Category: Horticulture Highlight

If my decomposing carcass helps

nourish the roots of a juniper tree…

-that is immortality enough for me.

                -Edward Abbey

In many an old country graveyard, even those with few trees, one may still come across Juniperus virginiana, Eastern redcedar, its evergreen leaves perhaps once providing a metaphor for eternal life. Native from southern Maine to the Badlands of South Dakota, and south to eastern Texas, and back up through the higher Appalachians, this is a small to medium sized tree, forty to fifty-feet tall at a maximum, but often half that size. Despite its common name this is yet another tree that is not a true cedar, or Cedrus, but rather a juniper.

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…Beneath the green mysterious

tree standing at the dead center

of the garden…

            Robert Bense

Having 5000 trees representing over 670 taxa, there are examples such as sugar maples, dogwoods and white pines, each with hundreds of individuals throughout our cemetery. To accomplish ongoing efforts of diversifying our living collection, we also grow lesser known, perhaps even mysterious, types of trees, shrubs, vines and perennials. One less well known and less frequently planted tree is Amur Maackia, Maackia amurensis.

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Horticulture Highlight: Willow, Salix sp.

Willow weep for me, willow weep for me

Bend your branches green along the stream that runs to sea

            -Ann Ronell

Composer/songwriter Ann Ronell (1905-1993) recounted that her 1932 popular hit song (covered by scores of recording artists since then) was originally inspired while at Radcliffe, by beautiful willows on/near campus. Before and since then, innumerable people (and wildlife) have likewise been enthralled with countless willows.

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…the white pine that stands by the lake. Tall and dense, it’s a whistling crest on windy mornings. Otherwise, it’s silent. It looks over the lake and it looks up the road. I don’t mean it has eyes. It has long bunches of needles, five to each bundle. From its crown springs a fragrance, the air is sharp with it. Everything is in it. But no single part can be separated from another…

              -Mary Oliver

 Whenever I think of or hear the name Japanese White Pine, Pinus parviflora, an immediate image is of one with a great blue heron resting on a long horizontal branch spanning above the placid water of Auburn Lake, which created a mirrored reflection.

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