Les promenades dans la Forêt Montréal

island of trees: Picturing Trees for the Next Six Months

2011-10-21T18:04:00.002-04:00

A few books and a notice of departure. As some of you know, I have colon cancer and I’ve reached a point in my treatment and a point in the seasons, where it’s time to retreat within. I am also working on a book, with the tentative title: Island of Trees: 50 trees, 50 tales of Montreal, due out next spring from Véhicule Press, and I couldn’t quite see continuing the column, writing the book and looking after my health all at once.

So, the island of trees will be slightly fogged in for the next six months but that shouldn’t prevent you from discovering your own islands of trees. To accompany you, I’ve prepared this annotated bibliography of a few books I have found particularly valuable, some for their spirit, others for their precision in identifying the details of trees.

I’ll start with a children’s book, reviewed in the Gazette a few Saturdays ago. It’s Barbara Reid’s Picture a Tree. Reid illustrates her numerous children’s books with Plasticine and I hope she had assistance in shaping the thousands of leaves in this book. She starts with the naked tree, “ a drawing on the sky,” then uses the trees to reflect back on us, how we’ve used trees as pirate ships, hideaways, places of solace, shelter from the sun, a repository of promise, loyally returning each spring. With each illustration, one can linger a long time, seeing new relationships between life in a tree and our lives with trees.

“A tree can be a high-rise home sweet home,” she writes, while the illustration depicts a Kentucky Coffee Tree-like sprawling high rise tree, replete with sleeping raccoons, wasps returning to the hive, young birds being fed and squirrels chasing each other. Meanwhile in the human habitat behind, the various families engage in similar pursuits.

Reid identifies no trees for that’s clearly not the point of her book. Still, with the 40 charming miniature portraits in the endpapers and forepapers, she seems to invite readers to identify – or at least recognize - the many familiar graphic forms: the shape of the ginkgo leaf and the horse chestnut, the baby white oak and the ancient pale grey beech tree, the cheery sumac, and, of course, the laconic white pine.

“Picture a tree, what do you see?” she concludes. For those of you wanting to improve your tree vision, I recommend poetry and drawing – even if neither is a regular pastime. Both demand observation. You may want nothing to do with the scientific or common name in order to keep you imagination free to name the tree as you see fit. When I work with children, they are obliged to come up with their own name before I reveal the common name. That way they can be the discoverer of the tree and analyse it with their own tools of observation and sensing.

If, however, at some stage you want more precision on the name and botanical characteristics, I recommend the following:

1) Arbres et plantes forestières du Québec et des Maritimes, by Michel Leboeuf, Édition Michel Quintin

This remarkably compact and inexpensive book is a superb introduction to our local forest. Not only does it cover trees well, presenting photographically at least five defining traits, the book also has chapters on small trees and bushes, understory plants and ferns. So, come spring with this book in hand, you will be well equipped to identify the emerging trilliums, bloodroot, coltsfoot, etc. While the text is in French, the English names of all species are provided. Furthermore, Leboeuf’s clearly written text provides a great introductory course on the ecology of our local forests.

2) Trees in Canada, by John Laird Farrar, Fitzhenry and Whiteside

Many of you likely know this bible of Canadian trees. Originating as a booklet in 1917, under the title Native Trees of Canada, the actual 502-page tome is our most complete reference book on trees growing in Canada. Very thorough though a tad heavy for a hike.

3) The Sibley Guide to Trees, David Allen Sibley, Knopf

Sibley’s name is usually associated with birds, but a few years ago he turned his hand and to writing and illustrating a beautiful and well-conceived book on tree identification and the basics of botany and plant ecology. While the book covers, principally, trees of the United States, the maps showing the tree’s territory include Canada. This book would make a great companion for a cross-continental exploration.

Of course, there are numerous other great books on trees and I will have to continue this list in the spring. In the meantime, peruse the shelves of your local library to help navigate your way to the island of trees.

island of trees: Hackberry: the tree that migrates

2011-10-21T17:56:00.000-04:00

Illustrations coming

You know this tree from its nobbly pale park, which looks possibly diseased, perhaps with a tree’s form of leprosy. It’s simple, alternate leaves are a bright, pale green in spring. At this time of year, the leaves are paling, some arriving at a pale creamy yellow. In the forest of Île Ste- Hélène, the biggest hackberry grove I know, they are resplendent in contrast with the oranges of the sugar maples and the bright, shiny yellows of the red ash.

Until discovering this grove I knew hackberry only as a street and park tree. Tough to salt and compacted soil, the tree does well in the city as is clear by the row growing against the massive St-Louis –de-France church on Berry Street, as one approaches Roy Street. I did wonder, however, about the 1.5 metre in diametre giant in the Mount Royal Cemetery. Until this tree lost a major bit of its girth to the 1998 Ice Storm, is was considered the biggest hackberry in Quebec. (You’ll find it named and numbered in the Cemetery’s self-guided tree walk). Most likely, therefore, it is older than the cemetery, which opened in 1852 and is a vestige of the original forest, composed of red oak, white pine, sugar maple, black cherry, beech, elm and white ash.

The island of Montreal is the most northerly extreme for this Carolinian tree that flourishes in the Pelee Islands on the southwest end of Lake Erie and at other points south. Some believe, in fact that the tree has only been in the Windsor area since the turn of the 20^th century and has been migrating northeast along the Great Lakes-St Lawrence Valley ever since.

