river birch

Spring marches forward at the Secrest Arboretum of the OSU Wooster Campus. Enjoy the river birches, the fungal and insect galls, and the marcescent beech leaves and watch for more developments soon as Growing Degree Day accumulate.

  Over the past five weeks, Wooster Ohio, home of two great institutions of higher education, a liberal arts institution - the College of Wooster, and a land grant institution, Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, and the City of Wooster have provided ample photographic opportunities for horticulturalisms and botanizing. Here are a few, from my light and dark perspectives: 

  In choosing river birch (Betula nigra), it is perhaps wishful thinking or imagining a more moderate summer, since as this tree’s name suggests droughty conditions are not preferred. River birch will survive our dry summer throughout much of Ohio this year, but leaf drop and poor color now in some cases reminds us to plant it in sites that provide moist, well-drained, acid soils with plenty of organic matter.   

 

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