Wednesday Filler: Philadelphia's White Pines

Like D.C., Philadelphia is a city where one can encounter southern botanical elements such as evergreen magnolias and hardy palms next to a few northern ones like the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).

At Penrose ave. and Homestead st.

At Gloria Dei National Historic Site.

Unlike those zone pushed plants, however, the White Pine is actually native, albeit at the edge of its range, to the cities.  It found quite a bit of use as a landscape tree, often planted in more open situations to take advantage of the bold sweeps of its unrestricted form.  In the wild around these parts, it grows with a decent amount of vigor and majesty, and has enough of a winter chill and less than brutal summer heat in order to reproduce decently.  From here southwards, however, these conditions are only met in the Appalachians.

The Magnolias Of Philadelphia

When I was first learning about various trees of the continent back in my idealistic youth, I was blessed to come across a free copy of Audubon's Field Guide to North American Trees (Eastern Region).  This was a marvelous book full of fun things like maps, pictures, and even illustrations of trees in silhouette, with the evergreens being nice and full, and the deciduous trees shown in their bare winter glory.  Now and then, I came across a remarkable leafy tree... with leaves on it!  I knew about them before, of course, being a traveled veteran of Southern Florida, but what really impressed me was the fact that some of them could be found very north, namely the American Holly (Ilex Opaca) and above all else, the majestic Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora).  In specific, the guide noted that the beauty is noted for hardiness "north to Philadelphia".

In gardening circles, people are lately growing fonder of the art of "zone pushing", which is to say that they, ahem, we, like to grow things far north of where they are considered hardy.  Gardeners in Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, and Cleveland (and associated friendly cities) have long since considered anything that retains leaves in the winter to be of high prestige and a reminder that life goes on during otherwise snowy and cold dark months between November and March.  Alright, so October and April...  Anyway, its a hard thing to take even a cold hardy palm or broadleaved evergreen and expect it to dance for you while the blizzard rages, at least this far inland.  Philadelphia, on the other hand, is perhaps in one of the perfect situations for attending to a variety of cultivation.

While it has far more in common with the ocean than the Appalachians, it has elements of both; pine species form extensive barrens in nearby rural areas in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as more mountain species like rhododendrons in surviving woodlands.  It's not too hot, it's not too cold, and due to an atmosphere of tolerance, it was the American city that got the most brains to boot.  Massachusetts was all about religious agenda/freedom, New York was all about commerce, Charleston and Williamsburg were all about slave-powered farming, but Philadelphia was about letting you pray how you wanted, letting you argue with people over politics, and, surprisingly, letting you talk about what academic subjects were currently in vogue.  Alexander Hamilton of the spice islands by way of New York tried to get finance to set up a crown here too, but ultimately the city is still best remembered as more of a home to the Benjamin Franklin type.  This is a city of books, trees, and people who still like to read newspapers on a park bench.

One such popular academic interest was plants.  Aristocrats in Europe went crazy over trying to acquire New World vegetation for their estates, especially in England.  Various botanists made quite the name for themselves detecting and acquiring such treasures, and Philadelphia's own John Bartram earned the respectable but low paying title of the "King's botanist".  While Charleston, under Michaux, served as a secondary port for the thriving plant and seed trade, the varieties of climate and plant life meeting here, as well as the royal connection, ensured that Philadelphia would remain the chief point of departure for the finest trees finding their way to the finest clients.  Unlike Charleston, however, Philadelphia grew up much more snug and dense, seemingly paved over, much to the distaste of the founders and succeeding generations of planners in the city who wanted everyone to have a growing space.  Thomas Jefferson disliked the environment, and like many other politicians, wanted to try to escape to greener pastures when possible, which usually meant taking a trip to Bartram's house (which I regret upon regret not stopping at).  There they talked about plants.  No, really.  Jefferson and Washington were plant geeks.

Philadelphia has since greened rather nicely, even if the concrete which has replaced the brick is still the dominant feature everywhere.  The riverbanks are lush, there are parks and green spaces never far away, and the city is home to the United States' first urban national wildlife refuge.  Out of all this, however, what caught my eye was, well, the magnolias.  My little guide book did not disappoint.  I can't remember where half of them were taken at, with the exception of the line of tall ones at Betsy Ross House.  They are not hard to find, though.  Just wander through the historic core and you will find quite a few, some very impressive in size.

Yeah, that's a Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum) intruding on the top left.  Pretty cool seeing them together!

These last fellows were at the Betsy Ross House.