That doesn’t however, explain the old tree at the Cemetery, unless it indicates another migration route for waterfowl and wild turkeys, two of the trees greatest fans. You see, the hackberrry, whose original name was the hagberry, an old English name for the sweet European cherry tree, Prunus avium, produces a sweet, dark blue berry every fall and migrating birds regale in the fleshy fruit, then fly off and deposit the seed at their next island or shoreline stop. This is why we find such concentrations of the tree on Île Ste-Hélène, Île aux hérons and Île Dorval. And I wonder if on Mount Royal, when Beaver Lake was a true pond and Le ruisseau de la montagne flowed freely, if the mountain too was not a favourite spot for both migratory birds and hackberry trees.

I should make clear that the hackberry is not a cherry tree, but stands in a family of its own, the Celtis family. Celtis occidentalis is the name of our native species while there are at least two other more southerly North American species and several Eurasian ones. Until recently, the tree was considered a member of the elm family, mostly due to the asymmetry and toothiness of the leaf, and the tree’s overall shape. The flower and fruit, however, bear no similarity to the elm, which produces its flower and samara type (winged) seed early in spring, often before the leaves emerge. The hackberry, on the other hand, produces both its male (pollen) and female (seed-producing) flowers at the same time as the leaves are emerging in mid-May. The fruit ripens only in the fall. If you look up, there’s a good chance you’ll see some of the dark blue berries still hanging from their single stems.

While the tree many not be an elm, it has been widely planted to replace the great old trees, due to its resistance to salt, drought and compacted soil, as well as its lovely shape and colour.

From my point of view, the bark is the most alluring characteristic of this unusual tree. Always a pale greenish grey, sometimes bumpy, sometimes showing the lines of a mysterious contour map, sometimes –though rarely –smooth, the bark stands out amidst its darker-barked accomplices. The bark is also a handy shelter for migrating monarch butterflies while they collect at Point Pelee, waiting for the perfect updrafts to moment to cross Lake Erie. After a month of so of flying and coasting, our royal insect settles in its winter throne in the Oyamel Pine tree, high in the Mexican mountains.

island of trees: The pear that bears no pears

2011-10-08T16:18:00.002-04:00

At the corner of Berri and Roy streets in the Plateau Mont-Royal borough of Montreal grows this Chanticleer pear, Pyrus calleryana Chantecler. Its leaves are just beginning to change colour from glossy dark green to yellow. In a week's time, there will be reds and oranges too. Note the fruit that bear no resemblance to our notion of a pear. Illustrations: Charles L'He ureux.

So closely do we associate the pear tree with fruit having the pear shape, we miss a whole series of trees that are, in fact pears, but whose small, round and hard fruit most closely resemble a small crabapple. For several years, there were three lovely, small-fruit bearing trees on my regular walking circuits that I couldn’t identify because I was unaware of the “other” type of pear.

One of these is the snow pear, Pyrus nivalis, which, true to its common name, has a snow-dusted quality to its leaf. When I first noticed this tree, it was spring and the recently emerged leaves were grouped together in closed clusters, resembling Chinese lanterns. It was a most beautiful and bewildering site as I had no clue what this tree with grey furry, elliptical leaves could be.

Later, flat clusters of five-petalled white flowers emerged from the upper branches, which reached the third floor balcony of the this Laval Avenue triplex just north of Duluth on the east side. Clearly this was something in the rose family and though the pale bark had a vague cherry quality in the way it was beginning to crack, it was too early for cherry flowers.

Then there was the mystery tree on the southwest corner of Milton and Aylmer streets in the McGill Ghetto. This one shone in winter with its lustrous pale grey bark and the masses of tiny red fruit dotting the whiteness of the surrounding winter sky and the pale grey brick of its host house . The bark was clearly not that of a crab apple.

Finally, Eric Champagne, horticulturist at McGill University identified it simply as an ornamental pear. We’ve yet to pin down the species.

But the pear that had me most confused was the one illustrated here. For years I have walked by this corner, at Berri and Roy streets, past the numerous lindens in the Thérèse Daviau Park, on the other side of Berri, on my way to the fruit store or Caisse Pop. In spring, it is full of white flowers. In summer, a bright, dark, shiny green, the plastic-like finish on the rigid leaves glistening in the sun. Most remarkable, however, was the fact that, in fall, its leaves hang on longer than most other trees and change colour, from green to yellow, to orange, to red – a most spectacular show.

This pear is known as the Chanticleer, Pyrus calleryana Chanteclerc. A native of China and Vietnam, this hardy pear arrived in Europe mid-19^th century when Joseph-Marie Callery, an Italian-French sinologue, sent the first specimens from China. In 1909, the tree imported to North America for agricultural experimentation. To this day, according to Wikipedia, it is used as rootstock for edible pears, the fruit we recognize as the pear, such as the bosc and nashi.

Only in the 1950s was it used as an ornamental tree, its hardiness in urban conditions, uniformity of shape and three-season beauty, finally recognized. In Montreal, according to Martin Gaudet, foreman of the City’s nursery, the Chanteclerc pear has been planted for the past 10 years, most notably in the St-Michel borough as a sidewalk tree on St-Hubert St., between Faillon and Villeray streets. Since 2008, the nursery has been cultivating the tree for future city plantations.

