tupelo

Foliage Foretells (F)all

  This spring I wrote of sour gum/black gum/tupelo/pepperidge (Nyssa sylvatica) when I noticed for the first time that I had a male tree (with stamens) and a female tree (with pistils) in my back field. Until then I thought of them as just two tupelos. Well, the bird-beloved result of their union have now resulted in greenish fruits which soon will be blue-purple. So, flowers, fruits, now a word about  – foliage. Tupelo leaves are wonderfully lustrous green in spring and summer before turning intense scarlets, oranges, and purples in fall. But, wait, the time has come, as every...

Published on
Authors
Jim Chatfield

BYGL Mail, Part Two: Week of June 13

More responses from bygl-alert readers:

3). Tom Holcomb wrote that: 

Our 80-year old plus parents have a gorgeous huge tulip poplar. Earlier it was full of blossoms. Squirrels have nipped most of them off.  They believed this is the first year that this is happened. Wondering if there is a reason/explanation for this?  

I do not know the answer, but one possibility is that this is due to the large amount of nectar produced by tuliptree (another name for tulip poplar) flowers. If so, their behavior is not so squirrely, after all.

 

4). ...

Published on
Authors
Jim Chatfield

Tupelo, Honey

In my back yard there are two sourgums, also known as blackgum or tupelo, with the lovely Latin binomial of Nyssa sylvatica. I grew them from young plants sold to me by Kenny Cochran at Secrest Arboretum, and now they have grown to the age that they are producing not only their glossy green leaves but also -  flowers.  

As the Missouri Botanical Garden website indicates, flowers are: “Primarily dioecious (separate male and female trees), but each tree often has some perfect flowers. Small, greenish-white flowers appear in spring on long stalks (female flowers in sparse...

Published on
Authors
Jim Chatfield