Chilean Bellota, are the nuts edible?

There are a lot of red flags here:

1. Nuts rain down during the "nut-raining season", but are not scooped up by squirrels or park visitors to eat. They are swept up and thrown out by the city gardeners.
2. There is hardly anything written about this tree. The tree label says it is Cryptocarya rubra and the PlantList says that is an accepted name.
3. A common name for the tree is "Chilean Soap Tree". :OP

Even dead trees can have a life

Our beloved park snag with its bear face

Trees in our local park have been dying over the last droughty years.

An alternative to cutting them down is to feature them as snags for wildlife.

The Smithsonian talks about creating a snag from one of their dying trees.

One of our beloved snags has the face of a bear. When I first volunteered at the park, I was told that our dead tree had a bear face. I didn't believe it until I saw that indeed it had a bear face.

Mystery Pink Flower

Last year in May, I ran across a mystery tree in our local park. "Hello, Lovely!" I said, "I don't think that I've seen your likes anywhere before. I don't even think I recognize your family. You are very pretty though! Who are you?"

The flowers are pink and tropical looking. The leaves green and glossy. I googled "pink flower tree" and many other combinations. Nothing looked right. I even used google image and came up short.

I posted a question on a forum asking if anyone knew what it was and stumped two experts. (However, eventually one person had a Southern California friend who knew.)

I tried out the Urban Tree Key and to my surprise I found out what this tree is. If you want to cover up the answer and try this yourself, you can discover it, too.

Red-Flowering Horsechestnut at the park

Red-flowering horsechestnut
Aesculus × carnea
April 2015

A very lovely tree. But what is it?

It is a hybrid of the American Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia) and the European horse-chestnut (A. hippocastanum). According to the Missouri Botanical Garden it was discovered in 1812. There's a story there.

The Red-Flowering Horsechestnut was introduced to California very early on. John Rock's Nursery in San Jose sold it in 1888. The California Nursery Company in Niles had it in the 1893 catalog..

Three baby chestnut seedlings this year. I am assured by an unknown (to me) expert on Facebook that the seedlings should look like the parent. Has one of them crossed with the California Buckeye (Aesculus californica) in the parking lot at the park? I will check if the bloom period is the same. Right now the buckeye has leaves again. I've seen flowers on other buckeyes (3/8/2016), but haven't noticed on ours. Will report back! If blooming periods do not overlap, then we can expect a red-flowering horsechestnut.

Early California Horticulture Publications

California Horticulture

Just ran into this really lovely illustration on the cover of California Horticulture by George C. Roeding.

Starting a page to collect all of these early horticultural books and booklets.

The Island of Rare Fruits and Trees

A Pleasure Island for Plant Nuts

Today we discovered a garden treasure in Fremont in a place that was so very unexpected. This garden is only a few miles from home.  It is on a peninsula, almost an island, in our local quarry lakes.  The garden, even in January, was full of bright colors, odd shapes, strange flowers, exotic plants, fruits, and a promise of free samples. Just the list of conifers takes up 8 pages. Wow.

I was as excited as Pinocchio when he first saw Pleasure Island, without the dire consequences (donkey ears) that Pinocchio's friends suffered.

The Conifers go to the Fair

The 1915 California Nursery Company Catalog is a departure from the previous years' simpler text catalogs. It looks like something special is going on this year.  The front cover is beautifully designed. The catalog is filled with photos: Norfolk Island pines, Monkey Puzzle Trees, deodars, Irish Junipers, spruces, weeping Sequoia, and Irish Yew.  There are pictures of how the Spanish pines are dug and boxed. And that's only the first 15 pages of about 130 pages.

The Quincunx, mystically considered

Huge fan, I am, of reading old gardening books.

While looking for some good pictures of roses for the current Días de los Muertos art project, I ran across this odd word - Quincunx. Odd and old, not to mention hard to pronounce.

Wikipedia has an entry for it. Merriam Webster has a definition. Visually it is the five spot on a domino - four dots on the corner and one in the middle.  The origin is thus: "Latin quincunc-, quincunx, literally, five twelfths, from quinque five + uncia twelfth part". According to MW, first known use was 1485. Now I'm still thinking how does 5/12 relate to planting.

Both the California Nursery and Fancher Creek Nursery talked about orchard planting and the Quincunx. Roeding's Fruit Growers Guide (1919) probably helped disseminate the information.

Visiting with your favorite deceased horticulturist

The redwood has embraced this gravestone.

This is an early start to thinking about this year's Días de los Muertos. Maybe these are thoughts you have when you take out the old tomatoes and start thinking about planting fava beans.

Last week our landscape drawing class had a field trip to the Mountain View Cemetery. On the way up the hill, Bryn and Robert and I had a conversation which, because we were in a cemetery, it was only slightly morbid. Where did we want to be parked when we are done with our earthly bodies?

Over the years of taking care of the older folks, I have decided that I want to be sprinkled about in some of my favorite mushroom hunting grounds. I'm hoping to hitch a ride up and down the xylem and phloem of a redwood until I settle into a ring of wood. That redwood might be long lived enough that I could spend some time there before being made into a fence or a mole den.