There is also a garden consisting almost entirely of imported magnolias which, while not the majestic Southern Magnolia, do put on quite the show in spring.  I ran into some volunteers at the garden who gave me the unofficial history of magnolias in the city, as well as the intent behind the creators of this garden.  They explained that Washington, plant geek, wanted to green up the city he had to spend so much time in as president.  He was particularly fond of magnolias, which the ladies and I deduced to probably be his proud Southern Magnolias, arboreal symbols of American robustness.  As a symbolic tree, Magnolia Grandiflora is much more associated with the deeper South and with Andrew Jackson, who planted them at the White House as they were his wife's favorite tree.  Nevertheless, Washington probably would have run into plenty of them in his boyhood tidewater stomping grounds, as the tree was already making quite the impression in the trans-Atlantic trade and was already being cultivated as an ornamental in the southern lowcountry.  He probably enjoyed seeing a tree as robust as this in remaining green even in colder winters, and as a horticulturalist probably thought about bringing them further north with him into his presidential exile from Mt. Vernon.  The creators of the garden, acting 150 years later, apparently did not have the same design in mind, which the volunteers and I grumbled about.  The Asiatic magnolias, they said, are nice, but they only flower in the spring, and, well, are not very American.  At the risk of sounding like an ecological imperialist, considering the intent of the design of the garden, I have to agree.

Still, it's a nice garden (with a fountain, which I did not take a picture of), a quiet space of reflection surrounded by quiet streets (Locust between 4th and 5th streets) and various quiet places of worship.  There are thirteen flowering trees and shrubs which represent the thirteen colonies, but most of them are imports, and ironically, two of the species are iconic of England!  I'm a proud subject of the Commonwealth myself, but the concept seemed rather nutty to me.  If I had to guess, I would think that the creators wanted to put on an incredible burst of spring and early summer color, and to be fair, the garden was set up long after the colonial era passion for natives had faded and the Victorian and Imperial passion for exotics had become the rage.  Remember what I said about zone-pushing?  That's something fairly new, the current emerging vogue.  People maybe just weren't planting southern trees here back in the day, just as they weren't planting palms in Vancouver or London until fairly recently.

The worm has since turned, and the National Park Service tends toward at least the homegrown and preferably native ecological restoration as much as possible (and to be fair, as much as they work here and are not too distantly native, Magnolia Grandiflora is native no further north than the central Chesapeake, if I am allowed to make such a bold statement).  In the garden we get to see shifting trends in horticulture presented as a history lesson about a history lesson.  I have to admit, regardless of my angst, I stopped and enjoyed the patch of green for a while.  Washington probably would have done the same.  Jefferson would have turned cross, purchased nearby land, and started over on a superior garden.  Bartram would have sold him the plants.  All of them probably would have been in awe of the many Southern Magnolias found through the rest of the city.  I have to admit, seeing them together with so many other trees, including my favorite Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus) gave the city a pretty interesting arboreal landscape.  You can do that in DC too, but then you have to pay for it with hot, muggy summers that do not get nearly as bad here.

What's the rest of that city treescape look like?  Come on by next post for a tour. 

Real Maple Syrup: Part Four

Though no tree can really compare with the noble Sugar Maple for excellence of syrup, there are three minor contenders at least passing mentions, all of which are largely bottomland species, preferring the lush damp world of the shoreline and riverbank to the upland home of the Sugar Maple.  We start with a species we have already been introduced to, a tree of incredible habitat diversity and stunning beauty:

Red Maple (Acer Rubrum)

A map for this species was already given in the first post of this maple series.  Click that link to find it!

The Red Maple produces what is probably the next best maple sap for getting syrup after the noble Sugar Maple.  It has a similar sugar content, but a distinct problem in that Reds break dormancy before most other trees, and they do it fast; the window for sap collecting is very short when compared to even the lesser maples.  This should not be surprising coming from a tree that is equally ready to face brutal northern winters as well as some brief passing of a seasonal dip in Southern Florida (and theoretically even the Sierra Madre Oriental in Mexico, but don't hold me to that until I find the trees and get famous and stuff).  Sure, the trees are probably not reverse hardy by any stretch, but what's important is that Mr. and Mrs. Red Maple hail from a powerful evolutionary tree line; while you are most likely to find one down near the drink, you would not be shocked to find one up in the hills or in an abandoned field.  I could make a small fortune in the nursery trade off of some that appeared in various gardens I have tended, more so than any other "weed".  Like any good "weed", they grow pretty quickly, at least until they are 10 or so.  Other trees which can then get established in their pioneering wake or are slow to wake up then usually overtake them, and they seldom tend to dominate forests.  Perhaps this is for our viewing pleasure, as they sure do look nice making passers by ignore the rest of the forest.

They look simply amazing, the equivalent in red that the Sugar Maple is in orange.  Except for the sumacs, no tree, even in flower, produces such a vibrant red.

This picture, and no picture really, does this tree justice.  This was taken somewhere in SE Michigan.  I have very few pictures of them on hand, even though they never fail to capture my attention and camera.  The yellow tree to the right is actually a female.  They turn yellow!  In the background are Sugars. 

They are often also provided with a reflecting pool, being rather fond of life at the water's edge. 

Cedar Lake, Algonquin Provincial Park.  This was a hazy day, in August of 2012.  As you can see, the tree has already turned, as many trees on the edge of waters which have been cooled by cold nights will.  This makes our showman stand out even more.  Those other shrubby things are Speckled Alders (Alnus Incana) and some Myrica.

