Tree-Watching: Horse Chestnut Trees in Flower

Horse chestnut tree in flower

I do miss the horse chestnut trees that were removed from our street corner, but I can’t help but notice them around the city right now because they are in full bloom.  And their flowers are gigantic!  I like the Scarlet Horse Chestnut trees — there are a lot of them blooming at the Ballard Locks right now.  Their flowers are like little red Christmas trees decorating the green horse chestnut trees.

Scarlet horse chestnut flowers

Scarlet horse chestnut trees at the Ballard Locks

Towering trees at the Ballard Locks

I really like the shape and arrangement of the leaves of these trees.  Here are some shots looking up into the canopy:

The leaves make a lovely pattern

Horse chestnut trees in Columbia City

Tree-Watching: Paint a Leaf, Paint a World

“If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the whole world.”
– John Ruskin

“Leaves are the verbs that conjugate the seasons.”
– Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces

Watercolor sketch of maple leaves in May

Watercolor sketch of willow leaves in May

The Blue Trees

The Blue Trees, Westlake Park, Seattle

One of the things on my “Life List” is to see and experience an  Andy Goldsworthy sculpture in its natural environment.  He is well-known for creating transient, ephemeral sculptures of natural materials that are designed to weather and disappear over time.

I’m not aware of any Andy Goldsworthy pieces in Seattle, but when I heard about Konstantin Dimopoulos’s Blue Trees, I made a special trip to downtown Seattle to see them.  Dimopoulos, an Australian artist, uses special environmentally-safe pigments to paint trees brilliant blue.  The color wears away over time, leaving the trees unharmed.  Dimopoulos has now made his way to Seattle, and has two installations in the area — at Westlake Park in the heart of downtown and along the Burke-Gilman trail in Kenmore.

Dimopoulos uses the startling blue to attract attention and awareness to the problem of global deforestation.  The blue is so unexpected, it does stop you in your tracks.  You might want to see these installations before they disappear.

The Blue Trees at Westlake Park

The Blue Trees

Blue tree with park benches

Blue Trees with park bench, Westlake Park

The Blue Trees at Westlake Park

Tree Watching: First Maple Keys

First, tiny but abundant, maple keys

I’ve been watching for the first signs of maple keys, and they suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere.  My “adopted” maple trees are now full of tiny, but abundant, maple keys.  I like how Wikipedia describes them:  “These seeds, or ‘whirlybirds,’ occur in distinctive pairs each containing one seed enclosed in a “nutlet” attached to a flattened wing of fibrous, papery tissue. They are shaped to spin as they fall and to carry the seeds a considerable distance on the wind. Children often call them “helicopters” due to the way that they spin as they fall. Seed maturation is usually in a few weeks to six months after flowering, with seed dispersal shortly after maturity. However, one tree can release hundreds of thousands of seeds at a time.”

I found more information about maple keys in The Rarest of Rare:  Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History by Nancy Pick:  “Botanists call seeds that produce their own life samaras . . . The maple’s asymmetry gives it an advantage.  Its samara is designed to flow through the air like a bird or an airplane wing, with a slicing leading edge.”

Tiny maple keys

Samaras

Tree Watching: Time of the Falling Maple Flowers

Maple leaves glowing in the morning light

I checked on my “adopted” maple trees this morning.  The maple leaves are getting larger, and the trees’ flowers are dropping and littering the sidewalks like green snow.  I love the dappled green light under the trees.

Sidewalks and streets littered with fallen maple flowers

Maple in late April, with new leaves and flowers

A bit of a mess for the cars parked underneath!

Fallen flowers from maple tree at curbside

Fallen maple flowers with focal zoom effect

Dappled light

 

Heart-Shaped Leaves

New leaves like burnished gold in the morning light

I pass these trees on my walks to work.  I think they are katsura trees because of their delicate heart-shaped leaves.  I love the dappled colors of these leaves in the morning light.

New leaves of rusty yellow and burnished gold will turn green as they mature.

I love dappled light.

Looking up into the tree's canopy

A train of light reflected from new leaves

Katsura tree with inverted color effect

Leaves aligned in opposites

Tree Watching: Recognizable Maple Leaves

My "adopted" maple tree with recognizable leaves and flowers

I wouldn’t be honoring the spirit of Arbor Day if I didn’t make a special visit to my “adopted” trees.

