Conifers: Swamp cypress

Swamp cypress in January

This year I intend to bore you all silly with conifers! I aim to identify as many species as I can and have been spending the winter making observations, at a time when most other trees lose their leaves and evergreen conifers are obvious in the landscape. Having said that, I am starting with a conifer that also loses its leaves (apparently not called “needles” in this case).

I never knew deciduous conifers existed – apart from the larch (Larix decidua) – until last November, when I first observed this swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum) close to the red footbridge in Cardiff’s Bute Park.

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Words: Leaflet, booklet, pamphlet, brochure…

Girl with a basket of pamphlets in a French 18th century painting

Although trees seem to have taken over my blogging life lately, I also sometimes ponder the meaning and origins of words. Bear with me as I invite you to consider the differences between a leaflet, a booklet, a pamphlet and a brochure.

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News from the world of trees #4

Here is another selection of tree news articles from around the world. Click on each of the pictures if you would like to read the full stories.

A bird’s eye view at arboretum

A wonderful aerial walkway has been built at the Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire – lots of pictures from the Daily Mail…

How bear dung helps cherry trees

The New Scientist says bears help move Japanese cherry trees uphill to cooler habitats…

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2016 tree following 4: From gold to green

New leaves on April 26 on the oak I am following in Thompson’s Park, Cardiff

As I hoped and feared, everything happened all at once in April to the oak tree I am following in Cardiff’s Thompson’s Park. I had planned to visit every week to keep track of progress but in the end I made only two visits, on April 26 and on May 10. And how different it looked on those two occasions.

On my first visit the leaves were gold and burgeoning. There were also many “catkin” flowers, but these had mostly fallen like furry caterpillars to the ground by my second visit.

Here are some of my pictures…

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Tree following link box for May 2016

Copper beech (Fagus sylvatica purpurea) coming into leaf

Here we are again with the monthly shout-out to all tree followers. If you are new to tree following, read all about it here.

The May tree-following link box is now closed, but at the bottom of this post you will find links to all the wonderful contributions we received this month…

Here in Cardiff everything is very dappled. And it made me think that the Impressionist artists who used “pointillism” had the right idea. The trees that are just starting to wake up for spring are very “dotty” and every dot is a leaf, or a flower.

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Fallen chestnut tree lives on

Fallen chestnut tree in Thompson’s Park, Cardiff, April 26

How will it end? This old horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) in Thompson’s Park, Cardiff, was felled by the gale we called Storm Imogen on February 8 (see my blog post here). But it doesn’t know it’s dead. I have been photographing it for the last couple of months as it came into leaf and flower as normal, despite being horizontal.

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