What's more, they have one more trick up their sleeves: the females turn yellow!  This can be seen in the neighboring tree in the first photo, in case you missed the caption.  They sometimes grab a little orange in the mix as the color game comes to an end, as can also be seen.  Anyway, it is no wonder that the tree would warrant more scrutiny and eventually be selected for harvesting by our first syrup and sugar makers.  Beauty and accessibility combined make for an attractive package.  Why wander through a forest when the trees are usually right at the edge?  That said, the Reds are just a bit more intense in flavor than the Sugars.  This actually makes for better straight sap consumption (yes, this can be done, as boiling into syrup essentially does not cook the product so much as concentrate the sugars) than the Sugars, at least to my taste buds.  Again, however, the window is small on getting the sap while it is running.  These trees flower insanely early in the waking season, and waste no time in arising after the winter slumber.  While repeated freezes can make sap run again, anything even over a week makes them taste... well, gross.  In terms of terroir, I have tasted sap from upland northern species and find that the rare loam-growing upland Red has reliable taste, while those growing in clay further south are actually even better, but the variability of the waking season further south makes for a difficult tapping.  I have never sampled any riparian tree sap, probably because it is easier to tap a tree on land than from a canoe.

Silver Maple (Acer Saccharinum)-Yes, the Latin name looks suspiciously familiar!

This is an entirely different animal, not being found much on uplands at all, being dominates instead of the river bottoms (they can't take shade in the uplands but can handle it with the extra nutrients of the waterside).  They can be flooded, like the reds, and make for a beautiful scene with the more southerly Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum), which likes to play even closer to the deep end of the pool.  They break dormancy and bloom even faster than the Reds.  They are beautiful (no I don't have pictures, which is odd because they are everywhere, including in my brother's backyard of his previous home) and despite their natural wet home, often get planted as ornamentals; trees in parks in central Toronto have been there for some time and reached incredible girths.  In terms of syrup, I am told (but have never had personally experienced) that they taste like the Sugar Maple, but apparently the sugar concentration is so low that the process is not worth it. 

Thanks, USGS!  If you were wondering where to find them that far south, its usually in the microclimate of the waterside. 

Since they have roughly the same range as the Sugars, with the exception that they grow two hundred or so miles further south in both directions of the compass, one is probably best off using a Sugar instead. They are amazing trees, however, and are planted as noted because they shimmer in a breeze, their leaves being silvery underneath and pale green above.  In the fall, they turn a less than brilliant yellow. 

Boxelder (Acer Negundo)

This one is a bit... weirder.  It grows amazingly well from Guatemala to the far northern plains in Alberta, as well as in the east. 

Many thanks as usual to USGS and the original map maker, Mr. Elbert Little.

It does not have normal leaves as we imagine most maples to have, as they consist of multiple little maple leaves in a giant compound leaf, arranged in a palmate pattern.  I have never taken a picture of a Boxelder, even though I have seen them in the most incredible places, including in little depressions and valleys in the high plains.  They are never far from water, and are often a good sign that it is near, be it high in the mountains or across the otherwise treeless plains.  Like our other two featured maples in this post, they break dormancy early and quickly, and are mentioned here not because they make powerful syrup, which they can, albeit worse than the others, but because they can be found in the north well west of the other maples.  I have had this maple treat me once, as the raw sap, tapped by an Ojibway woman in northern lower Michigan.  She told me that her people, and other First Born from farther west, including the Lakota and Black Foot, only have this maple to draw from, and they usually don't even boil it to a syrup, but drink the sap straight, mostly mixed with the sap of the Sugar Maple which out west they had acquired in trade from further east.  The stuff I tried was such a blend, and it was probably the tradition and respect talking instead of the actual taste buds, but it was pretty decent.  Sometimes the best taste just really comes from the trees where are found home... even in Vermont.

There are other trees capable of producing syrup from sap.  These, however, are the four genuine articles for honest-to-goodness maple syrup and sugar, with the orange majesty of the Sugar being the true real deal.  Next: the finale.  Then we can move on!

Real Maple Syrup: Part Three

Eastern North American Maples: A Brief Guide To Sugary Goodness

I wanted to cover all the syrup trees in one post, but these fine trees deserve more attention and better pictures than what I can give them.  I've lived around these trees most of my life, and yet I always seem to focus on the pines, spruce, fir, etc.  For now then, a shorter look at the individual maples, starting with a whole post for the top tree:

Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum)

This, without a doubt, is the best tree to draw sap from, by far.  The map included in the last post, in fact, is pretty much biased towards the best terroir for the noble Sugar Maple, to the expense of the other trees.  To be fair, this is a maple almost made to work with the cycles of frost and thaw.  Few others, if indeed truly any, trees germinate at only two degrees above freezing.  That's right, our little friends sprout when it is 34 degrees Fahrenheit, and not much warmer.  This is not to say that they are a true northern tree; while they can handle extreme lows, they do need some decent length of summer heat to truly make it.  They are a species that needs the sun, and also a species that needs the cold, like their frequent companions the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus). 

The range of the noble Acer Saccharum.  Thanks again, USGS!

In pre-colonial times, many moister forested areas in the eastern-central part of North America would have featured a dense canopy of Sugar Maples towered over by White Pines the equal of some of the most amazing giant trees out west.  In the fall, one imagines how amazing the bright orange foliage would have been in contrast with the towering, swaying pines.  Many of the first colonial residents in virgin forest areas left awe-struck accounts.

