Tag: native trees

First Week of April: Trees

A roundup of quick Sidewalk Nature updates: one warning and three wonders.

Trouble with Double

Kwanzan cherry trees don’t feed pollinators or birds. They look great two weeks of the year but they don’t support our foodweb. Prunus serrulata ‘Kwanzan’ / ‘Kanzan.’

My concern is that when people have room to plant one tree, this is the one they’ll want. It is cultivated for pretty, and pretty it is, but it doesn’t have nectar, doesn’t make fruit, and as a nonnative congener, its leaves support only a fraction of the Lepidoptera species a native Prunus / cherry can.

But at the Cherry Blossom Festival this month, festival-goers can walk away with a free Kwanzan cherry tree from the Nashville Tree Foundation.

Continue reading “First Week of April: Trees” →

Hackberry Jam

Our dog loves hackberry trees. If there is a hackberry seedling within range of her face, she finds it. Under the neighbor’s boxwood, up the U-channel of the stop sign, poking from a storm drain, or wherever. She plucks the leaves with her teeth. She will chew as many as her leash lets her have time for. The seedling may be flanked by baby elm or privet or althea or bush honeysuckle of a similar size, but she only goes for hackberry leaves. Continue reading “Hackberry Jam” →

Crepe Myrtle Confetti After a Storm

Last night’s quick storm left evidence, but mostly of the subtle kind. We didn’t have to leap over any downed hackberry trees on our morning dog-walk. We did step on confetti, and lots of it.

Crepe myrtle wins as leading indicator of subtle disturbance because blooms are at their peak, and the neighborhood—and the city, and the South—has plenty of crepe myrtle. The flowers are available to be ripped in quantities and spun where directed. Red, pink and white confetti line streets and sidewalks, and in more than one lawn lie atop as if sprinkled by a careful hand.  Continue reading “Crepe Myrtle Confetti After a Storm” →

Wild Persimmons on the Sidewalk

native persimmon
native persimmon

Native persimmon time again: fat little sacks of sweet pulp waiting to be baked into muffins. Mom and Izzy and I foraged in an office parking lot last night, under a tree I watch all year. I check for blooms, leaves, caterpillar tents, and any evidence that the property owners have lost patience with car-spattering, jelly-bomb season. Continue reading “Wild Persimmons on the Sidewalk” →