Spring comes to Fern Valley...and the rest of the Arboretum!

It may have been gloomy yesterday in Washington, but nighttime temperatures stayed right around 10C and we got over 1.5cm of rain so spring moves steadily forward. In Fern Valley the ephemerals are up. Look along the road behind the stone swale and under the big beech tree. On Monday there was nothing but a few residual snowdrops that I removed. By Wednesday Virginia bluebells, Sweet Betsy (Trillium cuneatum), and Toothwort, had forced their way out of the soil; by Friday, the Toothwort had visible buds, the Trillium leaves had unfolded to reveal their lovely mottling, the Virginia bluebells had pushed up to almost 10cm, and a Bloodroot had gone from non-existent to a fist sized bundle ready to expand.

The essence of Spring is change and you have to get out there and look or it'll pass you by; because of the incredible taxonomic range of its collections, the National Arboretum might be the best place in the area to watch spring approach. Cherries are beginning to flower, 'Okame' is almost in full bloom. The research collections contain a variety of common and obscure taxa; many are showing color. We have a wide variety of early flowering magnolias and they are beginning to open. Many spring flowers are fragrant; Prunus mume, the flowering apricots are out in their olofactory glory, and the winterhazels are opening and the witchhazels are moving through their season. It goes on and on and its started!

National Zoo Faux Bamboo Deer Fencing?

Lets have two pictures in a row without any living plant material! As part of my inservice training, I attended a lecture/walk at the Zoo about their new "Asian Walk", a wonderful few acres in which they display a handful of interesting Asian animals including Giant and Red Pandas in areas approximating their natural environment. The "bamboo" that you see in this picture is mostly metal fencing. I didn't talk with the fabricator, but it looks like they took galvanized pipe and laid welding beads around it at appropriate intervals to approximate the "rings" around bamboo canes, painted them and set them in concrete. Every 6th or 7th or both was painted the yellowish color of dead canes. Small (10"-16") rods were welded towards the top, 5-10 per pipe to represent the branching stems that hold leaves. Admittedly this is a somewhat non-realistic approach, and could not have been inexpensive, but it looked great and could be copied for use as deer fencing since it is 10-12 feet tall. Possibly the sculptural and open nature of the construction would exempt it from regulations that allow fences to be only 6' tall. We all know a 6 foot fence does not stop a determined deer.

Another interesting feature included in this exhibit space was a rock wall made up of loose stones filling galvanized cages, or gabions. The gabions, each approximately 2'x6'x3', were lined up and stacked to makes a wall at least 15' tall and 50' long. They are attempting to grow hostas and epimediums in sphagnum stuffed in the face of the wall with some apparent success though they were dormant now. The concensus among our group of expert horticulturists was that a more thoughtful choice of plant material would make maintenance easier and produce a more interesting effect. Their plant selections were no doubt influenced by the fact that this is an Asian exhibit. I would like to see the same construction planted with lichens, mosses, violets, ferns on a dark site, or conversely in the full sun planted with "shale barren" or Mediterranean plants. No doubt lists of plants for roof gardens would be productive sources of taxa for these sites.