Lovely Spring Day at Cylburn Arboretum

I decided to take a day off work to cook some beef short ribs, get some work done in the garden, and get a jump on other household chores.  Forest has been off this week for spring break, and he's been wanting to go to a garden to take pictures of plants and flowers.  We got the short ribs cooking and set out to go to Brookside Gardens, but about a mile down the road I remembered that there has been some new development at Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore, so we ended up going there.

On the way, we talked about the kind of spring we've had.  Although it looked like the trees might be in full leaf by the end of March judging from when the buds first started to break, they have held the first embryonic leaves in a state of suspended animation.  I suspect that this is because it has been very dry, with low humidity.  Trees need moisture and high humidity to hydraulically inflate leaf tissue through cell expansion.  And generally, the more winter chilling hours below 40°F, the more rapid growth and development are in the spring, whether we're talking bulbs, early flowering trees and shrubs, or leaf expansion.  We had such a warm winter that we didn't have as many chilling hours as we might normally have. And the weather has turned cooler.  Freeze warnings have been posted for tomorrow morning.  That will further delay things.

I didn't get to tackle the domestic chores or yard work that I need to do, but it was a fun day at Cylburn, and their new visitor center and greenhouse are very nice. 

Fothergilla gardenii   dwarf witchalder

Taxodium ascendens   Pond Cypress

 

Forest shooting pond cypress

Halesia diptera  mountain silverbell

Malus 'Sugar Tyme'   'Sugar Tyme' crabapple

Paeonia suffruticosa cv.  tree peony

Ever Seen a Pineapple Flower?

I think few people, even plant people, can say that they know what a pineapple flower really looks like.  I happened upon this plant in the tropical greenhouse where I work at the U.S. National Arboretum.  It's a pineapple in full flower.  The flowers are all packed together in what will become the pineapple fruit that we eat.  Like many bromeliads, they are a lovely shade of blue and don't open their petals any wider than this.  And because it is a monocot, there are three petals. 

This is a plant that Bradley Evans, our Introduction Garden horticulturist, uses in his stunning container gardens. I'm not sure what the cultivar name is, but it might be 'Mongo'.  It least it has dark reddish brown leaves like 'Mongo'. It's undemanding and can take a lot of heat, drought, and general abuse.