Oh, did I mention they turn orange?  Sadly I have no pictures to really do it justice...

Taken at Maybury State Park.  Maybury has lots of excellent second-growth beech-maple forest, as well as some of the furthest southern Tamarack swamps.  These are northern extensions into what otherwise starts to turn hot and dry with oak savannas and tallgrass prairie. 

With the exception of the Sassafras (Sassafras Albidum), the other maples, and the sumacs, no tree comes close to sheer brilliance.  One imagines that the First Born and then the colonial arrivals took notice of such brilliance and figured something special must be in the Sugar Maple.  In Vermont, home of the supposed best syrup ever (I will never let it go, Green Mountain guns at my door or otherwise), the spectacular autumn show which makes Bostonians and New Yorkers jam up their expressways in search of colored leaves is pretty much made by mountains of orange trees pocked by smaller concentrations of red and yellow.  The Adirondacks and Opeongo Laurentians (Algonquin), on the other hand, also feature a lot more lakes, somewhat darker skies, and a higher inclusion of northern conifers.  Alright, alright, so Vermont looks nice too.  Anyway, even further south where you get more southerly elements as well as a lot more beech trees in the mix, the noble tree still manages to steal the show. 

Maybury State Park again.  That is the same second-growth beech-maple forest back there, while the front is a reclaimed field turned into a prairie restoration; the soil and tree cover in the immediate area points to a moisture level that would have made most of this still forest.  You can easily see in this picture how Sugar Maples tend to stand out as the dominant species.  I did not make it over to successfully identify the bright yellow foliage.

The First Born probably made the stuff, inspired by the orange leaves, well into Tennessee, as long as the odd winter kept things cold enough, long enough, and provided an appropriate thaw.  Obviously, such winters would not be common at lower elevations, and to this day commercial production of syrup from any tree ceases much farther south than the Great Lakes basin.  That said, the Cherokee, Shawnee, Iroquois, and colonials certainly made syrup along the northern forest extensions along the Appalachians.  Sugar Maple would be the primary choice for such an activity, considering as how most other reliable and tasty maple species such as Silver and Red (next post) tend to be lowland, river loving species.  That said, while the syrup would come from higher than where most people would dwell, and the southern Appalachians have the same problem that the ocean-proximate New England mountains have: maritime influence.  The Smokies, for instance, are temperate rainforests.

Not that Sugar Maple forests are too far off, in some ways, from that sort of lush dampness.  Where the beech trees that so often pair with them start to taper out (Fagus Grandifolia is a tree of vast range, equally at home among the north as it is in Florida and even Mexico), Sugar Maple becomes the dominant tree and starts making the place look really green,

A bit more southern than intended, still at Maybury.  Nevertheless, maples are far more dominant here than beech or most other trees.  The wee plants on the ground are seedlings, the majority of which will die off from lack of light in the next year or so. 

 ...with the exception of heavy leaf litter on the forest floor.  The canopy is thick enough to prevent most light from reaching the forest floor.

Not quite what I was trying to get at (a bit south of what I wanted), but the maples are pretty dominant here.  This was taken in Brighton Recreation Area, one of the most underrated and unmentioned places in Southeastern Michigan in which to get a good look at the native landscape.

In the farther north, the forest then almost looks like something from Ohio or Pennsylvania instead of Laurentian Canada.   

This is about three and a half miles north of Brent, Ontario.  In this moist, loamy environment, the dominating maples cut out competition from the slower growing northern conifers, and in the modern absence of wildfire, never get killed back now and then to let pines get a foothold.

In the future I can probably snap up a shot of what I'm talking about, but these two pictures come close.  The road shot is obviously crowded with underbrush from the extra light.  One can easily see how this species would be very attractive for making syrup, however, as in the ideal situations (see map in previous post), you get what is called a "sugar bush".  This is a naturally provided area with most of the trees being the syrup givers, relatively little underbrush to have to fight through, and the whole thing being remarkably convenient.  I could go on and on about this tree, and I might in the future, but one last item of concern draws us to a close here today: taste.

If you've never had maple syrup, get the hell off your computer and go try some.  If you have, think of the richest, most smooth maple taste you can imagine.  This is syrup and associated products from the Sugar Maple.  In other maples the flavor can sometimes overtake the other delicate features and even the sweetness; not so here.  Everything is perfectly balanced, all the more so if you can get the triple crown of glacially-deposited organic loam, Canadian Shield minerals, and that awesome northern water to make the maple sing with all the voices of heaven.  Needless to say, you don't want the bottle saying "made from x, x, and x in x, x, and x.  I may be biased, but just like in wine, the purity of singular source does not confuse the senses with complications to an already delightful complexity.  Oh, and one more thing that makes it even better?  Paper Birch (Betula Papyrifera) is usually close at hand in such northern places.  While I would never advocate stripping a birch, which usually scars and kills the poor thing, the First Born, especially the Ojibway and Algonquins, who use the entire tree, still have traditionalists who make cooking vessels out of birch bark (they heat the water with red hot stones).  Trust me when I say that the addition of that birch leeching into the syrup enhances it akin to an oak barrel kissing the grapes in wine.

