Another close-up photo for you to analyze and identify:
A more inclusive photo on Monday will solve the mystery. (Sorry for the brevity – I’m on the road and internet access is variable. I’m taking what I can get!)
Enjoy your spring weekend!
Disney and Japanese Beetles
This past weekend I had the opportunity to speak at Epcot Center in Florida. It was, without a doubt, one of the highlights of my career so far. I spoke 6 times over the course of 3 days. The focus of my talk was garden remedies. I started by talking about Paris Green (a good story for next week), then made fun of some of Jerry Baker’s, Myles Bader’s and Joey Green’s recommendations, and then proceeded to talk about which homemade cures do and don’t work and why. … Continue reading this article “Disney and Japanese Beetles”
Another fine product…
I’m spending this week in Palm Desert, CA for a little R&R in the sun. In the morning, with my pot o’ Earl Grey, I read the local paper (The Desert Sun). Last Sunday’s paper provided me with an article about an “intelligent water incubator” (all material in quotes was taken from the article). Pieter Hoff, a “Dutch scientist, author, and major exporter of lilies and flower bulbs” has invented the Waterboxx, which “produces and captures water from the air through condensation and rain.” … Continue reading this article “Another fine product…”
Baffling Daffs
It is daffodil season in the Northern Hemisphere, hurrah! May their blooms shoo away the gray of winter! It is also the season where everybody and their mother writes something about the wonders of the genus Narcissus, so figured I’d join the fray, but with a bit of a chip on my shoulder…
Miss ‘Barrett Browning’ in the Hahn Horticulture Garden at Virginia Tech
I recently read YET ANOTHER article warning against mixing daffodil stems in with other cut flowers due to “harmful effects from the sap”.… Continue reading this article “Baffling Daffs”
Love in Broom
Recently, Rebecca Finneran, an MSU Extension Educator from the Grand Rapids area sent me a cool photo. The tree is a large Norway spruce near the Kent country Extension office.
This is a great example of witch’s broom. Witch’s brooms are growth anomalies that occur on various trees, most commonly conifers, Brooms can be caused be a variety of factors including diseases, aphids, environmental stress and random mutations. In some cases the growth defect is only present when the casual agent, say, a pathogen is present. … Continue reading this article “Love in Broom”
Friday puzzle answer
So many interesting answers to Friday’s puzzle – thanks to all of you for putting out the effort! It most certainly is an abiotic problem – but was it temperature, suggested by Deb? Water, suggested by Foy, Gayle and Ed? Light, suggested by Nancy? My plan was to have an extensive soil test run to address the possibility of pollution (suggested by Jim, Heather and Paul), except we discovered the source of the problem last summer when we finished digging our pond:
As you can see in this photo, we have solid clay about 12″ below the surface. … Continue reading this article “Friday puzzle answer”
Friday quiz time!
Now I could have sworn I’d posted this puzzle before, but after searching through all the previous postings I can’t find it. Here it is.
I planted this Cornus kousa in 1999 (removing the burlap, clay, etc. prior to installing). We removed the turf (still attached to the $(%&$ plastic mesh) and planted the tree in the existing soil. The first photo was taken in 2004, and the second was taken in 2007:
Here are some specifics about what was done to the landscape during this period: we replaced all the turf with wood chips and put in the fence as shown. … Continue reading this article “Friday quiz time!”
Edgeworthia!
Some of my favorite plants are those that “do something” when little else is.
Do we really need more June-flowering perennials? No!
Well, yes. Never mind.
Edgeworthia chrysantha – “Paperbush” is the common name – is a deciduous suckering shrub , native to China. It usually maxes out around 4′ to 5′ tall and as wide. The large, matte bluish-green leaves resemble those of Magnolia virginia in shape and are also a bit silvery on the underside. … Continue reading this article “Edgeworthia!”
Protecting existing trees – what a concept!
I just got back from a trip to Pullman where I guest lecture once a year for the Landscape Plant Management class. It’s also a chance to get some new photos for my Wall-O-Shame. Here’s my latest:
Pin oak (Quercus palustris) doesn’t drop its leaves in the winter – instead, they hang on until the following spring. So it’s really easy to see which part of this tree is alive (i.e., has last year’s leaves). … Continue reading this article “Protecting existing trees – what a concept!”
Friday mystery revealed!
Good sleuthing over the weekend! As John, Karen, Jimbo and Al suggested, there is something stuck on the side of this Norway maple (Acer platanoides, which is Latin for “maple that takes over the planet”). In fact, the reason that I, with my pathetic ID skills, know that it’s a Norway maple is because it’s a nursery tag stuck in the tree:
This type of injury really bugs me, because it’s entirely preventable. One of the cardinal rules of transplanting trees and shrubs is to remove all foreign material. … Continue reading this article “Friday mystery revealed!”