My maple trees have now sprouted new leaves with their distinctive pointed shape.  It looks like a single maple bud opens into both flowers and leaves.  The flowers have been evident for a week or so, but I am just now seeing new leaves.  Each bud seems to support several (five or so) leaves plus dozens of little flowers.  It’s really quite fascinating to notice all this production from one bud.  The entire tree is just sprouting with new growth.

Maple buds with lots of flowers, but with leaves just starting to emerge.

Here you can see some leaves have opened.

Just look at all this new growth!

The entire package -- bud, flowers, and leaves.

Looking up into "my" maple tree.

My “adopted” willow tree has been leafing out, too.  The bedraggled pussy willow buds are less prominent.

New willow leaves

A few pussies among the new leaves

 

Tree-Watching: Think Like a Tree on Arbor Day

Today is Arbor Day in Washington State.  (National Arbor Day is April 27th this year.)  So this post is a celebration of tree-ish things.

Jogger dwarfed by big tree at Green Lake

One of Seattle’s public radio stations, KUOW, recently aired a special called “More Than a Tree,”  and it said over half of Washington state is covered in forests, which translates to over 2 billion trees, or over 250 per man, woman, and child who live here.  (You can read transcripts of the KUOW program or listen to podcasts here.)

Blossoming trees at Green Lake

As you know, this year I am trying to pay special attention to trees.  I find them a challenge to photograph and paint/draw because they are so big and often unwieldy, with branches shooting off and up.  There is so much there that it is hard to figure out what to include and exclude in a composition.

Therefore I found it fascinating to read Martin Gayford’s A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney.  Hockney’s art frequently features landscapes, and trees are a big part of his latest work.  Gayford says of Hockney’s trees: “Trees are presences in the landscape, but also catchers of space and light.  They stand up as markers, dividing up the surface of the land; but they also contain space within them, especially when their branches are bare . . . A bare tree helps you to sense space within the maze of its structure, in a complex way.  In leaf, on the other hand, a tree functions more as a container of light.”

Trees are catchers of space and light.

An exhibit of Hockney’s tree/landscape art has just ended at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, but you can still see some images of his work online at this link.

I am also inspired by photographer Mitch Epstein, who has been photographing trees in New York City.  You can read about him and the stories behind a couple of the trees he memorialized in his photos at this link.

Trees at Green Lake (with HDR-ish effect)

And in keeping with National Poetry month, I’ll end with two tree poems:

Think Like a Tree
by Karen I. Shragg

Soak up the sun
Affirm life’s magic
Be graceful in the wind
Stand tall after a storm
Feel refreshed after it rains
Grow strong without notice
Be prepared for each season
Provide shelter to strangers
Hang tough through a cold spell
Emerge renewed at the first signs of spring
Stay deeply rooted while reaching for the sky
Be still long enough to
hear your own leaves rustling.

Renewing each spring -- buds of big leaf maple

 Trees
by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Tree Watching: Another Update, Buds Unfolding

This update follows quickly on the heels of last week’s posts.

New leaf buds on willow branch

First the willow tree.  I read something interesting about willow buds:

“Having separate buds for leaves and flowers — such as a willow, poplar, and alder — allows a tree to open its flower buds a month before the leaf buds . . . Wind-pollinated trees may produce flowers a month or more before leaves, which tend to block wind flow.”
– Bernd Heinrich, Winter World

No wonder the green leaf buds appeared on my willow only after the pussies became bedraggled and had dispersed some of the yellow pollen.

Maple buds birthing new leaves

Newly emerging maple leaves in the rain

Maple bud and raindrop

The leaf buds on my maple trees are birthing more green leaves every day.

A miracle unfolding -- horse chestnut buds, day 4

And here’s the latest news-flash about my “adopted” horse chestnut trees — they have been cut down and are gone.  I will miss observing them.  I am now glad that I cut two small branches with buds to watch from my kitchen windowsill.  This morning when I saw them, I actually exclaimed “Wow!” out loud.  The gauzy leaves have unfolded, revealing a cone-shaped seed head inside.  I just marvel at how much life was contained in one little resinous bud.  Truly amazing.

Inside a horse chestnut bud

Top-down view of horse chestnut buds in a vase

I woke to this amazing sight -- an unfolding story

Tree Watching: What a Difference a Day Makes

What a difference a day makes!  In just one day, the horse chestnut buds opened their varnished shells and gauzy, thready leaves are poking through.  I can tell that Spring is going to have me hopping to keep up with its changes.

Open bud, horse chestnut tree

The varnished shell of the bud opens to release a gauzy new leaves

Horse chestnut buds, day 1 and day 2

Watercolor sketch of horse chestnut buds