Some Winter Trees

Sometimes trees get a lot harder to identify in the winter but there are some easy ones to notice on winter hikes or drives. Here are my favorites from the area of Maryland where I live.

Holly. There is a holly growing as an understory tree in the forest behind our house. Whether they are in a forest or used as landscaping around houses – their red berries and bright green leaves are a spot of color in the winter landscape. The branches are used in greenery arrangements and garland at Christmas….but watch out for the prickles on the leaf edges.

Sycamore. After the leaves fall, the white inner bark of the sycamores is very striking. They grow quite large along the rivers and streams in our area.

River Birch. Most of the ones I’ve seen have been used as part of a landscape. Their peely bark is full of color in the winter landscape.

White or Paper Birch. The high contrast (black and white) of the bark makes these trees easy to spot.

Bald Cypress. This one not common in our area. We are little too far north. But is survives as a landscape tree. The knees give it away!

Southern Magnolia. The leaves on these trees say green all during the winter: waxy green on top and velvety brown underneath. You made find seed pods on the ground.

Sweet Gum. Sometimes it is easy to identify a tree by what is on the ground. Most Sweet Gum trees are so prolific that there are lots of gum balls around the tree all winter long.

Pressed Leaves

Back in August I trimmed the lower branches from our sycamore and saved some of the leaves by inserting them with paper towels in a book. I rediscovered the books with the pressed leaves yesterday. The leaves had dried retaining their characteristic overall shape. The top side of the leaves was a dull green – darker than the fresh leaves. The underside was lighter and the veins were still easy to spot. Between the veins the leaf was as delicate as tissue paper.

Taking a close up – the veins are brown instead of the light green they were when they were fresh. Sycamore leaves are a little fuzzy on the underside and that still seems to be true for these dried leaves.

There was a tiny leaf that was dominated by the veins that bring the water and nutrients from the soil up to the leaves. The new leaves are structured for their growth throughout the season so their veins always look large in proportion to the size of the leave. If this one would not have been cut it would have increased dramatically in size before the fall.

Sometimes insects cause leaves to take on a lace-like appearance. This leaf might have fallen early even if I had not cut the branch.

The last leaf I photographed was two colors and reminded me of a topological map with mountains and valley – brown rock and green forests.

At first I thought I might try to make Zentangle® patterns on the leaves….now I’m not so sure. They crumb very easily.

Our Sycamore

We have a sycamore tree behind our house. It planted itself near the base of the stairs down to the lawn and I have simply let it grow…trimming off the lower branches so that it would not get in the way when we mow the grass. It will eventually provide shade for the three stories of the house on the west side; it’s tall enough now to shade the first two stories. This week I noticed how thick the fallen leaves were.

Sycamore leaves take a lot longer to degrade than maple or tulip polar – the other trees that drop leaves into our back yard – and they are much larger too. They keep growing from the time they unfold in the spring to the time they fall. They are often bigger than a dinner plate! They have to be raked or they will smother the grass. I got started on it this past weekend but it is quite a job.

The leaves sometimes fall when they are still a bit green…or mottled yellow and brown…or like cracked leather. I liked the color of the mottled leaf still on the tree with the sun shining through it. This is about as pretty as the sycamore leaves get in the fall.

The tree has bark that peels away and leaves the top part of the tree white. It is an easy tree to recognize in the winter

Last year our tree had one seed ball (that I saw); it is showing is maturity this year with many seed balls.

Backyard View - May 2015

The wall of green filled our backyard view in May. At the beginning of the month the maple tree (to the rightside) still held all the season’s samaras. They whirled away with the wind at mid-month as can be send by the image series below taken about a week apart.

The scar from the large branch that fell from the tulip poplar is visible. There is a hole in the green wall high in the tree. It will take several years for the tree to fill the gap.

Last but not least - the sycamore is at its most beautiful this time of year - with unscathed leaves that seem edged with white and seed balls dangling on their long stems.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 7

Last Wednesday was the 7th of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. It was a very rainy day and we didn’t get out of the building for a hike. I took a few pictures under the covered part of the Carriage House patio - of the very wet forest with a hint of green from small leaves just unfurled

And the high contrast of lawn grass with the meadow (I also like the white and black of the birch.

The morning topic was Reptiles and Amphibians….not a topic I know very much about although I do remember some of the frog calls from participating in FrogWatch years ago. I enjoy photographing frogs and tadpoles when I can find them!  Many of the non-native and invasive species are in the state due to the pet trade or hitchhiking of vehicles. Some - like the Burmese python - won’t survive the Maryland winters. Others - like some of the turtles - can survive and thrive in Maryland; some of them can hybridize with native Maryland species. The part of the lecture on salamanders was new to me. There are a lot more salamanders in Maryland than I realized; I’ll add a hike with the instructor to my list of things to do as follow-up to the Master Natural class....since we didn’t get out during the lecture due to weather.