While Gaudet, lauds the beauty and hardiness of this tree, he cautions that while it may show less bacterial burn on its leaves than its cousin the apple/crabapple, it is still susceptible. As he puts it: “Qui dit rosasé, dit brûlure bactérienne et le poirier n’y échappent pas.”

Still, after at least 15 years, my own beauty on Berri St. still shines, blight-free.

island of trees: Are pears making a comeback?

2011-10-01T09:25:00.004-04:00

Next treewalk: Sunday, Oct. 9, at 10:30 au Gazébo Mordecai Richeler, to the south of the Tam Tams and the angel on Park Ave. Ends at 12:30 at Camillien-Houde look-out/parking lot. Click here for list of other fall walks.

This healthy pear, growing across from the Bagg St. Shul is full of pears and has proven its resistance to salt.

Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Live on, old trees, in your hale green age!

Long, long may your shadows last

With your blossomed boughs and golden fruit,

Loved emblems of the past.

W.H. Coyle, 1849, in his poem, To The Old Pear Trees of Detroit

As I was perusing the Internet for information on the history of the pear tree in Quebec, I stumbled upon this old poem, referred to in the Encyclopédie du patrimoine culturel de l’amérique française. Apparently, in the vicinity of Windsor and Detroit, there are several huge pear trees dating back to the 18^th century when the first land concessions were made along the Detroit River. According to the Encyclopédie, these were planted in groups of 12, representing the 12 apostles and they were known as the Jesuit pear trees. One tree, representing Judas would be outside the circle. These trees are of such cultural significance to the Franco-Americans (in the continental sense of America) that the pear tree was at the centre of the City of Detroit’s logo for its 300^th anniversary, in 2001.

At the time this poem was written those trees would have been roughly 100 years old, meaning the remaining Jesuit pear trees, as they are known, are roughly 250 years old. While I was unable to pin down the oldest pear in the Montreal area, I am certain that there are some of the same age. After all, the young pears planted in the Detroit area may well have originated in the pear orchards of the Sulpicians, on the south flank of Mount Royal, which date back to 1670.

Pears, member of the Rose family and the Pyrus genus, are not native to North America. In fact, their origins appear to stretch from Western Europe to the Orient. For a long time, it was believed that the pear originated in China but archaeological evidence from France shows that pears were part of the diet of prehistoric humans, and that the tree was one of the few European trees to survive the last ice age. However, according to Bernard Bertrand, writing in L’Herbier boisé, the two strains of pears may well have separate origins. Those trees bearing small round pears, resembling the smallest of the crabapples, being of European origin, descendants of the wild pear, Pyrus pyraster, while the juicy, pear-shaped pears are the descendants of Pyrus communis, the main ancestor of all our cultivated pears.

Somewhere along its history in North America, the pear took second place to the apple, as a fall fruit. Like the apple, the pear is both good to eat, fresh from the branch, as is equally good in its various transformations: sauces, butters, syrups, wines and juice. However, pears, once ripe, are a softer fruit and last only a few days, when refrigerated. Apples, on the other hand, remain firm and may be stored for months with proper control of temperature, light and humidity.

Still, other popular fruit, such as cherries and peaches, also have a limited shelf life, yet seem far more abundant in our markets and grocery stores than does the pear – at least, the locally grown pear.

This may change, however as Quebec farmers look for new fruit trees to plant. At St-Joachim-de-Shefford, for instance, citizens, in an effort to diversity the local economy and keep its population, have created a large poiriculteur cooperative. The town, which lies on the sunny side of Mount Shefford, not far from Granby, now calls itself “le pays de la poire.” Since 2002, the cooperative has been planting pear trees on numerous tracts of land, some of which are lent by landowners, and they are now 5,000 trees and aiming for 10,000 which will make it one of the most important pear-growing areas in Canada.

Closer to home, pears seem to be doing well in the most urban of conditions. In my own neck of the woods, on the southwest corner of Bagg and Clark streets, a healthy pear tree is laden with fruit on a site that’s subject to saltspray. Its shiny green leaves, which have something of the feel of plastic, look much better than the leaves of many garden apple trees and the fruit is untarnished.

Is this a tree that ought to be more frequently planted as a street tree and orchard tree? Stay tuned.

island of trees: Return of the elm!?

2011-09-24T10:03:00.004-04:00

Treewalk today: Pointe St-Charles, meet @ 4:30, 1900 Wellington, old Bank of Montreal, corner Ste-Madeleine, prelude to fundraising event @ 7 pm @ same venue. Free of charge for those attending fundraiser (see previous blog for details and for full list of fall walks), $10 for others. Finishes @ 5:30 pm.

This American elm, self-seeded and growing at the corner of Dr. Penfield and McTavish streets, is in full form and is testament to the fact that elms are alive and well and living on the street -- at least until they reach 20-30 years. Several other elms grow just north on McTavish. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

"But the survival of wild places and wild things, like the permanence of noteworthy architecture, or the opera, or a multiplicity of languages, or old shade trees in old neighborhoods, is not a priority for most people."

