Category: trees

Acer saccharinum

Like most maples, silver maple can be variably dioecious (separate male or female trees) or monoecious (male and female flowers on the same tree) but dioecious trees are far more common. They can also change sex from year to year.
Native Americans used the sap of wild trees to make sugar, as medicine, and in bread. They used the wood to make baskets and furniture. An infusion of bark removed from the south side of the tree is used by the Mohegan for cough medicine. The Cherokee take an infusion of the bark for cramps, dysentery, and hives. They boil the inner bark and use it with water as a wash for sore eyes. They also take a compound infusion of the bark for “female trouble” and cramps. They take a hot infusion of the bark for measles, and use the tree to make baskets, for lumber, building material, and for carving.– Wikipedia

quercus macrocarpa

new leaves in April
Bur oaks primarily grow in a temperate climate on the western oak–hickory forested regions in the United States and into Canada. It commonly grows in the open, away from dense forest canopy. For this reason, it is an important tree on the eastern prairies, often found near waterways in otherwise more forested areas, where there is a break in the canopy. It is drought resistant, possibly because of its long taproot. At the end of the growing season, a one-year sapling may have a taproot 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in) deep and a lateral root spread of 76 cm (2 ft 6 in). The West Virginia state champion bur oak has a trunk diameter of almost 3 m–Wikipedia (10 ft).

If you are only going to plant one tree in this life, make it a quercus macrocarpa.

VDOT pruning master class

pruned lateral branches
One hears varying things about the Virginia Department of Transportation and trees. I have seen them prune trees with a bush-hog, a rotary mower on a hydraulic arm, whacking limbs off a tree, then moving on. I have heard VDOT credited with creating an acronym for trees, “FHO” (fixed hazardous objects). I have seen them do terminal pruning of trees, cut the trees at ground level that communities have loved and cared for.
Route 20 Monticello Gateway
Recently, I have heard VDOT praise the trees between Charlottesville and Albemarle in the median of Route 20. I like VDOT when they are in praise mode.