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A Stroll Through the Maples

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In this third edition of my blog series on some of my favourite trees and shrubs, I’m taking a meander through the genus Acer, the maples, specifically those native to eastern North America.  And what better way to start than with the spring flowers of the iconic red maple (Acer rubrum)?   Always one of the first species to show colour, this tree in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery was sporting its fuzzy male or staminate flowers on its bare branches on March 31, 2010…

…. with a closer look here.  Red maple flowers are an important early source of pollen and nectar for native bees, hoverflies (like the one below) and honey bees.

Red maple trees, sometimes called “swamp maple” for their propensity to grow in damp sites, are generally dioecious with male and female flowers on separate trees, but occasionally a tree will contain flowers of both sexes, but on separate branches. Some trees have even been seen to fluctuate yearly between male and female flowers – something botanists call gender inconstancy.  This article titled ‘The Sex Life of the Red Maple’ by population biologist Richard Primack in Harvard’s Arnoldia magazine recalls that this gender variation has been called a “polygamodioecious” breeding system. Female or pistillate red maple flowers look like dangling, ruby-red earrings with their curved stigmas.  I photographed these April 9, 2010.  

I found our spring-flying polyester or cellophane bee (Colletes inaequalis) foraging for nectar in red maple flowers on April 22, 2016.  However, the length of the stamens and stigmas has suggested to botanists that some red maples may also be wind-pollinated, i.e. not entirely dependent on insects for reproduction.

When I hike through the 4700-acre Torrance Barrens (my local ‘sacred place’ on Lake Muskoka) in early spring, it’s always a joy to see the red maples, their red flowers contrasting with the rugged, grey gneiss outcrops.

And at our own cottage property in Muskoka, I only have to look out the window to see one of our own wild red maples coming into bloom alongside its faithful companion, the white pine (Pinus strobus).

Red maple leaves are green in summer as they absorb sunlight to synthesize the sugars the trees need to survive.  The species is well-known for being intolerant of alkaline soils, and leaves often appear “chlorotic” or yellowish in those conditions. The particular array of the leaves in the canopy is often reflected in its autumn colour, with more exposed parts of individual leaves turning red, while shaded portions turn yellow. 

The winged fruit or seed key of all maples is called a ‘samara’.

The red maple below in Section J in Mount Pleasant Cemetery is one of my favourite trees in autumn.  You can see some of that mixed fall colouration here….

…. and also below in my arrangement of leaves I picked up below another tree. Notice how different these leaves are from the green ones above and others later in this blog. Red maple is known for having a wide diversity of leaf shapes.

The tree has been a sentimental favourite of writers and naturalists. In his journal, Henry Thoreau wrote this on September 25, 1857:  “The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun. These first trees that change are most interesting, since they are seen against others still freshly green — such brilliant red on green. I go half a mile out of my way to examine such a red banner.”

But some red maple cultivars have been selected specifically for their biochemistry in producing a reliable show of red fall colour, like the tree below (possibly Red Sunset) which has carpeted the ground in the cemetery after an overnight freeze.

Contrast that uniform colour with the leaves of the straight species, below.

In fact, there are so many mature red maples in the cemetery that I have photographed specimens featuring all-gold, all-yellow and all-red fall leaves, below. Note the serrated margins of the leaves – an easy way to tell red maple from sugar maple, which has smooth margins.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of two large red maples in autumn.

At our own cottage on Lake Muskoka, I photographed young red maples at the shore exhibiting this same colour difference.  Things like this are interesting to me because there is a general theory that (red) anthocyanin secondary pigments act as autumn sunscreens for certain tree species, allowing them to continue to photosynthesize well into the fall after green chlorophyll breaks down.  Despite my efforts, I have not been able to ascertain why there is such startlingly different pigment biochemistry in this species, particularly when grown on the same plot of land where pH is not therefore a factor. My own theory, backed up by a few speculative references, is that it has to do with sex of the tree: red leaves on males, yellow leaves on females. (Oh, by the way, voracious local beavers cut down these scrubby little red maples.  Beavers don’t care about biochemistry, only housing.)

Speaking of the cottage, this is our best red maple in autumn, as seen from indoors. (And that’s my homemade botanical lampshade.)

It doesn’t surprise me that Acer rubrum is considered to be the ‘most abundant and widespread deciduous tree species’ in eastern North America.  If you hike in our local Muskoka, Ontario woods in May, the little seedlings appear everywhere, including with spring ephemeral wildflowers such as trout lily or dogs-tooth violet (Erythronium americanum), below.  This photo is also a good illustration of the “opposite branching” habit of all maples.