Edward Hoagland

Is this true? Pieter Sijpkes, the architect who introduced me last week to his favourite tree, the Wellington Street Elm, passed this quote on to me. He agrees with Hoagland, believing that, in large art, our appreciation for the permanent or, at least, of entities with greater longevity than that of our own species, is small. Better to take down an old tree or an old building, he says, so as to put up condos, save cars from being soiled by tree debris, prevent damage to foundations, etc. rather than finding ways of accommodating the culture, history and services offered by each.

But I’m not sure I agree with Hoagland and Sijpkes where trees are concerned. I’ve frequently been impressed by the Herculean efforts exerted to save a particular tree or entire species of tree. This is perhaps no more true than where the American elm is concerned. In fact, as I write, numerous elm angels are at work in cities, like Quebec, Guelph, Fredericton and Winnipeg, to both preserve the remaining healthy trees and to breed those trees that appear to be immune to Dutch elm disease (DED).

King of those angels might be the late Henry Kock, a horticulturist who launched the University of Guelph Arboretums’ Elm Recovery Project. Beginning in the late ‘90s, Kock traveled throughout Ontario collecting twigs of seemingly healthy mature elms, in what amounted to an elm dating service. He could see that many of the elms, untouched by the disease, were solitary and far from the next healthy elm, making cross-pollination of the tree impossible. The twigs were grafted to elm rootstock and deliberately infected with the fungal DED. The surviving clones were considered immune and transplanted to the seed orchard along with other immune trees in order that they reach sexual maturity and cross-pollinate, thereby enlarging the gene pool of immune trees.

Since the program, 600 trees have been grafted and 70 have survived inoculation. Ultimately, according to Kock’s successor, Sean Fox, that number will be whittled down to the top 30 “to keep in the gene bank.” Since it takes roughly 12 years for the elm to produce seed, none of these super-elms is yet ready for larger scale, commercial cultivation. Fox estimates that “within 10 years, we’ll have disease-resistant cultivars.”

What impresses me about this program is that these are human heads and hands speeding up the process of evolution. Mainly, it’s citizens that alert the Guelph program of healthy elms and without them and their donations, the program would not survive. “We don’t receive government support,” notes Fox. Clearly, there are many citizens pining for the return of the 30-metre high trees which, in their heyday in the 1950s, completely shaded many a street in eastern cities, including De Lorimier which, according to Martin Gaudet, supervisor of City of Montreal’s nursery, “was spectacular.”

Gaudet, who knows such sites only from archival photographs, regrets that the City has no program in place to create a gene pool of Montreal’s healthy mature elms. In the early ‘60s, however, the late Réné Pomerleau, an Agriculture Canada mycologist (fungus specialist) working on site in l’Assomption (which later became the City nursery), pioneered a DED-resistant American elm, known as “l’Assomption.” So, Quebec had its own elm.

“There are still a few out here,” says Gaudet, on the phone from the nursery, “but it never really took off.”

Other cultivars of the great elm, however, are being tested for DED-resistance. Ulmus Americana, “Brandon,” for instance, which was developed in Alberta, are being tested in their University Street sidewalk plots, between St-Jacques and St-Antoine streets. Planted in the late ‘90s, “the trees are very regular – they look like mushrooms,” says Gaudet, explaining that they are all clones. While they won’t reach the heights of the original American elm, they will grow to impressive 15 metres high and 12 wide. Will that satisfy the desire of some of us for a return of the complete elm canopy? If not, it’s good to know that the Guelph cultivars are waiting in the wings.

A fundraiser and this fall's treewalks/Soirée bénéfice et l'horaire des promenades de l'automne

2011-09-23T15:43:00.001-04:00

As you'll see from this poster, my roster of treewalks this falls kicks off with a walk in Pointe St-Charles to preceed a concert that dear friends have organized to help me through the coming months of treatment for colon cancer. So, you could plan this Saturday with a treewalk, 4:30 - 5:30, a supper in the neighbourhood, followed by a silent auction of works of arts and crafts, and an evening of apples, beer and superb entertainment -- all in a former Bank of Montreal, converted into a living/performance space by Montreal architect and long-time citizen of the Pointe, Pieter Sijpkes. This building is also wonderfully accessible by bike or public trans: just follow Wellington Ave. from Old Montreal, or take the #61 bus from the McGill College Metro, exit Union St. The treetour leaves from the same building, 1900 Wellington, and is part of the evening package, so no extra charge.

Here's the schedule of subsequent walks:

Sunday, September 25: Mount Royal Cemetery, in English, 10 - noon, followed by refreshments, leaves from main gate on de la Forêt, freewill offering to the cemetery.

Sunday, October 9: Giving Thanks to the Mountain: le piedmont du Parc du Mont Royal, bilingue, 10:30 - 12:30, $15. On se rencontre au Gazebo Mordecai Richler (devant le quartier général des pompiers). Inscription: bronwynchester@gmail.com/514-284-7384.

Sunday, October 16: McGill University Upper Campus: Fruits Amidst the Mansions, bilingual, 9 - 11 a.m., $15, meet on the steps of the Redpath Museum, bronwynchester@gmail.com/514-284-7384 to register.

island of trees: An elm that persists

2011-09-19T14:28:00.000-04:00

A rare site: A huge and healthy American elm, growing on Wellington St., near Charlevoix, in Montreal's Pointe St-Charles borough. The tree is three times the height of this working class cottage of, roughly, the 1890s, and likely older. Note the jagged, asymmetrical, alternate leaves, typical of all elms. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Two images, both iconic of the Eastern North American countryside: The first is lone American elm, in perfect health, its gracefully ascending parasol of leaf-thick branches up high in a farmers’ sky. Think of that superb specimen growing by highway 417, south side, roughly two thirds of the way to Ottawa. The second is the same species, dead but still standing, the parasol gone, bleached silver over the decades since starved by Dutch Elm Disease.