Treasures Of The North And Winter: Redtwig Dogwood (Cornus Sericea)

In addition to the birches, willows, and mountain ashes which make up the broadleaved gang of the Boreal north, one can also find a nice collection of dogwood, sometimes nearly to the Arctic treeline.  One in particular ranges even further north and bit further south than our Sorbus friend which we visited on ye olde blog yesterday, the magnificent Redtwig Dogwood (Cornus Sericea).

All but the last two of these pictures are taken from a tamarack swamp/fen (pretty sure it is actually a prairie fen) about two miles from your author's dwelling near South Lyon, Michigan.

While most winter interest deciduous plants try to fall back on great features like berries or persistent fall foliage, the Redtwig adds spice to the landscape with wood alone.

They like the same sort of cold winters that Sorbus seems to like, but because they like to get their feet good and soaked (or at least within root range of some plentiful water; I have seen them higher up on stream and pond banks), they don't range as far south into the Appalachians as the Mountain Ash or spruce and firs do.  There are some amazing cool, wet areas in West Virginia and Maryland where this dogwood and its best tree friend, the Tamarack (Larix Laricina) can be found at the far end of their eastern southerly range.  On the other hand, they extend well south into parts of Mexico where a combination of persistent water and artificial north provided by altitude allow them to thrive.  A subspecies is also found along the Pacific coast as far south as the mountains around Los Angeles, a rare find for a climate which does not have much in the way of eastern North American wetlands beyond its vernal pools (which does in fact have some populations of this remarkable plant).

USGS Geosciences, please never stop giving us awesome maps.  We love you.  Very much.

That said, they are indeed a northern plant, and I would definitely classify them even as a Boreal plant, and thus another gift of the winter lands.  Around here, they are a common feature of the swampier parts of the world, and they often form pretty amazing gatherings, as if nature did have some sort of aesthetic plans in mind and desired mass plantings.

Filling a swampy niche and having evolved within a balance, they never tend to completely form monocultures, even while they do dominate the scenery.  When the sun catches these things they turn an incredible bright ruby, but even in the dull overcast winter days they are far more brilliant than most cameras can even hope to demonstrate.

 

They grow slowly, and the old wood does turn brown even while the newer wood is the same amazing red:

Not the best image, but this old wood versus new wood is demonstrated by the emerging red stem from the central branch here.

In general, though, they tend to form an understory beneath taller wet foot trees like cottonwoods, the lovely Tamarack...

 ...and in a particular lovely combination of color and grace, the Black Willow (Salix Nigra):

Finally, they look amazing against the snow, almost as if to proclaim that not only is this winter and snow not so bad, it is positively enchanting.

Thankfully, Redtwig is pretty popular in the nursery trade, and even if Siberian Dogwood (Cornus Alba) seems to be flavor of the month lately, this is one case where even gardeners in its native land are falling head over heels for our friend.  Heck, there are even golden and green cultivars/selections out there!  Apparently you can plant all three as far south as the lowland Carolinas and parts of Georgia and Alabama, but I would imagine that like any northern plant, they probably do best in wet conditions with colder winters back home; they certainly do not naturally occur much farther south than the Great Lakes, at least at lower elevations. 

I do not know how the early colonists would have seen this plant and have yet to run into early botanical and garden literature regarding it, but the First Born absolutely loved it and used it in everything from smoking mixes to wound treatment.  Redtwig would make an excellent candidate for serious ethnobotanical study, and if this blog did not have a more general focus beyond ethnobotany (I know, I know, sometimes I get carried away with it) I would probably bore you all with a good solid set of posts on findings about good old red bark shrub. 

Oh, and this is just our friend in the winter.  In the spring it bears white flowers, in the summer these turn into white berries,and they all look great on those ribbed leaves.

Again as with our friend Sorbus, this apparently also occurs in northern Illinois, classic eastern Tallgrass Prairie country, a far cry from anything Boreal.  If anyone reading this knows more, by all means, share! 

Note: Cornus Sericea has also been known as Cornus Stolonifera. 

The Palms of Charleston

In the last post we pondered the question as to how well palms were received for ornamental purposes in past eras, at least in the United States.  As noted, very few depictions of gardens, cityscapes, landscapes, or even individual botanical subjects include palms as a regular feature, even while we also know that the settlers of the Carolinas and Georgia were certainly familiar with their abundance in the wilds around their settlements.  The islands from the Charleston area southward do indeed have the mighty Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto) growing in abundance among the pines, magnolias, myrtles, and all other sorts of wonderful Southern plants.  The Dwarf Cabbage (Sabal Minor) also grows here and north halfway up the coastal areas of North Carolina (in the west well inland to extreme southeastern Oklahoma).  Crepe Myrtles and various broadleaved evergreens are easily grown here, and considering what I had thus far seen of the new subtropical crazed South, I was expecting to see a few streets nicely lined with Cabbages, such as in the scene below:

Yes, it was humid, hence the blur.  Yes, like much of the eastern United States and Canada, everyone here seemed to be glued to a cell-phone, at least in the trendier shopping areas and business-dominated streets.