Here it is amidst wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) and other native plants.

In the same forest, on the same day, we find a sugar maple (Acer saccharum) seedling.  Note the smooth margins and the opposite branching.

Sugar maple’s flowers are unlike those of red maple; they are ‘perfect’, meaning male and female flowers are on the same tree. Here you see mostly male flowers with their dangling anthers, but also a few female flowers with the curved stigmas.  Sugar maple also flowers later than red maple.

In autumn, sugar maple trees colour early, often with salmon-scarlet leaves covering an entire tree but sometimes with many hues at once, as you see below in my photo from Mount Pleasant Cemetery. 

Between them, red maple and sugar maple produce the most vibrant autumn colours in northeastern forests. One year, a relative with a small plane took me up above the forests of Muskoka. Looking down, this is what I saw:  a spectacular combination of red maple and sugar maple, with birches and aspens offering yellow contrasts. Oaks would change colour later.

In the ravine in the park at the end of our street in Toronto, the population of native sugar maples, in fall colour below, struggles to survive against the incursion of exotic, invasive Norway maple (Acer platanoides), at right. That European maple takes on yellow fall colour later, along with its normal coal tar spot disease which is visible on some of the leaves.

On the boulevard in front of the pollinator garden at our house in Toronto, we have a columnar tree that I ordered as “red maple” with its presumably spectacular fall colour, to go along with the ginkgo at right. Imagine my disappointment when those red leaves turned out to be dishwater yellow.  Across the street is a Freeman maple – more on that one below.

The ginkgo and red maple on my boulevard were replacements for the 100-year-old silver maple (Acer saccharinum) tree that had dominated our view and given us shade for all the years we’d lived in our home… until 2007. That’s when the city’s water department came through the neighbourhood upgrading the plumbing. I looked down from my 2nd story windows at the workers having their lunch one day.

After they went home, I looked at the excavation on the boulevard. How could any tree survive the kind of root cutting that this would involve?

Sadly, it did not survive (though silver maples are considered short-lived compared to other native trees.) In 2011, it received the dreaded orange dot that designated it for removal.  But note the weeping area in the bark; this is called ‘bacterial wetwood’ and is caused by bacterial infection of a wound.  It happens to many trees and does not bode well for them.

Silver maple trees usually bear male and female flowers separately, but can also have ‘perfect’ flowers containing both male and female organs, like the one below where you can clearly see the male anthers and female stigmas.

Healthy silver maples (they can be notoriously weak-wooded) reach a considerable size at maturity, up to 90 feet (27 m) or more. Native to a wide swath of the Northeast and Central Plains from New Brunswick and Maine to Minnesota and eastern Oklahoma and Texas, they are generally bottomland trees, preferring moist soil.  They derive their common name from the silvery underside of the leaves. In autumn, the foliage turns pale yellow. 

Compared to red maple, silver maple leaves are narrow and very deeply notched.

There is an attractive, naturally-occurring hybrid of red and silver maples called Freeman maple (Acer x freemanii). Named in 1969 for Oliver Myles Freeman (1891-1979) of the U.S. National Arboretum……

…… who made the first controlled cross of the species in 1933, using red maple as the female parent, it blends the best traits of both species: the form and rich fall colour of red maple with the fast growth and cultural adaptability of silver maple.

Growing 40-60 feet (12-18 m) tall with a 20-40 feet (6-12 m) spread, it has become a popular street tree in Toronto.  There are also many specimens at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, below.

When I created my “leaf dancers” blog in November 2020 (see Pigments of my Imagination), I gathered small Freeman maple leaves from the boulevard tree across the street to fashion the skirts of my Maple Maypole dancers.  I like to think Oliver Freeman would be amused to see them.

Finally, a little maple that grows in the shady understory of northeastern forests, including the mixed woods near our cottage on Lake Muskoka:  striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum).  It’s also called “moose maple” because it is sometimes the winter food of moose and white-tailed deer; squirrels and chipmunks forage on its twigs; and many birds consume the seeds. Though occasionally seen as a small, single-trunked tree, it is usually found in nature as a multi-stemmed shrub, seldom exceeding 20 feet (6 m).  Taxonomically, it is the only non-Asian species in the Acer section Macrantha, or “snakebark maples”; all the other 18-21 species, e.g. A. davidii, A. rufinerve, A. tomentosum, occur in China, eastern Russia, Korea, Japan or Myanmar.  The photo below shows its dainty samaras.

