Those of you who guessed dogwood to my mystery photo from yesterday are correct. I guess the question was too easy. I thought it would be more difficult because of what was in the background of the photo—dead leaves on the forest floor.When I was walking around and first spied the flowers down there, I thought what are those? It was only when I got closer that I realized the flowers weren’t growing out of the ground but were part of a tree. This particular tree is a victim of one of the winter’s ice storms. In fact, I thought the tree was dead because it’s broken in half, the top half resting on the forest floor. I’m certain that this tree will die, but somehow it managed to survive long enough to produce one last burst of flowers in the spring.
My photo today shows the last two marcesent leaves on a beech tree in my front forest (woodland living equivalent of a front yard). They look pretty funny surrounded by the green leaves of spring, but there they are, the very last two.
Posts
3 comments:
Funny how those few little dead leaves can hang on.
Carolyn, I have been surprised to see broken limbs continuing to thrive on numerous trees. Bradford pear for one. We had terrible ice storms in Oklahoma last winter. Most of the cleanup in the cities is done. But along the road sides you can see lots of downed tree, and many are leafing out. Amazing!
Dana, It's interesting that you've seen these damaged trees blooming too. This morning I found a dogwood that was completely uprooted and resting on the forest floor--blooming away for all it was worth.
Carolyn H.
Post a Comment