Some Colorful Conifers

While out walking in Hofstra's Pinetum, I ran into some pretty colorful conifers that looked like they might have a good story or two to tell, if they could talk that is. Still silently they managed to convey some fashionable ideas about design to me. Is that lime green and what shade of rose is it next to? The color combo is dynamite in the garden if you asked me.

And apparently green is the new brown this season, at least for some cones that is.

Botanical Heaven on a Hofstra Arboretum Tour with Fred Soviero

I thought I had died and gone to botanical and plant geek heaven yesterday when I was lucky enough to catch a tour of Hofstra's South Campus Arboretum with grounds director Fred Soviero. Of course it's sort of true that I feel like I'm in botanical heaven on a walk on any given day through this campus. But it's not every day that I get to hear binomial names rapid-fire and the Latin too!

So instead of just taking in all the colors, textures and the growth of the moment, which is my habit, I got to hear some of the history of the campus and stories about specific trees while touring the pinetum and some of the fabulous South Campus grounds.

Turns out that the mammoth commanding Katsura I fell in love with the first time we met is the oldest tree on campus and the Chinese Quince with the incredible bark, which I just met last week and is my latest crush, was actually saved and then transplanted from the north shore of Long Island when it was already 30 feet tall and quite massive.

I didn't know that the Hofstra campus was a registered arboretum when I first went for a walk on the grounds, but I knew immediately I was somewhere special that people had spent a good while creating and maintaining.

Pine Needles in the Park

One way to begin identifiying pines is to count how many needles there are in a bunch. A walk in Prospect Park today provided that opportunity with some fallen needles conveniently located in the snow underfoot. (Of course, they can just as easily be counted on the branches of the trees in winter, unlike decidious trees.) But bark and habit and other identifiers need to be looked at too. According to Prospect Park's website, there are 150 species of tree in the park. I wonder how many of those are conifers? Probably enough to learn a bit more about the Pines this winter on walks in the park. Above, the needles of the Eastern White Pine. Below, what I think are Red Pine needles. Bundles of two are tougher.





















Sunset report: Today's sunset was pretty good. Fairly clear skies. Bonus for checking out the sunset on the roof tonight? A hawk sighting. Perhaps one of the denizens of Prospect Park. The picture is terrible. The moment was not.