Why I Oughta...

We wandered around for a bit in the China/Japan section of the Morton Arboretum this weekend and while much of the plant-life is in dormancy, one of the standouts was a couple of Larch trees that were in full bud-mode.  There were a few different Larch trees - Larix X - that are in a stand together.  This section is close to Route 53, so without foliage on the trees, you get a little bit of road noise, making this part of the Arboretum a little less 'remote-feeling'.  Here's a couple of not-so-good photos of the tree buds: North Dakota State has a .pdf up about the Siberian Larch here . They point out this tree is hardy down to Zone 2 - which...I think the name "Siberian" implies, right?  Zone 2 is negative fifty degrees.  The Morton Aboretum folks won't have to worry about this one not surviving one of our Winters.  That has some appeal. I've been thinking of Larch trees for a number of years and covered a few of them here including a Japanese columnar La

Back in the Spring, I bought this tiny Horstmann's Recursive Contorted Larch Tree from an online nursery and planted it in the front/sideyard.  I watered it in and have been trying to baby it during the heat.  Today, posting this in the [garden diary] so I know what it looks like in the Summer of season one.  It has added some length to the tree, but due to it's weeping habit, it is hard to tell how much.  I'll add some measurements to this as I do a season-ending caliper reading later this Summer/early Fall. I also didn't get around to adding this tree to the 'inventory', so I'm correcting that now. This is tree #51 that I've planted and BY FAR the smallest one. The previous one was last week when we planted the other contorted tree -the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick  - which I mentioned was the "last tree" we had this year, but I stand corrected. 51 trees across four planting seasons. (For now...) 45 of those trees still ali

Back in February, I posted about a tree that I came across that had a lot of the features that I desired in a tree: the Diana Weeping Japanese Larch .  It is a narrow tree (columnar), is contorted, has a weeping habit and is a deciduous conifer.  I have yet to see a  Diana Weeping Larch, but I did come across a similar tree from an online nursery named Kigi Nursery called: The Horstmann's Recurved Contorted Larch Tree . I read the description and thought this was a good fit for our yard: LARIX DECIDUA 'HORSTMANN'S RECURVED' CONTORTED LARCH IS AN UPRIGHT DECIDUOUS CONIFER WITH TWISTING, TURNING BRANCHLETS. NEEDLES ARE GREEN IN SUMMER AND GOLDEN IN AUTUMN BEFORE FALLING. PREFERS ORGANIC RICH WELL DRAINED SOIL. Sounds perfect, right?  I went on the site and they were offering only a 0-1 year old tree for $40 .  I don't know what I thought it was going to look like when it arrived, but when I opened the package, I felt surprised.  Here's a look at the tree

Two days ago was the latest in the run of [ tree dreaming ] posts featuring this columnar Japanese Larch called "Paper Lanterns" that throws off these beautiful - and delicate - paper-y cones .  In that post, I mentioned that I while I haven't covered Larch trees before, in looking at columnar Larches, I came across a tree that checks a couple of really desirable boxes for my tastes in trees. Is there a tree that is: a deciduous conifer.   Puts on a 'Fall show'. Is Japanese-inspired. Grows in a narrow, columnar form. Displays a weeping branching structure. And...is considered contorted.   Turns out, there's a tree that checks all six of those boxes.  It is called the Diana Weeping Larch .  I found it when I was looking around at columnar larches and found this story on FineGardening about trees in tight spaces .  They showed this photo (below) of the Diana Weeping Japanese Larch.  This is a special tree, isn't it: This is not my photo.  Fo

More dreaming about trees going on here on the blog today.  Yesterday, I posted about the columnar American Sweetgum called Slender Silhouette .  The whole [tree dreaming] series can be found at the very bottom of this post.  If you're not interested in following along with me in documenting some of the trees that I've come across this Winter that are worth sharing, you can just move along here.  But, today I'm posting about something interesting:  a new (to me) deciduous conifer.  I have a few deciduous conifers on our property including a Dawn Redwood and Bald Cypress that are both small trees.  Turns out, the largest portion of deciduous conifers appear to be larch trees.  From this post on The Spruce : Most of the deciduous conifers belong to the genus Larix and are commonly known as larch trees . These trees have short needles in clusters that run along the branches, with flowers sprinkled throughout. The flowers transform into cones. Larch trees are appealing