Its leaves have three shallow lobes and the greenish flowers are held in arching racemes.  If you look very closely, you can see an early instar of gypsy moth or LDD moth (Lymantria dispar dispar) on the lower right of the leaf. In May, I still thought we’d survive the onslaught of this destructive pest; by mid-summer, it was clear we had not, as you can read in my 2021 blog.

Though there are other maple trees in North America, including mountain maple (A. spicatum), Manitoba maple (A. negundo) and black maple (A. nigrum) in the east and central Canada and bigleaf maple (A. macrophyllum), Douglas maple (A. glabrum subsp. douglasii) and vine maple (A. circinatum) in the west, I’ve included in this stroll the beautiful trees I see each year here in Ontario.  Oh, there’s one more maple we see fairly often – and it’s native right across the country.  My little granddaughter once confused it with the phrase “make believe”, but it is our true (if slightly stylized) “maple leaf forever”.

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Want to read about more North American trees?  See my recent blogs on tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) and redbuds (Cercis canadensis and its cousins). And here is one on fall colour in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

At the Vorres Museum

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One of the first stops on our Greek tour had a very Canadian connection. In the leafy Paiania neighbourhood, a suburb of Athens, we visited the beautiful Vorres Museum of Folk and Contemporary Art. Donated to the state in 1983 by its Greek-Canadian owner Ionos Vorres (1924 – 2015), it is an interesting complex, evoking both the clean, modern lines of contemporary Greek architecture and the rustic, whitewashed homes of a 19th century Attica village. Connecting those notions philosophically and physically by converting a few old houses and a stable to create a world-class collection of ethnographic folk art reaching back 2,500 years and a sleek gallery of contemporary art was the genius of Ion Vorres (Ian).

Viewed from the upper part of the property, the building surrounds a courtyard on three sides, the folk museum on the right, the modern gallery on the left.

We began our tour in the art gallery, passing a fountain of lantana to enter.

A light, airy space with pale brick walls, the gallery was designed in the late 1970s by Michael Fotiadis, co-designer with Bernard Schumi Architects of the new Acropolis Museum. Additions were made in 2004.

In the 1970s, when Ion Vorres began to collect works by 20th century artists such as Yannis Gaitis, ‘Human Landscape’ (1975), below, the National Gallery in Athens did not have a collection of modern paintings.

So Vorres became both collector and benefactor. That tradition continues today at the museum, with annual residencies and educational programs in which school children visit to do activities while discovering noted artists such as Dimitris Mytaras, below, and his ‘Yellow Tombstone’ (1970).

Given the times of much of the work in the gallery, created during the far-right Military Junta of Greece (1967-74), there is a distinct political slant that adds to the mystique of the works. Our tour guide was Ion Vorres’s grandson Nektarios Vorres, President of the Vorres Foundation, which oversees the museum. He stopped at his favourite work, ‘Hommage to the Walls of Athens, 1940-19…’ (1959) by Vlassis Caniaris, in which the artist recreated the images of the protest-laden walls of Athens during the Nazi occupation. Before the occupation ended, of course, the Civil War began in 1943 and lasted until 1949.

Hear Nektarios Vorres speak about the painting, below.

A personal note here. When I visited Greece in 2011 during a tour that began in Istanbul and travelled through the islands of Rhodes, Patmos, Lindos, Santorini, Mykonos and Delos, our one day in Athens happened to coincide with a national day of protest on the talks with the European Union. It was the time of ‘the debt crisis’ and nothing was open. My husband elected to travel to Delphi even though the site was closed, just to see the countryside.  I decided to go downtown and watch the protests. I perched on a street railing and watched the people parade by: teachers, nurses, government workers, young, old, holding their flags and banners.

It occurred to me then that I come from a young country that has never been in the grip of a national crisis, economic or otherwise. Canada has fought in European wars, but war has never come to us. We have not been occupied, nor seized by the military, nor torn apart by civil war, nor invaded repeatedly in our brief century-and-a-half since confederation, unlike Greece and its tumultuous events over thousands of years. It is impossible for me to understand the depth of history that rests in the Greek psyche, the kind of scribbled history that Vlassis Caniaris was capturing on the Walls of Athens. But I could indeed watch this small moment in history pass by in downtown Athens.

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Then we came to Giorgis Derpapas‘s stately 1975 portrait of Ion Vorres, below. After graduating from the (American) Athens College at the age of 18, Vorres joined the OSS underground in 1942 and fought behind the enemy lines during the Nazi occupation of Greece.  In 1944, he travelled to Canada where he received his BA from Queens University followed by an MA from the University of Toronto. He became a Canadian citizen and stayed and worked for some years, writing on art and architecture, organizing exhibitions, and authoring The Last Grand Duchess, about the exiled Grand Duchess Olga, sister of Czar Nicholas II.  He returned to Greece in 1962, eventually selling the family company. But he was lured back to Canada for Expo 67 and named director of the Greek Pavilion, the only Canadian citizen to run a foreign pavilion.

