Species in the Spotlight Archive
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Black Locust
As early as the 1630s, New England shipbuilders imported black locust from the southern colonies to use for the dowels, or treenails, that hold a ship’s planks to the frames. The metal fasteners available back then corroded when exposed to salt, and black locust was soon found to be superior to the traditional oak treenails as it is harder and… (more)
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Pin Cherry
Separating cherry from not-cherry is easy. All you have to do is taste a twig, for twigs of all the cherries have a bitter almond taste. The complete content of this article is part of the downloadable pdf of this issue, available in our online shop.
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Slippery Elm
In her 1905 book, Our Native Trees and How to Identify Them: A Popular Study of Their Habits and Their Peculiarities, Harriet Keeler extols the unexpected qualities of the inner bark of slippery elm: “It is thick, fragrant, mucilaginous, demulcent, and nutritious. The water in which the bark has been soaked is a grateful drink for one suffering from affections… (more)
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American Chestnut
Silvics of North America, a weighty two-volume book published by the U.S. Forest Service, describes the life histories and management recommendations for all the important trees in this country. When I noticed that Castanea dentate was missing from this book, I was outraged. Even though I had known about the devastation of chestnut from chestnut blight since birth, I wasn’t… (more)
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Nannyberry, Viburnum lentago
Michael Dirr, my favorite horticulturalist, is a man of strongly held views. Though our tastes don’t always align (one of my favorite plants, Kolkwitzia, “gives him a headache”), we share a similar fondness for viburnums. “A garden without a viburnum,” Dirr writes, “is akin to life without music or art.” I wouldn’t go that far, but there is something admirable… (more)
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Sassafras
My early knowledge of sassafras brings to mind the legendary blind men describing an elephant. One man touches the tail, another the flank, another the tusk, and in the end, there’s no agreement as to what this “thing” actually is. As a child, one of my jobs was clipping the little sassafrasses that sprouted prolifically from the roots of a… (more)
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Pitch Pine, Pinus rigida
In forestry circles, monocultures don’t get high marks. Most planted forests have just one kind of tree, and because of this they are often looked down upon as biological Levittowns: boring forests that are of little interest to other species. Sometimes, however, nature does a pretty good imitation of a plantation, even if she does a poor job at keeping… (more)
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Scotch pine, Pinus sylvestris
Some stands of Scots pine in Europe (that’s what it’s called in its native range) are gorgeous, with straight, unbranching trunks that self-prune nicely, revealing the lovely orange bark that is characteristic of mid-sized stems. But the Scotch pine plantations growing in the U.S. rarely live up to that ideal. Some planted stands are successful, but the species is susceptible… (more)
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Tuliptree, Liriodendron tulipifera
For the last 45 or so years, I have had to travel to be in the company of a tuliptree, as this species thrives only in more southern climes – from southern New England south to central Florida and west to Illinois. Nonetheless, this tree is dear to my heart. When I was a child in Connecticut, it was the… (more)
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Butternut, Juglans Cinerea
Healthy butternut trees are now so rare that, before the image of this tree in its full glory fades, let’s bring the butternut tree of 40 years ago to mind. Back then it was a robust member of the tree community, found on rich, moist loams, on limey, rocky soils, and in the dooryards of a high percentage of old… (more)