Sneezemaker and the Basswood Bees

Each September finds me, along with some other adventurous souls, ambling in honor of the Hudson River Valley Ramble.  This series of events, all held in proximity to our great waterway, aims to get people out and doing.  I enjoy leading my plant walk on Papscanee Island, where we visit the tree that grew in Brooklyn (Ailanthus altissima) as well as the plant that killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother (white snakeroot).  We pause at old favorites, like the three hostas growing under the touch-me-nots, and always find something new, too.

Our novelty this year turned out to be a lovely plant I once tried, and failed, to grow in my garden.  We discovered just one small patch of Helenium autumnale, sometimes called Helen’s Flower, growing inches from the mighty Hudson. The location wasn’t surprising; it requires a moist soil, making it a denizen of streambanks, ditches, pondsides and the like, in all lower-48 states.  My garden, it turns out, is just too dry.  The bright yellow flowers, composed of a prominent disk surrounded by fringed rays, make it a thing of beauty.  The plant hybridizers, seizing something good, turned Helenium into a garden center commodity by expanding its floral color range into all shades of red and orange.  Don’t focus on its other common name, however, since no one wants to grow sneezeweed.  This moniker derives from the old-time practice of using the dried blossoms and leaves as snuff.  Nowadays, it’s more likely that nursery customers might assume sneezeweed causes allergies, and drop it like a pot of poison ivy, so smart marketers focus on the connection to beautiful Helen of Troy.  Supposedly, Helen’s falling tears caused this plant to spring forth.  That would be quite a feat, since she lived in Greece and Helenium is strictly American, but let’s not question the gods too closely.

A tour highlight is finding the lone basswood tree, known also as American linden and botanically as Tilia Americana.  This takes some doing, as it stands some distance from the path amongst impenetrable thicket; one year we missed it altogether.  Growing naturally from New England to North Dakota and into the upper South, basswood thrives in rich, damp bottomland soils but also makes a living on drier slopes, too.  Pyramidal in youth and aging to oblong or rounded in shape, it can reach 60 feet tall or much higher.  The dark green, heart-shaped leaves hide small pale yellow flowers, which appear in June and lure scads of honeybees and other pollinators.  Crafty beekeepers take advantage of this situation by placing hives in linden groves and taking the honey produced off as soon as the linden flowers fade. It is described as pale-colored, medium sweet, and highly aromatic.  Basswoods are rarely found in home landscapes, although they sometimes appear in parks or on golf courses.  Passed up in favor of the littleleaf linden, darling of European horticulture which has spread here, perhaps someday we’ll prize our native version here as highly as I regard the lone wolf on Papscanee.

Serendipity

Plant a redbud tree, and with a little luck, it will reward you with the beauty of it’s form, foliage and flowers for many years.  You might even find some tiny redbud seedlings sprouting nearby.  Should they be pulled from the ground, mowed down or dosed with herbicide?  That would be the response of some folks, but to my mind, they are a gift from Mother Nature.  

While gardening is sometimes about planting and nurturing, editing is also involved, too.  This is referred to this as weeding, and the joys and challenge of grubbing out the undesirables is a major part of life as a gardener.  But there are good “weeds,” too, in the form of delightful or useful plants which suddenly spring up, unbidden, a form of horticultural treasure.  It just seems to happen a lot less frequently than, say a new stand of poison ivy. 

Twenty or more years ago, I wanted a redbud tree, more formally called Cercis Canadensis.  I acquired seeds from a roadside tree, several of which germinated, and one survived.  This tree has grown into a handsome specimen, producing dark pink pea-like blossoms early each spring, followed by papery seed pods.  Only recently have I noticed baby redbuds appearing, hither and yon, throughout the garden.  Some I might pot up, others I can move to where I want them, while those in a favorable place I will leave, just to see what happens.  It’s fun to play god of the garden when it isn’t just about ripping out thugs like Japanese knotweed and garlic mustard.