Back home again, Ion Vorres looked for a way to celebrate the culture he saw rapidly disappearing as Greeks abandoned the countryside for the city, a massive flow of population that occurred after the Second World War.  Determined to conserve important artifacts of Greek rural life, he began collecting; as the word went out people came to him with what Nektarios called their “old junk”. He lived in a small section of one of the houses as he oversaw the development of his museum while playing an active role in Greek cultural life, serving on boards and as an international  cultural advisor. He was also Mayor of Paiania from 1991 to 1998. Among his honours were the Order of Canada (2009) and the Greek title Grand Commander of the Order of Honour (2014). In his final years, the debt crisis loomed large for Ion Vorres, as it did for all Greece’s cultural sites, reducing financial support from the state to which he’d bequeathed the museum and limiting the open days to weekends only. Today, a 10-member board of directors runs the foundation and the museum caters to special functions as well as fulfilling its mission focus. 

We finished our tour of the gallery with a retrospective on the work of Jannis Spyropolous.

Then it was into the museum for a tour that was more like walking through a rambling home from the 19th century. Furniture, art, religious icons, textiles, household items….

….. and old millstones, all beautifully displayed with vases of tumbling bougainvillea blossoms.

I walked past shelves of coloured glass…..

…. with enticing views of the stone walls and their adornments in the garden beyond.

We finished in the old kitchen with its impressive paintings and….

….. collection of commemorative ceramic plates.


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Then in was out into the garden, but not before a little introduction by Nektarios and our tour guide Eleftherios Dariotis, below left, who has been working on a more sustainable approach to the Vorres Museum courtyard gardens and their collection of Mediterranean plants. Not only has he redesigned the plantings to incorporate many indigenous and drought-tolerant plants, but he has also embarked with Nektarios on a brand-new dry garden behind the museum.

I loved this little cottage garden adjacent to the museum with its lime tree and a mix of interesting plants.

Against the white wall grew perfumed Hedychium gardnerianum, or Kahili ginger lily from the Himalayas. While we usually refer to botanical names as Latin, their roots are very often Greek. In this case, the genus name comes from the Greek words “hedys” for fragrant, and “chion” for white, referring to another species.

And there was the popular South African plant Leonotis leonurus, or lion’s ear, its etymological roots in the Greek words “leon” for lion and “otis” for ear, describing the fuzzy upper lip of each flower.

Nearby was a 70-year old pomegranate (Punicum granatum) full of fruit.

Easy-care sages (Salvia sp.), a Dariotis specialty, spilled over a wall.

A dark-leafed taro (Colocasia) adorned a millstone in a little pond.

This is the view from the other side.

A little greenery against the white wall.

Though native to the Caribbean, sweet acacia (Vachellia farnesiana) was imported into Europe in the 17th century.

Because of the configuration of the museum and gallery, there are numerous walled courtyards in which to stroll, each with its own selection of sculpture and plantings. And the dry stone walls are spectacular as background. Whether formal….

…. or informal, they are stellar examples of decorative stonework.

We toured our way to the courtyard just inside the….

….. tall gate and the driveway lined with more stone walls.

Then we climbed stairs to the upper part of the property……

……….. and listened to Eleftharios and Nektarios talk about the new garden……

…… taking shape here beyond the little pile of spare monuments(!)  One day soon, visitors to the museum will be able to explore the wealth of indigenous Greek flora growing on this gentle slope: a leafy, yet no less important, heritage of the country that the Vorres family celebrates here in Paiania.

Penstemon Envy

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I’ve just returned home from Denver (and the annual edition of my Garden Bloggers’ Fling) with a severe case of ineedmore. There’s not really a cure for this, except to acknowledge that “I need more penstemons” is a real affliction, especially in June. Especially after being in Colorado, where so many penstemons are native.  I felt it stirring at the High Plains Environmental Center in Fort Collins, where red-flowered scarlet bugler (P. barbatus) was consorting wtih purplish Rocky Mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus) and native yellow columbines (Aquilegia chrysantha).

Pretty sure I saw gorgeous, pink Palmer’s penstemon (P. palmeri) at the doorway to the visitor centre there. I tried to grow that one from seed, but no dice.

