Category: flora

whatis?


Eight years ago a massive white oak next to Brooks Hall blew down, the night hurricane Isabel came to town. UVA is really good about planting trees on central grounds (aka campus). They replanted a sapling near the oak’s site. My question, what is this tree? Looks almost like pictures of American Chestnut (Castanea dentate), a tree that used to dominate the Piedmont, got knocked down hard by blight starting in the early 1900’s.
On the subject of tree genocide, I wonder if UVA has an official program to deal with the Emerald Ash Borer? No doubt. They must. I wonder what percentage of the large trees at UVA are ash trees? The borers’ favorite food.

fortunate


To live in a place where there is rain, and in a place where the villagers don’t make charcoal out of every available woody plant.

The forked twigs of Witch Hazel are preferred as divining rods. An extract of the plant is used in the astringent witch hazel. The bark and leaves were used by native Americans in the treatment of external inflammations. Pond’s Extract was a popular distillation of the bark in dilute alcohol.–Wikipedia

betula uber

The Virginia round-leaf birch was the first tree given protection under the Endangered Species Act. This rare variant was first described by botanist
W.W. Ashe in 1918 as living in a single creek's drainage area.
The single natural population of Virginia round-leaf birch has dwindled down to only eight individuals in 2003.
Reproduction in the wild was last documented in 1981.
While there are nearly 1,000 artificially propagated trees in botanical gardens and the wild, the lack of natural reproduction is the primary reason the tree is still listed today.
Recovery for the Virginia round-leaf birch hinges on the successful natural reproduction and survival of these populations in the wild.--U.S. Fish and Wildife Service
tree sex
Tree champion Joe Murray talks about woody perennial sex and Betula Uber…

Arbor Day

“A society grows great when old people plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”


Members of the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards, the Charlottesville Tree Commission, Charlottesville Parks and Recreation and Mia the Dog planted a quercus bicolor in Tonsler Park this morning celebrating Arbor Day.

Martha Warring, forester with the VDOF addressed the assembly, marking Charlottesville’s 5th year as a “tree-city”, a citation granted by the Arbor Day Foundation.


Trees start small, they get big. This quercus falcata (Southern Red Oak) is located in the City’s Oakwood Cemetery.
If you have a tree you’d like to nominate for the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards “treasured tree” program contact them.