Most of the perennials in my garden have bloomed a little earlier than normal.  Here it is almost the second week in August and I am seeing the late August perennials such as Sedum and goldenrod start to bloom.  It's also time for me to do a little cleaning up in the gardens, especially with those plants that have finished blooming such as Echinacea (coneflowers), Nepeta (catmint) and others.

It’s Sunday night, I check my e-mail, and Frank Sinibaldi asks: “Mr. Chatfield, can you tell me what tree this comes from?”  I check out the attached image, and there it is: a linden bract with attached peduncle, pedicels and fruits.

 

  So, linden (Tilia spp.) is the tree. Common lindens are the American linden or basswood (Tilia americana), littleleaf linden (Tilia cordata) native to Europe and into Asia, and the hybrid Crimean linden Tilia x euchlora).  Lindens are much bee-beloved.

 

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The great thing for all of us as plant lovers is the simplicity of enjoyment of a walk in the woods or through city streets, checking out the plants we know. Here are some snapshots of just a few plant sightings on an afternoon walk in Wooster, Ohio a few days ago.

 

  First, as our lead photo, at the edge of a parking lot was Calycanthus, which a Clemson fact sheet notes has common names of Carolina allspice, strawberry-bush, sweet bubby {my favorite}, sweet Betsy, and spicebush {my least favorite since we think of Lindera benzoin as spicebush up North...

While in Maryland and Virginia recently our Extension Nursery Landscape and Turf Team of diagnosticians admired crepe myrtles (Lagerstroemia indica) in whites, reds, and lavenders.  Absolutely gorgeous trees for their flower displays and their attractive bark.

What a great response to our Name That Pine query posed last Friday. There were dozens of responses, some on Friday and Saturday, and then again a number today, Monday July 31. At first, this bimodal response rate puzzled me until I realized that some of you do not get bygl-alerts, our just-in-time alerts to your phone via e-mails, vs. the Monday summary of the previous weeks alerts. 

 

 How can you possibly not want to be alerted by phone the very moment that we ask for your pine ID skills and other matters!!! Well, it is imaginable, but if you do want to get those alerts...

What does local foods mean to you? While there is not one definition for “local” food - it is very personal and can vary from person to person. Some people are able to grow their own food. Others grow some food, and also support local producers by purchasing food from them.  And still others only purchase local foods from local producers. 

True pines, as opposed to say, Norfolk Island-pine (Araucaria heterophylla) or Japanese umbrella-pine (Sciadopitys verticillata) are in the genus Pinus, which differs from other genera in the Pinaceae family. Other genera in the family include, for example, spruces (Picea), firs (Abies), and hemlocks (Tsuga).

As we continue traveling south to Washington DC, we were moseying along some backroads in Virginia and suddenly the camera crew began yelling “stop the van… pull over”.  We piled out to run over trying to position ourselves to take photos of a HUGE Albizia julibrissin, commonly known as Mimosa or Persian Silk tree.

 

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On July 22, 2017, Joe Boggs wrote a BYGL Alert on the "flaming" of black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) by the locust leafminer beetle (Odontota dorsalis) in certain areas of Ohio.  These "flamed" trees are easily observed along highways from southeast to northeast Ohio. Interestingly, Curtis Young and Amy Stone in Northwest Ohio seldom see any evidence of locust leafminer beetle.  They have to travel east to at least Mansfield, Ohio before seeing the activities of this leafminer and it isn't because of a lack of black locust trees. 

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In a previous Tree of the Week, I featured sassafras, but noted that I did not have an image of their very cool-looking fruits, though I once did have said image. I figured that I had electronically misplaced or that it was from all the way back in the Kodachrome Slide Era (somewhere between the Dirt Age and the Middle-Age Anthropocene).  So…

 

Voila. I have seen bright carmine red fruits, and here you can see both the early speckled green phase and cool grape-Kool Aid purple. Sassafras, a lovely native tree.

 

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