We love the elm and hate the disease. I get more questions about the American elm than any other tree. “Are they still around?” being the most common. Yes, as a matter of fact and, at least until a certain age, thriving. Even – perhaps especially – in the city.

Peter Sijpkes knows this because almost every day for the 35 years he has lived in Pointe St-Charles, he has passed by one of the city’s oldest elms and the tree still appears to be in top health. Its mighty trunk, measuring roughly five metres and is three times the height of its host house. The tree, which is at least 150 years old, would have been a scrawny thing at the time, resembling all those wispy elms you see lining farmers’ drainage ditches, their silhouettes resembling the hairdo of Sideshow Bob, of Simpson’s fame, in various stages of dishevelment.

The street is not a tree-lined residential street, where, on occasion, one still finds old elms. Rather, it’s a stark stretch of Wellington Street, near Charlevoix, across the street from an ugly glass factory, which dominates the immediately vicinity with a 24-hour industrial hum. Marguerite Bourgeoys Park, to the east of the factory looks lovely with its green grass, old trees and sculptures but the noise repels would-be patrons. The 19^th century houses too are attractive – the brick ones clearly working class, the stone ones once homes of notaries, doctors and the like – but you worry for the noise and incessant traffic and think: Thank God, the residents have this miraculous tree – the other dominant element - to both soften the hot, sharp edges of the street and factory parking lot, but also to provide shade, and sound to mask the hum.

Sijpkes, a retired professor of architecture, likens the tree to “half a Gothic cathedral,” and wonders why more majestic trees are not being planted in his neighbourhood and in the city, in general. I remind him that big trees need big space and there are scant signs of us willingly giving up car space to free up more earth for vegetation.

As we’re looking up, following the paths of the 14 or so secondary trunks that part from a common point like a 30-metre bouquet, a woman next door asks if we’re assessing the tree in order that it be cut down. She lives in a pretty stone house and she’s concerned about the damage being done to her foundations. Charles L’Heureux, who’s walked this stretch before, has also heard from the owner of the cottage hosting the elm, that a root has actually come through the foundations.

I understand the concerns of homeowners. The truth is that tree roots don’t break into pipes or foundations but if there’s already a crack, they’ll seize the opportunity for water or nutrients. Once the roots have made their way in, they expand and can cause damage. In the case of this elm, if we lived in a province that considered extraordinary trees as heritage sites – just as we do with other forms of architecture – these houses would be evaluated for free and, in order to make the changes to accommodate the tree, the homeowners would not be stuck paying the bill for what is, in practice, a public institution. After all, when a public highway is to be widened and houses are in the way, it’s not the homeowner that pays to have her house moved farther back.

Given the obvious good health of this tree, I wondered if it was a subject of research by plant pathologists in Quebec. In Ontario, for instance, the University of Guelph collects cell samples from old elms that appear to be untouched by Dutch elm disease in order to test them for true immunity (as opposed to simply having been missed by the elm bark beetle which carries the deadly fungus) and to create a gene bank of those trees in order to breed disease resistant elms and enhance the genetic diversity. There’s not quite the same program here but there are other approaches to saving the great elms.

Stay tuned for Return of the Elm?! next week. In the meantime, you can visit the Pointe St-Charles elm next Saturday during my treewalk and another of the greats the following Sunday during my treewalk in Mount Royal Cemetery. Details maybe found in the subsequent blog.

island of trees: My apologies, elm is coming ...

2011-09-18T09:06:00.000-04:00

So sorry for this delay, but the router went caput on Friday and is only now back in order. Have to leave now to get to the Mount Royal Cemetery for this morning's treewalk, from 10h - 12h, followed by refreshments. All for free, thanks to the Cemetery. Today's walk is in French, next Sunday, same time and place (main entrance), in English.

À tout à l'heure.

island of trees: Calling all butternuts

2011-09-10T08:31:00.001-04:00

Coming treewalks: Mount Royal Cemetery, Sunday, September 18, 10h à 12h. Début: L'entrée du cimetière, Chemin de la forêt. The following Sunday, same in English. Free.

This old butternut at the top of the loop, where Steynor Ave. turns around, may date from the time of the Ferme sous les noyers, also known as the Priest's Farm, land farmed by the Sulpician fathers and which clearly boasted many butternut trees, the only "noyer," (French for walnut) then in Quebec. The other noyer, the black walnut, was introduced from southwestern Ontario, only at the end of the 19th century. While both have long compound leaves, the two are easily distinguished by the difference in colour of bark - the butternut being a soft grey while the black walnut is dark- the size and shape of the nut, and the fact that the butternut has a terminal leaflet while the black walnut does not. Illustrations: Charles L'Heuruex

If you are fortunate enough to have a butternut tree and that tree is full of nuts, please collect them. Or, if you haven’t the time, contact Les noix du Québec (noixduquebec.org) and they’ll do the job for you. Why? Because the butternut, Juglans cinera, is an endangered species and the organization wants to see it survive.