I have a photo specialty of bumble bee (Bombus) images, and I was happy to collect a new species, Bombus nevadensis, the Nevada bumble bee, nectaring on Penstemon strictus at the High Plains Environmental Center.

Denver Botanic Garden‘s new Steppe Garden featured penstemons galore. I loved this little meadow with large-flowered penstemon (P. grandiflorus) in various colours.

This was an interesting combination at Denver Botanic: Penstemon grandiflorus in a bed of Fire Spinner ice plant (Delosperma cooperi).

I do grow P. grandiflorus at my cottage on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto. A biennial, it makes a rosette of succulent, silvery-gray leaves the first year, then sends up this sturdy stem with gorgeous lilac-purple blooms the next year. It’s easy to grow from seed. This is what it looked like the first year I seeded it, up near my septic bed. (And yes, it is growing with the pernicious, invasive, lovable oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare…)

If I watch this penstemon carefully , I’ll see lots of native bees and hoverflies exploring the lilac-mauve flowers.

Desert penstemon (P. pseudospectabilis) was in flower at Denver Botanic Gardens, too.

We would see that pretty penstemon at The Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins, this time with a pink dianthus.

There were other penstemons at this developing garden. This sky-blue one had no label, but horticulturist Bryan Fischer is quite sure it’s Penstemon virgatus, the upright blue penstemon or one-sided penstemon.

Well-known designer/writer Lauren Springer Ogden is creating The Undaunted Garden (named after her iconic book) at The Gardens on Spring Creek.  One of the plants she’s used is the stunning Penstemon heterophyllus ‘Electric Blue’, below.

Rocky mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus), of course, is a common native beardtongue in Denver.  This is P. strictus ‘Bandera’ at Denver Botanic Gardens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Denver Botanic Garden’s Chatfield Farm campus (where we enjoyed a buffet dinner and line-dancing lessons!) we saw Penstemon strictus growing with scarlet bugler (Penstemon barbatus ‘Coccineus’) and a bearded iris thrown in the mix.

And Penstemon strictus made a beautiful purple foil to native yellow blanket flowers (Gaillardia aristata) at Chatfield.

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This was an effective colour combination there: apricot mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) with Penstemon strictus. 

Banana yucca (Yucca baccata) made a brilliant focal point in a sea of Penstemon strictus at Chatfield, below.

In Carol Shinn’s beautiful Fort Collin’s garden, I admired purple P. strictus and scarlet bugler (P. barbatus ‘Coccineus’) in a gritty bed beside her driveway. They were flowering with a native white erigeron, yellow eriogonum and tall yellow prince’s plume (Stanleya pinnata) in the background.

 

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Dan Johnson and Tony Miles’s lovely garden in Englewood, Pentemon strictus was consorting happily beside a little water feature with California poppies.

At radio personality Keith Funk’s garden in Centennial, below, a front yard alpine garden paired the compact red flowers of pineleaf penstemon (P. pinifolius) with yellow foxtail lily (Eremurus), right, and evening primrose (Oenothera), rear.

Well-known garden guru Panayoti Kelaidis, outreach director of the Denver Botanic Gardens, had lots of penstemons in his garden. I liked this colourful combination of cacti with desert penstemon (P. pseudospectabilis).

I first met Panayoti in June 2006 when he generously gave my husband and me a 90-minute tour of the botanic garden, of which he was (and is) so deservedly proud.  We were on a driving trip from Denver to Edwards CO and we stopped in at DBG and also at the Betty Ford Alpine Garden in Vail. What a delight that little jewel of a garden is, especially for penstemons!  So when I came back to Canada, I decided to sow some penstemon seed in my wild, sandy, hillside garden on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto. As I wrote above, biennial large-flowered penstemon enjoyed the conditions and still comes up here and there. Not all the seeds took, but one luscious species, prairie penstemon (P. cobaea var. purpureus) found happiness with its roots seemingly tucked under rocks and graced me with just two plants that appear faithfully each June.

My most successful seed-sowing, however, was our native foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis), which loves my granite hillside, thrives in sandy, acidic gravel and shrugs off drought.  It is a great self-seeder and enjoys the company of lanceleaf coreopsis (C. lanceolata), which likes the same mean conditions.  They are always in bloom on Canada Day (July 1st).

Here it is with a foraging bumble bee. Hummingbirds love this penstemon, too (as they do all penstemons).

Penstemons are also called “beardtongue”, for the fuzzy staminode in the centre of the flower. You can see that below with a closeup of foxglove penstemon.

