Why I Oughta...

 Back in the end of November, I posted a few photos of our columnar Hornbeam trees retaining all their dead leaves this year.  For garden diary purposes, I also wanted to post a closeup photo of the leaves as they stay on the tree.  You can see that they've turned from green to brown, but have some green staying in the background and the edges of the leaves gaining some jagged, dried-out edges.  I'll try to revisit these trees and the leaves later this Winter to see if I can spot more changes as they continue their slip into dormancy.

Here's a third in a series of posts in the garden diary that is showing off this year's foliar marcescence in our backyard for this Fall/Winter 2019.  First was a couple of photos of our Frans Fontaine Fastigiate Columnar Hornbeams (European, too.  But, that's far too many descriptors for one tree, right?).  Then just yesterday, I posted a photo of a Chanticleer Flowering Pear (Cleveland Pear) tree that was also retaining all of the leaves after most of the trees have dropped. Today is a photo showing the two large Oak trees in our yard.  One on the southside ( that lost a limb earlier this Fall ) and one on the north in the foreground of the photo.  Oaks are well-known for retaining their leaves all Winter long and dropping them come Spring when the buds push off the dead leaves and they drop to the ground.  Northern Woodlands Magazine has a piece that talks about a couple of potential evolutionary reasons why these Oaks are keeping their leaves.  From that Norther

Last week, I shared a couple of photos of our stand of Frans Fontaine Fastigiate Hornbeams and talked about how they were retaining their leaves to provide some Winter screening.  They're not the only trees in the yard that has foliar marcescence occurring.  Above you see one of our three Chanticleer Flowering Pear trees that has almost all of its leaves still on the branches.  This tree grew a ton this year - based on the tree inventory post  - but I'm not sure if this foliar retention took place last year, but I do remember that one of our old flowering pear trees in Elmhurst held on to most of the leaves through Winter because I wrapped lights around it and had to contend with the leaves obscuring the lights shining through.  I planted this tree early in our time here in Downers Grove, but, unfortunately, I don't have a post showing it going in the ground.  It has grown quite a bit and I placed it strategically based on a neighbor a few doors down having a light on

This year, all eight of our Frans Fontaine European Columnar Hornbeams are exhibiting  marcescence :  the retention of dead plant organs that normally are shed.  And that's by design.  Or at least...that's part of the reason why I was drawn to these particular columnar trees.  They'll provide some additional Winter screening by keeping most of their leaves on the limbs.  These look quite a bit different than a year ago - and you can see 12 months ago here - as one of them (the fourth from the left) dropped its leaves and these have widened out a bit.    The photo above is from a different angle, but this photo below shows that same angle from a year ago.  All of them appear to be thicker and a bit taller, too. But if you also look closely at the photos above, you might notice that there is quite a bit of brown leaves at the bases of the trees.  That's something I'm trying new this year:  using leaf mulch.  I used my mower to pick up some of the leaves aroun