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“. . . this aborted, leap, and altogether unreliable month, excels them all in its wily tricks;
therefore beware of it. During the day it wheedles the buds out of the bushes and at night it blisters them; with one hand it cajoles you, and with the other it makes you feel like a fool.”  -- from "The Gardener's Year" by Karel Capel |
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|  clear: light breeze: 6º Days have been sunny and temperatures at or just above freezing. Nights have been cold and clear. The combination has made for some half-hearted melting of the snow and ice cover followed by re-freezing. I saw these leaves of a saw-toothed oak caught in the freeze-thaw cycle. In other winters, most of the crabapples are gone by now-fallen naturally or eaten by squirrels or birds. This year though many of the trees still have their fruit. The apples are shriveled; their vivid color dulled; but they still hang on waiting to fall or to become some creature's meal.Two white birch trees stand at the source of the lake in the Japanese Garden. The trees are on the adjacent grounds of the National Council of State Garden Clubs but visually, they are part of the botanical garden. These are trees of winter. They blend into the chorus with when the ground is snow covered, but they take front-and-center against a backdrop of dry leaves. This morning I left the walk to take a closer look at them.  Up to about eye-level height, the barks are lined with evenly spaced rows of puncture marks, each about a quarter-inch across. Likely, because today is Valentine's Day, I thought of hearts and arrows and the initials of lovers carved into birch barks. The marks on the birches in the Garden were more random though, like needle trackmarks on a junkie's arm. A woodpecker's work was my guess. A check of the web confirmed that the trackmarks were made by a species of woodpecker called the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. I never saw the bird, but a picture taken by the Missouri Department of Conservation shows a robin-sized bird with a red head patch and white shoulder patches. The Garden's web site says that yellow-bellied sapsuckers winter here until April. Unlike most woodpeckers that prefer to drill into dead trees, the yellow-bellied sapsucker likes live ones so that their holes will draw sap. The birds then return to the holes to feed on the sap that oozes out or on the ants attracted to the sap. Reports say that the sapsuckers often fuss with other birds or squirrels that try to feed at their sap wells. Even though the tracksmarks are unsightly, they seldom harm the trees because the holes are shallow. With new growth the holes heal and seal. Now that I know about sapsucker preferences and habits, I plan to return to the birches to look for marks that might have been made last winter.I've been looking for a small tree to replace an ornamental peach that someone who lived in the house before me planted at start of the walkway to the front door. My wife says the tree is ugly most of the year. In winter, it looks knobby and unwelcoming. It has no color in fall. In the summer, its leaves droop and are sometimes scaly. She concedes that for one week in spring when it's filled with delicate pink blossoms, it does look pretty good.  I think I've found a replacement. It's a small Japanese maple at the west end of the Japanese Garden that I've been watching for a few months. The tree is an Acer palmatum 'Beni kawa.' I learned that an Oregon nursery named Greer Gardens developed 'Beni kawa' in 1987. In their catalog description Green Garden Nursery modestly writes "Sensational" describes this terrific maple!" Right now the tree in the Japanese Garden is a bright coral-red tangle of twigs that have no hint of knobbiness. In spring and summer the nursery description says that the branches will fill with a thick coat of light green hand-shaped leaves with seven fingers. Then in the fall, the leaves are supposed to turn a ginkgo gold. I think I've found what I've been looking for. Now if only Greer Gardens would cross 'Beni Kawa' with a 'Granny Smith.' |