Anyone fond of purple, in all its various shades, should plan a trip in April, along Rte. 81, the backbone of VA. When I drive down to TN, on the 13th of April, the Interstate was lined with the deep lavender of a dominant understory tree, the Redbud. Always a mystery that they call it “Redbud” when it seems so very purple but any googling of the name only said it had a red flower. Maybe it’s a deficiency in my color vision that I have always seen it as purple. Either way it was beautiful, especially when viewed against the backdrop of fields of yellow mustard.
Turn the car around three weeks later, head north and the road is lined with a much lighter lavender, for all the Paulownia trees were in bloom. Looking into the background of this tree reveals a most amazing tree indeed! It can grow 18 feet in it’s first year, its leaves, at least on a zippily growing young tree, can be 2-3 feet (!) across and by the third year it has reached the height of 30 feet and is providing shade for the whole family! Its blossoms, which caught my attention for their beauty and scent, last for 6-8 weeks and smell somewhat akin to jasmine and come in white, blue or lavender. The trees I saw along the highway weren’t ornamentals, but forest trees and probably was Paulowania Elongata, which attains a height of 80’ and has the lavender blossoms.
Although these trees have been grown in Japan for centuries, the fossil record shows that, shazam, it is a native North American tree, doing very well here, thank you, until the ice age came along. So, those people who buy them to plant don’t have to feel guilty about adding yet another invasive to the list. In Japan it is customary to plant one of these trees when a daughter is born, and then harvest it at her wedding to make her wedding chest from it.
The list of positive attributes goes on and on, at least on the website where they are trying to sell you one and by the end of reading it you want to jump up and buy a dozen. However, although they fare well almost everywhere and can tolerate temperatures from –15 to 130 degrees, they DON”T like salt air. So we won’t see them springing up along the highways and byways of Cape Cod. But from TN to CT, they were everywhere.
Driving north, once again, the season of spring was rewound back into its container. In TN all the trees were fully leafed out, black locust trees with their hanging white racemes of flowers were also everywhere. But here on the Cape, the locusts are just thinking about getting their leaves out. So I will get to see this emerging leaf show all over again! How cool is that! I feel like it’s a sort of natural history time machine I’ve been travelling in. Almost as disorienting as when you have to readjust to different time zones. But I shall get my, whose-coming-up-when, bearings back again and reset my blog tales to Spring, Cape Cod style.
But at the moment, now that I am back in the work saddle again, there are copepods to be caught for a micro-projector class with 5th graders tomorrow. Daphnia too, and they are always worthy of a shared tale. So, until then, happy, whatever point in spring, you find yourself in, day!
from the author. Hmmm about that, not an invasive thing. It seems some sites have it listed as such. It obviously has a way of spreading itself around easily, for I did see it along the highway from VA to CT. If you haven't been here for a couple of million years, and then you come back,does that make you an invasive or a resurrected? Any true botanists in the audience can feel free to weigh in. My hunch is they will lambast me for saying that if you want to get some carbon credits, this is your man. Or maybe I never said that. Whatever. Pat
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