The afternoon was very different from the other classes because the topic was Interpretation….which is really part of all the other topics. There is a National Association of Interpretation! By the end of the lecture I realized that a lot of what I’ve learned in the training for leading field trip nature walks is about interpretation. And I still have a lot to learn. This area may be more challenging that the factual aspects of being a Master Naturalist.

Later in the day, it was still very gray - but I like the wavy branches of the pine

And the lichen on the sycamore. Sometimes a gray day provides a different perspective of familiar vistas.

I also noticed - and appreciated - a new feature at Belmont: marked parking spaces.

Short Walks at Belmont - March 2015

Yesterday when I was at Belmont Manor and Historic Park the snow was gone and I made short walks during and after the short class I attended. One focus was to get pictures of the trees before the leafed out for a project I am working on to produce materials of a Belmont Tree Tour. But it was a nice day and I was easily side tracked. From a photographic perspective I am more interested in the close ups - like the English elm branch with buds, lichen and moss.

The bald cypress by the pond is interesting because it is a surprise. It is a survivor north of the usual range for the tree. It is easy to identify even in winter because of the knees and fallen needles.

The swallows seemed to be taking over the blue bird boxes. This pair seems to be very proprietary about this particular box already. They both would fly away and return to the same box again and again.

There we shelf fungi growing on a tree that was upright but appeared dead - or near dead.

Some of the interior was hollow and exposed - cracking along ring lines and other trunk structures.

As I walked along nearer the manor house there were periodic patches of crocus. At my house the bulbs have not started blooming quite yet.

The wind had blown some sycamore seeds down. The ones on the tree were too high to get good pictures so it was a bonus to get the pictures. This is one tree I can identify from the bark!

Southern Magnolias are easy to identify too. They keep their leaves and already have buds.

There was also an empty seed pod from last season on the ground - probably blown off by the wind just as the sycamore seeds were blown.

Some trees have places where large branches were cut that are fractured much like the dead tree…but are very much alive. This was from an English Elm that appears to be surviving well enough.

Last but not least - I hiked into the forest to take a look at another magnolia. I’d been told it was a cucumber magnolia but none of the trees is large - they are all in the understory. I’ll have to watch it as it blooms.  It may be an umbrella magnolia instead.

Sustainability - Planting Trees

I am thinking about spring even though it is still a bit too cold to be out planting things just yet. Today I thought about trees rather than the chaos garden or the deck garden. Trees are a lot bigger and long lived too. Trees make a home more sustainable by

• Providing shade in the summer (cooling) and bright sunlight in the winter (warming)
• Soaking up rain - slowing down the runoff into nearby stream or gutters
• Providing nesting places for birds and squirrels…food for pollinators and their larvae…and sometimes food for humans too

The oak tree to the east of our house has grown tremendously in the 20 years we’ve lived here and now shades the front of the house almost completely in the summer. In the winter, the leaves are gone and we get the sun warming the front rooms during winter. We like it - and our cats seem to migrate to the patches of sunlight on winter mornings.

On the southwest side of the house a sycamore has gotten tall enough to shade the dining room and one side of master bedroom in the summer ---- and let the sunlight reach the house through its bare branches in the winter. Ideal placement!

So - in keeping with thinking about gardens and plantings - do I want another tree in the yard? I am concerned that the deer population in our area is so overwhelming that they are eating everything. How would a young tree survive? I’ve convinced myself that we’ll not add any trees in the near term. I’m grateful that the lowest branches of the trees we have are out of deer reach!  I would like to plant some fruit trees....and beging the process of dramatically reducing the grassy part of the lawn...but that is for some future year.

First Day Hike

It was a cold January 1 in our area of Maryland and my husband was just getting over a cold --- he didn’t want to hike. So I took a very short hike from a two lane road near us down to the Little Patuxent River. I want to try out my new monopod/hiking pole. It turned out to be a good idea since I managed to unscrew the bottom section completely!

All the leaves were brown and brittle. The sycamore leaves were still largely intact and quite large from the trees growing along the river.

I was not fast enough to photograph the great blue heron that was evidently fishing in the river when I arrived.  There were some deer that were on the opposite bank - white tails flashing by the time I saw them.

The places where the water was still enough were still frozen from the previous night’s temperature drop into the 20s.

I looked for shelf fungus on the downed logs but only saw tiny ones but this moss with sporophytes add some color to the otherwise drab colors of winter.

On the way home I stopped at the storm water pond in our neighborhood.

The stumps from a visit from a beaver a few years ago were still visible near the short - and punctuated the ice at the pond’s edge.

And a surprise from my daughter in Tucson - they had snow on January 1! She sent the pictures below.