As more of the trees fall victim to the butternut cancer, an ugly black sore caused by an exotic fungus, there are fewer trees left to produce the nuts. No nuts, no more butternut and fewer chances for planting the nuts in places where the tree has the least chance of being struck by the odious Sirococcus clavigignenti-juglandacearu.

Bernard Contré, member of Les noix du Québec, who will put your sticky, lemon-shaped, pale green butternuts to good use, growing young trees. Owner of La Pepinière Bellefeuille, which specializes in nut trees, Contré continues to sell young butternuts even though they may not make it the full 15 – 20 years till sexual maturity (ability to bear fruit). “I inform my customers that their trees may be struck by the canker,” said Contré on the phone from his nursery just outside Joliette.

He also informs them of the planting site which gives the tree the best chance at avoiding the fungus. “I recommend ‘clean,’ sites, such as open lawns where the tree had full sun, is relatively far from other trees – thereby reducing contact with insects, and is exposed to light winds,” he says, adding that insects may, or may not, be responsible for spreading the fungus from tree to tree.

As the fungus has only been in Quebec since 1990, it is not fully understood. Contré notes, however, that butternuts in the open fare better than those in the forest.

That is certainly true of the magnificent butternut beside the east entrance to the Japanese pavilion at the Montreal Botanical Gardens. With its black and ash-grey – hence its name in French, Noyer cendré, as in cinders – bark and the light green, thick parasol of all those compound leaves, this tree is a site to behold. Should you visit this butternut, be sure to touch the bark in order to appreciate the smooth-topped raised dark ridges about the rougher texture of the pale grey in the troughs.

Beneath the unique bark of the butternut lies a pale, fine grained softwood, prized by woodworkers for its colour and malleability. The wood may serve for low-traffic uses such as table tops and carvings.

The tree you see in this illustration, however, grows in a lesser know spot than the MBG. Does Steyning Avenue ring a bell? Probably not, unless you work in psychiatry at the Montreal General Hospital, are a teacher at the Académie Michel Prévost, or happen to be a Benedictine monk. That’s because this deadend street snakes up the east side of the private school, running from Pine Ave, just after the Cedar Avenue fork, passes by the 1910 Jeffrey Hale-Burland mansion, whose most recent vocation was a Benedictine centre, and circles back on itself at the hospital's Psychiatric Rehabilitation Centre.

Just to the right of this centre, you’ll find a stately, roughly 150-year old butternut on the edge of the ravine angling up a wildwood to Cedar.

Look up into the canopy and you’ll see the multi-leaflet compound leaves with the well-defined terminal leaflet. This is one of the traits distinguishing the butternut, also know as white walnut, from its cousin black walnut, which originates in southwestern Ontario and the Appalachians but has naturalized here since the late 19^th century when it became a prestigious tree for institutions and the homes of the well-to-do.

The butternut, on the other hand, smaller and with a sweeter and more easily cracked nut, was more closely associated with farms. And I am wondering, in fact, if this old butternut, which predates all the surrounding buildings, bears any relation to La ferme sous les noyers, or the Priest’s Farm, as it was later known, from which the Sulpician brothers farmed, forested and mined (limestone) in this vicinity, and up Atwater Street, until the mid 20^th century.

Now, there is no obligation to collect nuts here as there aren’t any. Butternuts produce bumper crops every three years and while, according to Conté, this is a bumper year, this old tree is not complying. You'll find plenty of fruit, however, on other trees

As a final anecote, I found on-line, a laxative under the brandname Butternut Bark made by Benedictine Healing Products. As far as I know, the Benedictines, who were the last occupants of the mansion on Steyning, are not related to this product but perhaps they passed on some nuts to their Californian brethren.

island of trees: Changing islands

2011-09-03T10:09:00.000-04:00

A year and a half ago, when I and Gazette managing editor Catherine Wallace came up with the name, Island of Trees, for this column, we were thinking, literally, of the trees of island Montreal. But within our large, river-bound island, exist countless smaller islands of trees, sitting amidst the lakes, seas, rivers, and rivulets of the built environment. In fact, it’s ironic that we speak of heat islands when, in fact, it’s the trees and the surrounding plant life that live on islands, cool ones, while the flow of asphalt courses through our parking lots, highways, main streets, schoolyards and alleys.

For the past 20 years, my own island of trees has expanded in the quality and quantity of its members. When we first moved into our Victorian cottage, the back garden was surrounded on all four sides by the asphalt of the alley and the paved backyards on either side. In the roughly seven-metre square patch of garden thrived some giants of the self-seeded and self-managed forest that still characterizes many a Montreal alley: two cottonwood poplars, one of which was twice the height of our house, a Manitoba maple growing, literally, out of the house foundation, and one lone red ash, standing tall and skinny, reaching for the sun amidst the deep shade of the maple and poplars.

Ill-placed as these alleycats were in a small garden, I appreciated their ability to screen the bad sights and sounds of the immediate vicinity, the pattering of the plastic-like leaves of the poplars and the swish of the innumerable leaflets of the compound leaves of both ash and Manitoba maple, masked the vrooms and sirens of the densely populated Plateau Mont-Royal. The abundant leaves nicely eclipsed our view of the falling-down duplex on the Henri-Julien Street side of the alley.