Penstemons flower mostly in June and early July. Depending on the species, they make beautiful garden companions for lots of late spring-early summer perennials: irises, peonies, lupines and more. One June (before the foxglove penstemon came into flower), I made a little bouquet from my country meadows here on Lake Muskoka.  Along with the pale-lilac Penstemon grandiflorus I included native blue flag iris (I. versicolor), wild lupines (L. perennis) and weedy oxeye daisies and buttercups. This year our spring was cold and flowering was late, so I’m back at the lake in the first week of summer in time to enjoy all these flowers, and the ones that come later.  And to daydream and write about the wonderful gardens we visited in Colorado, where penstemons rule supreme!

 

If you love penstemons (or if I’ve misidentified any), please leave a comment. I love hearing from you.

Spring at Ontario’s Royal Botanical Gardens

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After a long winter, it always nourishes the soul to soak up spring in public gardens as they begin their season-long parade of blossoms. So, last Thursday, I paid a short visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario. It’s also in Hamilton, the neighbouring city – which is what happens when you have discrete properties spanning the municipal boundary along Plains Road. There was a lovely ‘Gorgeous’ crabapple attracting bees in front of the visitor centre.

Tulips (I think that spectacular orange one is ‘Daydream’) were in full flower along the walkway.

The raised gardens here attract lots of attention, given that they’re at eye level.

I loved this combination: yellow-flowered cushion spurge (Euphorbia polychroma) with ‘Blue Ensign’ lungwort (Pulmonaria) and eastern shooting star (Dodecatheon meadia) in front.

Then I arrived at what used to be called the Hendrie Rose Garden and is now the Centennial Rose Garden within Hendrie Park, which is the new name encompassing all the gardens at this location. The roses will begin in June, of course. I must say, I miss the old vine pergolas with the clematis and pleached trees overhead, but I’m sure these black metal gazebos will stand the test of time.  And from the photos I’ve seen online, this new incarnation is going to be more inspiring to gardeners who want to know how to design with low-maintenance roses in their own gardens, i.e. using companion plants rather than seeing the shrubs all alone in a “rose zoo”.

As we walked along the edge of the forest of the Grindstone Creek Valley, I saw native redbuds (Cercis canadensis) with their branches lined in tiny pink flowers.

A little flash of yellow alerted me to a male goldfinch in an oak tree. Lots of birders come here with their long lenses!

A horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) was just opening its first flowers, left, below. Did you know that this European tree has a fascinating reproductive strategy? Bees can see yellow, but not red, so the tree features a little yellow splotch on its newest flowers, the ones containing fresh nectar and pollen. As the flowers age, they turn orange, then red (right). Red is not a colour bees can detect, so they don’t bother with the old “used” flowers any more.

The Scented Garden was awash in fragrant daffodils (no labels, alas), while magnolias and perfumed Koreanspice viburnum (V. carlesii) were offering their olfactory best in the distance.

A favourite spot for me is the Helen M. Kippax Wild Plants Garden. I like its naturalistic approach to life and pollinators.

Mayapples were just coming into flower beside brilliant Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica)…..

….. which were attracting queen bees to the nectar-rich flowers, like the one below.

Our native common blue violet (Viola sororia) was putting on a pretty show.

How thrilling to see a young American chestnut (Castanea dentata), in a cage here to protect the tender shoots from voracious rabbits. Once a major eastern deciduous forest component (thought to have comprised 25-30% of hardwoods), this now endangered species suffered a massive decline because of chestnut blight, which is estimated to have killed between 3-4 billion trees in Eastern North America between 1904, when the disease was discovered, and the 1950s. Currently, the Canadian Chestnut Council is working to reintroduce trees bred to have better resistance to the blight.

The familiar flowers of wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) lit up a corner.

American red elderberry (Sambucus pubens) was in flower at the top of the Grindstone Creek Valley.

There was an informative and artful display set up to explain the role of solitary bees. I didn’t see any in residence, but perhaps it’s still early in the season.

Native bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) was showing off its catkin flowers.

The pond featured an interesting sculpture and a good interpetive sign explaining earth’s water cycle.

Most of the gardens were still waking up. In the Medicinal Plants Garden…….

…. the only plant in bloom was pink lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis var. rosea). Evidently, in careful doses, the root, which contains convallatoxin, has been used for cardiac arrhythmias and other heart issues. (The berries, however, are highly poisonous.)

Our next stop was a short drive down Plains Road to The Arboretum to see the RBG’s big lilac collection of over 700 species and cultivars. I wanted to see the early-blooming lilacs on the Kitsy Evans Lilac Walk…..