Volunteer tree seedlings make great gifts, too.  Many years ago, a wonderful woman named Virginia had an expansive garden, full of interesting trees, in East Greenbush.  Beautiful silverbell trees (Halesia sp.), native to the Appalachians, grew there, and started self-sowing.  Virginia kindly gave me a seedling, which I planted behind my garage.  Thinking it would develop into a smallish example, the silverbell has morphed into a large, multi-trunked pyramid, covered in white bell-shaped flowers in spring.  I’ve been waiting for mini silverbells to appear, but so far none have come forth, despite the tree making seedpods.  Perhaps the seeds are not viable without cross-pollination, or maybe I just don’t have the magic that Virginia did, but I will keep hoping for offspring, nonetheless.  Virginia shared her silverbells with other lucky gardeners, and she left us a wonderful guarantee that her spirit and generosity will be remembered.

In practical terms, there are steps to take if you would like to encourage volunteers.  First, plant the parents.  It won’t do much good to wish for redbud seedlings if you don’t have a mother plant in the garden.  Develop keen eyes, too.  Seedlings are tiny, and easily destroyed.  And be a little messy.  Highly polished gardens, like the sterile yards surrounding some tract houses, are unlikely to yield volunteers, which often pop up amongst last year’s leaves, along the edge of the woods, or under a shrub.  If we desire a little serendipity, we can cultivate it. 

Bittersweet Confusion

Some plants generate confusion.  Ask the man on the street to identify a pine or spruce, and you’ll find he’s confused the pine with the spruce.  When someone mentions a red maple, are they referring to a red-leaved Norway maple (Acer platanoides ‘Crimson King’), a red-leaved Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’) or the true red maple (Acer rubrum)?  Often it is one of the first two, while choice three is best.  Only one thing is certain:  misidentification is a human issue.  No plant ever had an identity crisis.  Since they let it all hang out, it’s up to us to observe their attributes more closely before we attach a label to them.

Consider bittersweet, plants placed today in the genus Celastrus.  Early settlers to these parts thought a vine they came upon looked like Europe’s bittersweet, so they gave the new plant the same name.  Oops.  The olde worlde herbe turned out to be Solanum dulcamara or Eurasian nightshade, a completely unrelated species to our native American Celastrus scandens.  While the fruits of both look similar at one stage, the leaves, flowers and stems are night and day different. 

Jump ahead to the mid-1800’s.  While  American bittersweet was ornamental enough for gardens, chiefly valued for its fiery-orange fall fruit the shape of a pea, Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) was thought to be better.  Some botanical wizard imported it from China or Japan into the northeast, and soon it was found to be better.  A better climber, since this new species not only scrambled up trees, but it could break, smother and strangle them (see photo, bittersweet taking on spruces).  A better propagator, too, since its fruit usually has five or more seeds, while the native’s berry often only contains one.  Since the release of the Oriental species, it has largely taken over the habitat of the American in New England and New York, and has possibly hybridized with it, too.

Straightforward enough.  We should banish the invader while aiding our hometown hero.  Unfortunately, for folks uninitiated in the nuances of bittersweet, the two types are tough to tell apart.  When someone asks which one they have on their land, it is a darn good question, one worth pondering before any further action is taken.

Start with flowers and fruit.  American bittersweet has these in clusters on the end of the shoot, while Oriental bittersweet has flowers and fruit all along the stem.  American bittersweet has an orange capsule that encloses the fruit, while Oriental’s are yellow.  American’s fruits are larger, but contain few seeds, as noted above.

That’s great, but there’s another rub:  both species feature separate male and female plants.  Male plants don’t make berries, so those clues are out.  So get out your magnifier, because male American flowers make yellow pollen while male Oriental flowers make white pollen.  There is also a vegetative indicator.  When American vines leaf out in spring, the leaves are rolled like a scroll, while Oriental’s are folded just once. 

Confused?  Check the internet for the Great Lakes Science Center Fact Sheet 2007-2: https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev3_017307.pdf