 But while there was some formality to the plantings as in the standard lined street above,the older sections of town seemed to focus slightly less on formal layouts than in fitting in vegetation wherever possible. 

That's a story for another post, but the theme of the finding is important in understanding how palms are simply everywhere here, almost like weeds.  Understand, Charleston is very groomed and formal.  Yes, some of the brickwork and paint could use some work, but the overall effect is more one of proudly displaying an aged antique.  Most of the people here have public dress which belies a concern for respectability and a sense of decorum.  Manners are refined even between people in rush hour traffic.  Once you get away from the hustle and bustle of the urban core, the cell-phones even disappear.  The backstreets have a quiet, reflective pace.  Again, this is owed another post, so back to the palms, but you get the idea.

They are allowed to grow to their own designs.  It seems wherever there is a little bit of room for soil and roots they are planted, and not necessarily to the exclusion of other trees and shrubs.  They do range naturally here, and probably spring up just as often wild as cultivated.

If this were so many other cities, the little one at the lower left would be groomed right out of existence!

But let's face it, the tourists like them, the locals have long since made them their floral emblem, and they are low demand trees.  I still question how long they have been this popular, but in some places where the overall formal lines do return, it is obvious that the Cabbage Palm has long since been a favorite of Charleston, the planned city with crooked edges. 

And really, they do look like they belong here, far more so than the imported cherries of Washington or the nearly-imported Mexican Fan Palms (Washingtonia Robusta) of Los Angeles and environs.  Though there are so many other reasons beyond imagination as to why one should pay a visit to Charleston, coming to see the palms is not exactly a bad thing in and of itself. 

Charleston, after all, is a special place where garden and building seemed to have been created for one another.  It's almost like a place that sprang into existence so that both concepts could be celebrated in unison.  Much like the modern lake shore of Chicago, Charleston looks as if it and the trees were trying to grow into one another.  Very few North American cities seem to make this much room for vegetation, at least not to the degree where the cityscape as a whole would be at a bit of a visual loss without it.

After all, the city owes its salvation to this wonderful tree, and the tree is etched into the human era of artifice because of that role:

Want to see more of Charleston's organic setting?  That's where I'm headed next.

Finding The North In Congaree

Today we take the first few steps onto the boardwalk at Congaree National Park.

One of the first things a northern type such as myself notices about the world between the uplands and the floodplain, as small as it may be, is how familiar the surrounding forest is.  Tall deciduous trees grow rather closely together, many species being the same sort of thing we have up north, if not similar in form to more northerly trees.  A Sweet-gum (Liquidambar Styraciflua) can pass for a maple at first glance, and there are even some Tulip Trees (Liriodendron Tulipifera) around to remind us that even this far south we are still passing through what can still be considered the Eastern mixed-forest.  Still, people expecting something more Southern lowcountry are hoping to see those amazing fluted bases of the cypresses or tupelos.  Instead, before we can even make it a decent portion of the way along the boardwalk, we find... a beech?!

Yes, that would indeed be a rather massive American Beech (Fagus Grandifolia), something one would expect to find at a higher elevation in the Appalachians or most certainly among the namesake Beech-Maple forests of the Great Lakes.  Here the thing is positively thriving, with a girth to it that I have never seen on a deciduous tree short of an oak or a Tulip Tree back northwards.  The upper branches themselves looked like they belonged on a mature tree!

That's what a long growing season and plenty of moisture can do down here, one supposes.  American Beech is not entirely a northern tree, as it can barely make it much into the Boreal forest and ranges slightly south into Florida.  Supposedly down that far it still claims title as a king of the canopy, being a tree that makes it all the way into the final stages of forest succession and is a true feature of the mature old growth deciduous canopy.

With love, USGS, with love.

Still, it is northern enough to have been fondly remembered as a regular feature of the forests of the northern Great Lakes.  Trunk after trunk there is marked by bear claw scratches, and most Black Bears (Ursus Americanus) that I have ever come into contact with were high up in a Beech looking down at me.  While the Beech disappear as the north shore of Lake Superior comes into view, they are certainly a regular feature of the edge of the Boreal world.  To see one of such grandeur in Congaree told me almost instantly that here we have a special place not only for the greater South, but perhaps even for the greater East.  Pretty soon, however, a few more steps along the boardwalk took me into that Southern world I was expecting...

Residents Of The Piney South: The Longleaf Pine

The South did not always look as it does today.  The Loblolly Pine (Pinus Taeda), while common in pre-settlement times, was not nearly the apparent monoculture of endless coniferous wallpaper that it is today.  Once there were pines that were as tall and as graceful as the Eastern White Pines (Pinus Strobus), the best example one might give for their northern counterpart.  Both grand trees managed to make their way to the crown of forest existence only through a baptism of fire, and the northern majesty and southern elegance alike needed the flames to wipe out the competition and let the sun do its work.  The two could not otherwise be more different, however.