…. including the common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) which has given rise to so many cultivars over the past century.


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The Hyacinthifloras were in flower, given the early season……

….. and renowned Manitoba breeder Dr. Frank Skinner’s 1966 introduction, the compact, pink-flowered S. x hyacinthiflora ‘Maiden’s Blush’ (S. oblata, ssp. dilatata x S. vulgaris) was perfuming the path.  It’s a favourite of many lilac fans.

I headed down the slope of the Katie Osborne Lilac Garden to see what other early lilacs were in bloom.

There is now a path along the bottom of the Dell, which makes walking through easier……

…. but I must say that given that the Royal Botanical Gardens was once the International Cultivar Registration Authority (ICRA) for lilacs and has such a deep collection, I was disappointed in the attention being paid to the lilacs on the steep south slope. Pruning has been let go here and elsewhere, which has allowed many lilac shrubs to grow too tall. In some places, lilacs have died and there are now hazardous depressions where people who want to climb the hill like mountain goats can twist ankles or worse. I have been many times to the RBG at lilac time, and I’ve written about lilacs and Hyacinthifloras and hybridizer Frank Skinner in particular – see my Canadian Gardening 2008 story, below. In one memorable interview with the RBG’s former lilac specialist Charles Holetich in the mid-90s when I was writing my weekly newspaper column for the Toronto Sun, he said he was a “strong believer that lilacs should be kept pruned at between 6-9 feet”.

I understand the difficulties associated with a steep slope (and limited staffing), but it seems to be me that some of these important lilacs, below, could easily be transplanted to the empty, flat lawn at the top on the north side of the Dell, where they could be maintained as they should be.

As we headed out of the Arboretum, I enjoyed this lovely ‘Midnight’ chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), and gazed beyond it to the big, flat lawn where those ignored lilacs might enjoy a new lease on life.

With a few hours left before we had to drive north to Guelph, we decided to stop in at the newly redesigned David Braley and Nancy Gordon Rock Garden back down Plains Road.

I attended the opening in 2016 (following a 4-year renovation of the 1929 garden) but the plantings have matured in three years. While it was primarily a spring display garden in its previous life, it had been re-imagined courtesy of Janet Rosenberg & Studio as a four-season garden featuring many more shrubs and a big palette of perennials. This was the view from the top.

Nearby was a fragrant ‘Heaven Scent’ magnolia (M. liliiflora x M. veitchii).

I did find some familiar little paths on the edge of the valley slope, where I could look through flowering almond (Prunus triloba ‘Multiplex’)…..

….. to old plantings of basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxatilis) still going strong decades later…

….. and some beautiful views down to the valley through fragrant Viburnum x carlcephalum ‘Cayuga’.

But it was down on the valley floor where you get the big picture, over a sleek, sinuous water feature up towards the new visitor centre, intended to attract not just garden-lovers but year-round restaurant diners and wedding and special event revenue as well.

The water feature extends around in front of the old 1962 teahouse, which is now called the Garden House.

A beautiful bridge spans the water, which will host water lilies in summer.

Along the main garden path which takes visitors on a gentle (wheelchair-accessible) ascent back to the Visitor Centre, only a few spring perennials were in bloom.

Retracing my steps, I climbed a path at the far end of the rock garden, past a lovely Korean maple (Acer pseudosieboldianum) …….

…… and a pretty little waterfall.

There were pale fritillaries (Fritillaria pallida) peeking out from ostrich ferns….

…. and at the top of the stone steps, the reward of a ‘Valentine’ bleeding heart in flower.

We walked through the late blossoms of ‘Kanzan’ Japanese cherries in the RBG’s cherry collection to return to our car.

After a long winter, it was a joy to walk among cherry blossoms, daffodils, scented lilacs and viburnums in yet another spring at the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Christchurch Botanic Gardens

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As we pulled into Christchurch in late afternoon a few hours after our delightful lunch and garden tour at Akaunui Homestead and Farm, a few of us decided to leave the hotel and walk to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens less than a mile away. After the disastrous 2011 earthquake here, the city has been rebuilding for years, especially structures that were not earthquake-proof, like this old building en route.

The botanic gardens are open to the public from 7 am to 6:30 pm (conservatories 10:15 am – 4 pm) daily, except Christmas Day. Like all the botanic gardens we saw in New Zealand, there is no charge to visit. Covering 21 hectares (52 acres), they were opened in 1863, occupying a pretty site along the Avon River.  There is an excellent printed .pdf guide online.

