where about 10 growers produce about 11.5 million plants per year (1996).

It is an impressive feat to get a summer-blooming lily to flower precisely on a holiday that arrives on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. The process begins with vernalization (exposure to cold, moist conditions) followed by greenhouse forcing. When Easter comes early and six weeks of cooling is difficult to fit into the schedule, after the plant shoots appear they can be exposed to artificially long days to speed their maturation. The next stage brings the plant to “bud initiation,” which should be achieved by late January. The buds should reach about 1 inch in length by the first Sunday in Lent. When the oldest buds on the plant are in the “puffy white” stage, the Easter lilies are brought to market about a week before Easter (Palm Sunday).