But the big cats were not to last. There was no possibility of installing a proper fence, much less have a garden in their presence. The earth was devoid of nutrients and my partner fretted – with good reason – that the tallest of the poplars would lose a branch one stormy night and crash down on our little house.

It hurts to see a mature tree come down, but it’s wonderful to plant new trees. Apple and crabapple, Asian pear, Russian olive and autumn olive, filled up the empty spaces. When our first son was born, we planted a butternut, a magnolia, for the second. When we realized the butternut was going to be too big for our tiny yard – it’s easy to forget that young trees become big trees! – we replaced it with a columnar English oak. In time, the Asian pear died, the crabapple was one tree too many between the ash and the magnolia, and, eventually, the apple cast too much shade in the sunniest corner and I, hankering for an herb and scent garden, had it felled. But I’ve saved the substantial trunk to have bowls turned from the beautiful wood.

Now, each tree has room enough to for its role. The Russia olive, recently trimmed to grow wide rather than high, nicely screens that same falling-down house; the oak masks the Bell pole and breaks the overly bright lamplight in the alley; while the magnolia – struggling as it is against the irksome scale beetle – casts a pale pink Japanese spell on the early spring garden. I hope that my radical pruning of the worst affected of the branches will assure the return, next spring, of the saucer-sized flowers.

As for the ash, the only tree left of the original gang, it thrives, roundly. It’s great S-shaped branches fall down on either side of the fence between my neighour and I, giving us a measure of privacy. The enormous ball of leaves now well beyond the height of our houses is expanding in leaps and bounds, now that the tree has unfettered access to the sun.

Of all our trees, it’s the ash that I will miss most in our move to an apartment. Like so many of you who have lived a long time in one spot with a tree or two by the windows, I’ve grown attached to the great on-going show that a tree provides. I’ve seen it fill out to a good metre-size at breast height, watched the delicate, tender green of the emergent, miniature 7-leaflet leaf, turn into a dark green, large fishbone; enjoyed the play of starlings, woodpeckers and squirrels on the many branches, and seen many of the latter napping, their tail’s folded over them, in the V-shaped crook where branch leaves tree.

In my new island of trees, just 10 minutes from the old, I’m pleased that there’ll be an old ash in view, and the cottonwood across the street will patter on a windy night. But it’s the backgarden that’s the treasure trove. At least twice the length of my own, this garden is home to a katsura tree, burr oak, elder and tamarack. But the highlight, especially in winter, is an immense row of cedars which is home – at least seasonally – to lots of birds. Sitting on the back balcony overlooking the hedge, I’ll be able to savour a new soundscape, view and scents.

Sorry, tonight's treewalk (Outremont) cancelled

2011-08-31T16:26:00.000-04:00

I regret to say that I have had to cancel tonight's walk due to lack of participants. I will reschedule it for the fall.

island of trees: Do cucumbers grow on trees?

2011-08-27T08:31:00.000-04:00

The Cucumber-tree, Magnolia acuminata, is the tallest tree in the Jardin des arbustes at the Montreal Botanical Garden. Note the long leaf and the cucumber-shaped fruit, which, at this time of year, are a string raspberry red. lllustrations: Charles L'Heureux

There’s a delightful minor trend in the nomenclature of trees that tends to fantasy. There are tropical trees named strawberry, sausage and cannonball though none actually produce their namesake products. Closer to home we have the cigar tree - also known as the catalpa – so name because of the shape of its seed pod. Rather thin and long for a cigar, I’d say. Still, a compelling image.

Better named is another local tree, the cucumber-tree. At this time of year when the fruit are bright red and 5 – 8 cm long, naming the tree after the popular vegetable is a bit of a stretch. Earlier in the summer, however, when the short, green fruit clusters emerge from the pale yellow, long-petalled flowers, the name seems apt. Gherkins, or baby dills, seem to grow from the tallest of all North American magnolias.

Not only is the cucumber-tree native to North America, it is the only magnolia to make it into Canada, albeit only, in the most southwestern section of Ontario, known as the Carolinian forest, where it is a rare tree. In Montreal, I know of only three cucumber-trees. Easiest to find but the least attractive of the three, is one standing immediately in front of the McGill University School of Architecture. Tall and scrawny, standing next to a thriving Siberian elm, this tree, which loves moist rich soils, has clearly suffered from lack of water and soil compacted by years of students attaching their bikes to the narrow trunk. Still, this battered tree returns each spring.

Better located and sheltered from the madding crowd are two beautiful specimens, one in the west, at the Morgan Arboretum, growing in Blossom Corner, the other standing dead centre in the Jardin des arbustes on the western edge of the Montreal Botanical Gardens. This latter was a real surprise to me, mostly because I’ve generally bypassed that garden, which consists not only of shrubs but of a collection of ornamental trees including magnolias, on my way the Quebec forest section.

At this time of year, the beauty of this garden is subtle, the interesting fruit and yellow flowers of the late-flowering magnolias must be seen from close-up, as opposed to the riot of colour in the herbaceous gardens, just to the south. Luc Thériault, who’s the horticulturist in charge of this section, introduces Charles L’Heureux and I to the cucumber-tree. At a distance, standing tall with large bright green leaves, it would be easy to mistake it for the Northern catalpa, Catalpa speciosa. But up close, the narrowness of the leaf, as compared to the broad heart-shape of our most common catalpa, ends the similarities. In fact, the species name of the cucumber-tree, Magnolia acuminata, means coming to a narrow point.