We started in the Kitchen Garden adjacent to the former Curator’s House, which is now a restaurant (we would eat dinner there later).  I thought this was one of the finest edible gardens I’d visited…..

….with its focus on design…..

….and diversity of edibles…..

….and education.

We walked along the Avon River with its scrim of beech trees….

….past early evening picnickers.

With so little time until dark, we bypassed the lawn and adjacent heather garden.

The large Rock Garden seemed to need a little more TLC in the weeding and editing department……

….. but had clearly been an ambitious design with significant scale.

I liked seeing a new ornamental onion, Allium carinatum subsp. pulchellum, so happy here…..

…. and keeping the bees happy, too.

I had never seen Francoa sonchifolia in a garden, so was delighted to find it here along with its foraging honey bees…..

I walked slowly through the New Zealand Gardens….

….full of indigenous plants which in this country seem to be so understatedly…..

…. green that the overwhelming perception is unremarkable.

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But it takes time and local understanding to appreciate each of these plants, the smallest and the large, like the iconic totara tree (Podocarpus totara), below….

….and how they relate to wildlife, including this insect chorus on a Christchurch evening in mid-summer. Listen…..

Adjacent to the Native Plant Garden is the Cocayne Memorial Garden, designed in 1938 to honour Leonard Cocayne (1855-1934), New Zealand’s pioneering botanist and ecologist and author of The Vegetation of New Zealand (1921).

Given our limited time, we hurried through a cactus garden….

….. with some interesting large succulents that I later discovered were Furcraea parmentieri. A monocarpic Mexican species, these plants will grow until they achieve flowering, after which they will die.

A female paradise shelduck hovered at the water’s edge with her duckling nearby.

There were pretty, South African Crinum x powellii at the water’s edge here, showing why its common name is “swamp lily”.

Time was fleeting so we turned back toward the entrance past this lovely stand of fragrant lilies.

Nearby was a giant redwood (Sequoidendron giganteum), below, one of seven grown from seed that was ordered from California in 1873 (just 21 years after William Lobb first collected seed of the newly discovered trees in Calaveras Grove in the Sierra Nevadas for Veitch’s Nursery in England), making them 145 years old. Interestingly, though North Americans call this species “Sierra redwood” or “giant redwood” or “big tree” (since it is often confused with the smaller Coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens). New Zealanders and the British call it “Wellingtonia”, a name that recalls England’s race to be the first to name it. After Lobb returned to England with seed, seedlings and herbarium specimens, taxonomist John Lindley named the species Wellingtonia gigantea to honour the recently deceased Duke of Wellington (1769-1852).  Meanwhile, as tourists poured into Calaveras Grove, botanist Albert Kellogg was working to sort out his big tree specimens in his herbarium at the brand-new California Academy of Natural Sciences in San Francisco, intending to call the species Washingtonia.  In 1854, the Duke of Wellington would lose his “official” taxonomic honour when French botanist Joseph Decaisne placed the tree in the genus Sequoia as S. gigantea (Sequoiadendron came later), but the common name Wellingtonia stuck for giant redwoods grown in the Commonwealth.

We peeked in to the lovely Rose Garden with its 104 beds, but kept walking.

Two more trees caught my eye. The Madeiran lily-of-the-valley tree (Clethra arborea) was attracting bees to its pendant blossoms……

….. and I was happy to see a young kauri  (Agathis australis) growing here, having loved walking under towering kauris in their protected forest at Bay of Islands.

At the southeast fringe of the Rose Garden was the extensive Dahlia Garden, with 90 percent of the collection sourced from New Zealand breeders.

This is ‘Velvet Night’, a 1985 introduction from Dr. Keith Hammett, one of the dahlia world’s icons and New Zealand’s leading breeder of ornamental plants.

We walked past an old Kashmir cypress (Cupressus cashmeriana), with its elegant pendulous branchlets.

Sadly because of the lateness of the day, we missed seeing the large water garden and the far reaches of Christchurch Botanic Gardens including Hagley Park. And the six conservatories had closed a few hours earlier: Cunningham House (tropical rainforest), Townend House (cool greenhouse), Garrick House (desert), Gilpin House (orchids, bromeliads, carnivorous plants), Fern House and Fowraker House (indigenous and exotic alpines).  And somehow we missed the herbaceous border. But it was time to head back to the entrance, past our riverside picnickers who had now been joined by friends and a few waterfowl, in order to enjoy our own alfresco dinner at the Curator’s House Restaurant before walking back to the hotel and hitting the sack. For tomorrow would be one of the best days on our tour, starring three stunning and very different New Zealand gardens.