So that's what I said - I just want my folks (whoever they are at that time) to sprinkle me up and down the coastal forests. [and that includes some local ones which shall remain nameless]

Trees of Katie Elder

Earlier this year we watched The Sons of Katie Elder. It was a great classic Western. In the final shoot-out, however, the forest really stole the show. The trees were huge and the roots gnarly. They were clustered at water's edge and (in the movie) growing near a triple waterfall. Surely this place must be famous. The movie poster, here, integrates the trees into the action. WOW!

Where is that forest and what kind of trees are they? Time for some forestry forensics!

The Undecidable Woods - Le Bois de Lauzelle

Le Bois de Lauzelle is located in Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium.
The trees may be beeches.
I will look through my pics to see if I can confirm.
Photo by M. Balk

When Little Bart was in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, she posted this picture of le Bois de Lauzelle on her blog. The photo of green trees and red forest floor immediately resonated with something that I had seen before. I pictured a horsewoman, gliding in and out of the trees, at least sort of, but in an odd way.

Sequoiadendron giganteum...Who named it first?

"Hermit and Burnt Tree" from Calisphere.

The "Big Tree" has had many names and there is much interesting controversy over how it was named and claimed. This is but one of many articles that I have found in google books and Internet Archive and other archives.

What I have read elsewhere is that the English scooped the Californians in describing the tree now known as Sequoiadenron giganteum. To the Americans it must have seemed very nervy and audacious when Dr. Lindley named our great tree after one of the English military greats, the Duke of Wellington. How much sense did that make? Apparently it's ok if you are the first one out of the gate. But not surprisingly there was a bit of fallout and controversy. And as you know, it didn't stick, except in the U.K. where you can still see signs for the "Wellingtonia".

Branch Studies

Oak tree branch and rocks and hills

Whenever I hike in our local parks, I see the scenes that Eyvind Earle painted. (No, silly, not Sleeping Beauty's castle)

His landscape pictures capture the look and feel of the coastal hills of California - coastlines, green or golden rolling oak hills, long shadows of cattle or trees. Many of his pictures have a tree branch in the foreground. I have wondered about those tree branches. 

Plant ID at 60 MPH - What the heck was that?!?

Seen on the median strip travelling north on 680 through Castro Valley - a tree with large light colored flowers and no foliage to speak of. When I saw it whizzing by, I said "What the heck is that?".

Yellow Leaves on the "Bouquets de Fleurs" Citrus Tree

Our "Bouquets de Fleurs" is now forming tiny citrus. I despaired that it would ever form fruit or even flowers, but this year we now have several bunches of fruits.

Visiting Our East Bay Trees...cheaply

Magnolia from Strybing Arboretum

I like to go to gardens all the time. It can get expensive. I like to be able to pop in frequently for a few mins at a local garden as if it were mine. And when travelling, I like to go to whatever garden or arboretum I find.

I am facing a renewal of my UC Bot Garden membership and am weighing the plusses and minuses of their different levels. This is beginning to hurt my head trying to figure this out. I may have to get out the spreadsheet to help decide what is the best way to visit gardens (and possibly museums) cheaply.

Blooming in December! Chinese plum, Japanese apricot, Prunus mume

The show stopper

The Prunus mume that is blooming now.
I think this one is Matsubara Red.
I will keep looking to make sure.

Last night I found two neighbors looking at the flowers of our street-side Prunus mume and taking pictures. One neighbor said that they are Chinese plums and they are called mei. She said that they are early blooming and in China they sometimes get snowed on. The other neighbor was wondering if she could plant one and what kind of care do they need and what do they look like when not in bloom.

Monumental Trees, World-wide, and especially in Belgium

Castle Bleu in Trooz

The Monumental Trees website tracks trees, world-wide, that are monumental in some way - the oldest, tallest, biggest, thickest. Anyone can add to their database. Giant sequoia seems to be a favorite.

You can find the monumental trees in Belgium. Listed are 1448 specimens of various species. And you can find Giant Sequoia trees that are growing in Belgium! Today there are 956 Sequoias listed. I had trouble clicking on the marker except when I was in the big map. Look at all of those trees! Indeed, the Castle of Dave has three specimens! Mammoetbomen! Not so often, do you see a castle with a Giant Sequoia. Or do you if you are looking outside of California?

Tree Rings

From the book, Sequoia National Park, 1937.

Most school kids in California have probably seen a redwood tree section showing the annular rings on it with dates, like "WWII ends", "Columbus discovers America", "Jesus was born", dates like that.  So it's pretty common knowledge that trees can show years passing by the number and kind of rings they set down.

If you want to refresh your memory, here's the NOAA website that talks about tree rings. And here's the wikipedia article on dendrochronology.

Ok, so now you know all about that tree ring stuff.  Did you know that humans also have annular rings?

Selecting that perfect tree

Looking for that plant that is low maintenance, drought tolerant, and is a great tree?  And maybe one that will not grow so tall that the utility company hacks at it periodically?