The White Pine, you see, needed competition gone to reach into heights above what would later fill back in as a main canopy beneath their super canopy.  This southern pine I speak of, however, was a creature of the savanna more so than the forest.  This pine is the Longleaf (Pinus Palustris).  Like the Loblolly, there are very few pictures of it that I can say to have taken, but not for the same reasons at all.  The Longleaf, you see, is a tree that has fallen on hard times for the last 150 years.  Aside from isolated trees (which can be found rather frequently), only a quarter or less of the ecosystem they supported in great numbers still exists.  In truth, I have never experienced a Longleaf savanna with my own senses.  Only recently in Congaree National Park did I even see a stand of more than several of them together:

Congaree is probably one of the most amazing national parks in the world, just in terms of sheer treeness.

And what a sight they were.  I was already pining away (did I just do that?) to see a gathering of them after having an inspiring read of Janisse Ray, but what I saw when I found them in an approximation of their past glory, I was surprised by just how impressive they truly are.  Up close they look somewhat similar to any globe-clustered pine, in some ways even more like an old growth Red Pine (Pinus Resinosa) than a Loblolly is, but from even a slight distance, the scale and elegant sweep of their branches puts them in a beauty class more approximate to that of the White Pine.  The forest you see above is not the best approximation one could give of what a healthy forest of these things looks like, namely because they were very much a creature of the forested grassland, soaring over happy little seedlings, blueberries, palmettos, Wiregrass (Aristida Stricta), and enough forbs to make even the Midwestern tallgrass prairie swoon in lust.  Apparently one could stand in a Longleaf "forest" and look in all directions and see miles and miles of trunks soaring over the park-like expanses as if they were columns in a natural cathedral of Cordoba.  Imagine it, a place where the game was plentiful, the breeze blew freely under a semi-open sky, and yet the grand trees still provided a lovely shade as if one were in thicker woods.  I suppose I have a weakness for our native grasslands of any stripe, yet you have to admit that this sounds pretty damn wonderful. 

The First Born certainly did.  In addition to the fires that the many storms of the region would provide and the grazing that the many ungulates, including Buffalo, would do, the First Born would keep the place as it was supposed to be by now and then starting a fire of their own, just as they would in the rest of the eastern grassland ecosystems.  This was simply their style of land management, to continue the work that nature was already doing and use it within their agricultural and hunting practices.  Then along came us, the Second Born, who were used to fencing off plots of land and requiring the soil to be productive not only for sustenance, but the generation of capital.  The first two and a half centuries of Southerners loved this ecosystem too for its fertility, but also because the trees were just incredible to use for lumber.  At the same time, there was a different pace of life in the South that let the land become conquered much more slowly.  Similar to how a semi-solitary existence and frontier mentality was the norm in the backcountry stretching from Vermont to the Smokies, the lowland people of the South did not try to farm over every square inch of what they saw and actually sort of blended into the back woods.  Yes, I did classify the land that the Longleaf once grew in as the low country, but Southern culture is a unique thing that blurs divisions like that.  More on this as the blog endures.

But then great changes came about as industrialization and productivity started taking over the nation after the Civil War.  The frontier moved west, and along with it went the go-to-hell rugged individualism of the Eastern backcountry.  That said, as the beautiful but inhuman plantation existence came to an end, many Southerners went back to fending for themselves and went into small-scale cotton farming in that wonderful ground that the Longleaf savannas once blessed.  In tandem, however, the market became more spread out and roads of rail and dirt alike starting developing the land faster and faster, and with it went what was left of those marvelous parklands of pine.  The pace has only increased ever since, along with the rate at which the last remnants of the old, colonial even, Southern culture have disappeared.  Again, this is not necessarily the classic movie-type slave-holding plantation culture, but something as older than cotton or Loblolly stands.  Like the Longleaf itself, such a culture is a lost memory consigned to the same dusty bin of history where the First Born sit, buried even behind the plantations and the sharecroppers and the other stuff that is now buried behind whatever it is we have developing today.  Almost makes me sound like an old man telling the kids to get off my lawn...

Anyway, as I neglected to provide a map last time for the Loblolly, and since the comparison of how deep into the South we are getting with our pines seems appropriate to now give, here's the Lobolly range:

Thanks USGS!

And the Longleaf range:

As you can see, the ranges are comparable, but the Longleaf likes just a little bit more of a lower and hotter climate and does not venture too far onto the Piedmont.  Ready to get even toastier and really sub-tropical?  Feast yer eyes on the range of the Slash Pine (Pinus Eliottii), which will be our next and final guest of pines before we get into some really fun Southern stuff:

Yep, this is where we really start getting into the DEEP South.  Heck, you can't even see Canada on that map.

Residents Of The Piney South: The Virginia Pine

Head anywhere south of the Ohio River or the Mason-Dixon line and all of a sudden you will find more pines than you can shake a stick at.  The first such wonderful resident is the Virginia Pine (Pinus Virginiana), which looks something like a Jack Pine that moved south and got a bit of a fuller crown and straighter branching as a package deal.

