Category: Friday puzzle

Friday quiz – guest inquisitor!

Reader Ginny Stibolt passed this one on to mull over the weekend:

“We stayed at the Llano River State Park in Texas where I spotted this weird growth pattern of a gnarly oak–it’s like a puddle of trunk from which the main trunk arises. The camp host, who seemed to be well informed, said that these were Spanish oaks in the white oak division and that a root disease causes the expansion of the base of the trees. About 1/4 of them, here in the camping area, have this malady and often new sprouts grow from the wide base. Spanish oak does not seem to be the “correct” common name, and in looking at the native oaks for Texas, I couldn’t readily identify it. So a mystery or two…”

 

So what kind of oak is this, and why does it have this weird trunk base?

Ginny has an update, and I’ll post it on Monday.

April foolery revisited

You certainly had fun with this!  Yes, it’s “lucky bamboo,” a name which is completely inappropriate given that it’s not bamboo (but Dracaena sanderiana) and it’s certainly not lucky:

Now “spiral lucky bamboo” is usually dracaena (or as I like to call it “not-bamboo”) that’s been exposed to a unidirectional light source and turned at intervals to create a contorted spiral shape:

These plants, on the other hand, have been cut into straight sections and bound with shiny gold wire in ever increasing lengths so that we have a leaning tower of not-bamboo surrounded by adulating ceramic frogs (good eyes Anne and Jam!).  Given enough time – a few weeks, maybe – whatever architectural appeal this arrangement had will be covered with leafy growth from all those sprouting nodes.

There’s a homework assignment for someone:  buy one of these, then film it under time lapse photography.  If our tech guys ever get our video capability up on this blog, I’ll post them!

Looks like larch!

Great debate on the identity of Friday’s mystery plant! Several of you guessed larch, and this particular one is contorted larch (Larix kaempferi ‘Diane’), a cultivar of Japanese larch:

(As an FYI to a side discussion in the comments, tamarack is the common name for American larch, Larix laricina.)

And the eagle eye award to those of you who saw that YES! WE FINALLY HAVE A SEARCH FUNCTION on the blog! It’s still being tweaked so that the results pages will be a little more sophisticated, but it works. Now you don’t have to sort through hundreds of posts to find that one of Holly’s on pee bales. Or Jeff’s on drunken slugs.

Heck, it’s hellebore!

You were too smart for me this week.  Though my husband was convinced that Friday’s photo was not enough to help identify the plant, JRR, Foy, and an unnamed commenter all recognized hellebore:

Always a welcome sight in the spring.  And don’t be fooled by those old wives’ tales that hellebores don’t like wood chip mulches. These beauties have been in wood chip mulches all their lives, and not only do they do great, their seedlings do as well.

Wet trunk – the whole story

We had a flurry of discussion on this over the weekend. The diversity of possible answers shows you how difficult it is to do diagnosis with only some of the information available. That being said, several of you (Gail, Tom, Dave and Jimbo) all had portions of the problem identified. Here’s the whole picture:

As both trunks of this double-leadered tree have continued to expand in girth, they’ve created the perfect conditions for disease to occur in the narrow constriction between the trunks. Though I’m not a pathologist, I would agree with an initial diagnosis of slime flux.

In addition to the poor structure and disease issues, the location of this tree – next to a street, sidewalk, houses, and across the street from a school – simply shouts for removal before it inevitably fails and causes damage or injury.

Nice job – and thanks for doing your homework over the weekend!

Friday puzzle: wet trunk

Another diagnostic question today.  Below you can see the lower portion of a tree trunk whose left half is obviously wet:

What is directly causing the wetness (in other words, what environmental factor), and can you guess what led to this problem indirectly?

I’ll eliminate some of the obvious possibilities:  it’s not from dog pee, nor is it from a directional sprinkler.  And the answer to the second question is not in this close up photo, but will be revealed on Monday.

Why do I torment you like this?  Well, if nothing else, it gives you an idea of what distance diagnosis can be like – which is what we tend to do more and more, thanks to the internet and digital cameras.  Someone will send a photo of a plant problem and expect us to figure it out, but the answer may lie outside the field of view.

In any case, have fun!

The roots of the rhody problem

There were several good shots at analyzing Friday’s unhappy rhododendron.  Mature leaf size can be determined by light levels, as both Lisa B and Tom &  Paul suggested.  Moving a plant from a low to high light environment could cause this change in leaf size.  This rhododendron hasn’t been recently transplanted, however, so we can eliminate light levels as a cause.  (And there was no other impediment to light, such as the presence of shading plants.)

Lack of nitrogen was mentioned as well; but a lack of nitrogen would have resulted in chlorosis in newer leaves as well as smaller leaf size.  In this case, the new leaves are not chlorotic.  (The chlorosis on the older leaves is probably a phosphate-induced iron or manganese deficiency.)

Foy alluded to issues with water…and indeed that’s what I believe is happening with this rhododendron.  Plants that exhibit smaller mature leaves in subsequent years are often limited by water.  Full turgor is needed to force leaves to expand fully; without this physical pressure from inside, leaves fail to expand and once cell walls have lignified, leaf expanion ceases. 

Lack of sufficient water during leaf expansion could be related to irrigation, though in our wet spring climate this is rarely a factor.  More likely is a problem with the roots themselves.  Definitive diagnosis would require digging up the plant to find out whether its roots are still encased in clay and burlap (my guess) or if something else is restricting their ability to grow beyond the planting hole.