Taken at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, one of the most cultural significant, scenic, and underrated places to visit in the eastern United States.  Here we see an absolutely stunning specimen of our friend that I would have to rate as the finest Virginia Pine I have ever encountered to date.  Here we see the pine in her full glory, worthy of being counted among the most stately Jack Pines (as featured in the painting of the same name).  The tree also bears a silhouette not far from that of a mature Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).

Needles borne in clusters of two, like the Jack Pine.

Irregular spreading crown, especially while young, also like the Jack Pine.

In the east, they like to wander only slightly far from their mountain homes and thus are found mostly in the backcountry, or Piedmont.  In fact, the Virginia Pine never seems to stray very far from the Appalchians in general, as seen in the following map of their current natural distribution:

Public Domain.  Thank you again USGS, and rest in peace, Dr. Ebert Little.

In Virginia, even right up north near Washington, they seemed to be filling a role comparable to what Eastern White Pines used to, individual trees scattered among deciduous forests, sticking up above the canopy (but in much less of a grand profile). 

Not the best illustration of the concept, but it was the best I could do in 100 degree weather.  This was taken at Manassas National Battlefield Park, just outside of the Virginia side of the DC metro area.

Mind you, they do perform this role further on in their range, even if still only a junior partner to what the Eastern White Pines used to do in forming the supercanopy. 

Also from Cumberland Gap.  All such pictures were taken near the Pinnacle Overlook, which in addition to being a stunning vantage point to take in the Gap itself and the three surrounding states, is an excellent place for the casual explorer to have a taste of central and southern Appalachian flora.

Admittedly, I did not think too much of them for quite some time, a sentiment apparently shared by tree lovers of the past.  I do not recall seeing one at any botanic garden or historic home grounds anywhere one would expect to see them.  This is not overly shocking, as, again, they not present a robust profile as do the other native pines of the east.  Given a chance, however, they can form an elegant profile that makes for a lovely accent to the natural landscape and one that decidedly marks the passage between the Appalachians and the surrounding lands.

Same as above.

US 25 leaving Kentucky and approaching the modern tunnel under the Gap towards the junction of Virginia and Tennessee.

In the true Appalachians and plateau country to their west they are an entirely different animal, albeit again acting like the White Pines in certain situations.  Here they seem to favor rocky, well-drained soil and often grow as if emerging right out from the exposed rocks of the grand eastern mountains.  Much like the Pitch Pine (Pinus Rigida) barrens of further north along the Appalachians, or the Jack Pines growing under similar conditions on Georgian Bay, this is where we can find the Virginias often serving as the dominant tree, laughing at even the hardiest oaks and junipers. 

While not as open as the rocky haunts of the Jack or Pitch Pines, probably due to the greater precipitation available to them in their southward approach, the same effect is appreciable.  Both photos were taken at Pinnacle Overlook.

Such a phenomenon of the hardy pines can be found with relative ease by modern travelers: simply drive along any rock cut or past rock outcrops and even a thick stand of Virginia Pine might not be too far away. 

This blurry windshield shot was taken in a rather unwelcoming stretch of US 23 in Kentucky across the Ohio River from Portsmouth, Ohio.  While the valley had some lovely views, the area is lacking in safe pull out vantages.  Here they at least have a reason, as small bluffs press in close to the road.

 

 

Further south along US 23 in Kentucky, somewhere between Louisa and Hagerhill.  Where there are rock cuts, there are Virginia Pines thriving in the rocky, thin soils that wash down onto them and collect in the crevasses.  And yes, another windshield photo, but broad shoulders are far and few between in this part of Kentucky.

But while they thrive in rocky, dry areas, they are perfectly at home in richer soils more befitting of a forest area. 

Taken near Martin, KY, on Kentucky 80.

Virginia Pines are often the first trees to make their way into abandoned fields.  While the Appalachians do have grassy areas, be they summit balds, small pockets of the easternmost extensions of the prairie, or (formerly) buffalo corridors, grasslands here tend to be but the first stage in landscape transformation rather than a permanent feature.  Most seedlings of the region are somewhat vulnerable to intense sunlight and exposure, leaving the hardier oaks and Virginia Pines the job of handling the scorching summer sun that reminds the human traveler and dweller that this is, even in the mountains, a land of heat and the edge of the South. 

But again, this is not the land of pine barrens, and the Virginia Pine does not get to be the star of the show as do the Jack or Pitch Pines.  Eventually, the pines get surpassed by the forest once trees start shading the ground and making conditions a bit more palatable to other species.  Unless they happened to form a dense enough stand in the harsher conditions or can be found where such conditions never go away (as in an outcrop), much like the mighty White Pines, the Virginia Pines find themselves thinned out and striving for the canopy:

It almost looks like a Pinus Strobus, really.

One of the many overlooks along the road to the Pinnacle Overlook.  The town seen beyond the pines is Middlesboro, Kentucky.

"Accent piece" or not, however, Virginia Pines are certainly a lovely and integral feature of the central and southern highland landscape.  They are very much a traveler's tree, being a pioneer that welcomes back the forest from even centuries of cultivation and welcomes the human wanderer into frontier lands beyond the greater regions of both North and South.  Want to see more?  Time to get really into the South!