The fruit are spectacular, like raspberry-coloured cones. Soon, the individual seed pods will split away from this structure and the seeds, most unusually, will hang down on gossamer threads. I have only read of this phenomenon, unique, among magnolias, to the acuminata, and hope to get the timing right this year to see them. Thériault believes the fruit are more interesting than the flower but tells us that the acuminata species has been cultivated into numerous yellow-flowered magnolias, including the popular dwarf magnolia, the “Elizabeth.”

Sadly, however, the cucumber-tree and its cultivars are all vulnerable to the magnolia scale, a recent and nasty bug which, if not treated, will kill magnolias of the acuminata, stellata and liliiflora species, which include the very common, pink-flowered hybrid, Magnolia x soulangiana. During walks in your neighbourhood, check the garden magnolias and you’re likely to find some with white spots on the pale grey branches. In advanced cases of scale, whole branches will be coated in the waxy substance and the bark will have darkened due to a mildew caused by the sweet sap excreted by the insect.

The only way to get rid of scale is to kill the larvae, or “crawlers,” as they are known because they crawl to an available bit of branch then fix themselves, suck out the sap and make their sweet and waxy sun protection. Thériault says that this is the time of year to look for the tiny bugs and spray them with a plant detergent. The other period when the scale is vulnerable is in early spring, before the magnolia leaves have emerged. At that time, painting or spraying the branches with mineral (dormant) oil – huile de dormance, in French – suffocates any adults, eggs or larvae that have survived winter. If you use the oil once the leaves are out, the leaves too will be killed.

Pruning badly afflicted branches is also a solution but be sure not to compost those branches and to bundle them into garbage bags so the bugs can’t re-emerge from the ground. Of course, the best solution is to avoid buying the magnolia species attacked by this newly arrived scale species, from south of the border, and to check carefully the magnolias you may buy at the nursery.

Island of trees: Mountain maple on the mountain, of course

2011-08-20T08:11:00.000-04:00

You will find this mountain maple 10 metres to the right of Chief, the enormous cottonwood poplar on Olmsted Road, in Mount Royal Park, not far to the left of the top of the staircase that runs alongside the parking lot of the Royal Victoria Hospital. You will recognize this bush maple by its 3-lobed leaf and the yellow-green tassles of disamaras. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

This is a live broadcast. I am sitting on a park bench across Olmsted Road from the second of the giant cottonwoods – second, that is, if you’ve come up the path from Park Avenue. Or, it’s the first if you’re descending the road having come down the Peel Street steps from the lookout. Look for it on your left at roughly five minutes walk from the foot of the steps.

It’s 4:30 and I can hear the cars pulling out of the Royal Victoria Hospital parking lot down below. I call this cottonwood Chief as he signals hello with his right arm to all that pass. He could just as well be a she but I don’t recall ever seeing the cotton-clad seeds flying from the branches so far extended towards the sun.

No doubt, there was another arm many years ago but not in the 30 years I have known this tree. But I’m not here to write about Chief, but merely to use this spectacular tree to locate a tree that is equally spectacular – at least during spring and late summer/fall -but far more discreet: the mountain maple.

Once you’re sitting on one of these two benches, in the shade of two fine sugar maples, look 10 metres to the right of Chief and you’ll see what look like greenish yellow flowers hanging in tassles from a small tree. Walk toward it and you’ll see that the flowers are, in fact, fruit: disamaras, or keys, hanging in clusters of as many as 20. The fruit has, no doubt, told you that this tree is a maple, as no other genus of tree has a double samara.

The leaf too spells maple. Three lobes, like the red maple and the black but not easily mistaken for either tree because of the rounded bottom of the irregularly toothed leaf and the very shallow lobes. Besides, the mountain maple, is more bush than maple. While it may reach heights of 10 metres, it is always multi-trunked.

The only other species of maple you might confuse with the mountain maple is the striped maple, also known as moosewood. A small understory tree with equally rounded and shallowly lobed three-point leaves, the striped maple stands out both for its striped, pale blue on green, bark and for the size of its leaves, which are easily the biggest of any local maple.

Walking along Olmsted Road, there’s little chance of confusing these two smallest of our native maples as I’ve yet to see a striped maple in the park. You will, however, see plenty of other plant species with maple-like leaves. In fact, just to the left of today’s tree is a patch of purple-flowering raspberry, also known as thimbleberry, Rubus odoratus, (for the berry’s ability to fit over your thumb without breaking apart), angling its maple-shaped leaves upward to catch some last rays of sun.

If you continue along the road until reaching the foot of the Peel Street stairs, leading up to the Kondiaronk Belvedere, you’ll find a spectacular self-seeded and self-managed rock garden, including two other non-maple species of plant with maple like leaves. Once again, you’ll find, Rubus odoratus, the purple flowering raspberry, some of which still sport a few of their rose-scented purple flowers, as well as highbush cranberry, known in French and in Algonquin as pimbina, after which a sector of Mount Tremblant Park is named.

The latter, whose Latin name, Verbena trifolia, or three-lobed viburnum, has leaves quite similar to the mountain maple. Like all members of the verbina genus, the leaves are opposite, just like all in the maple genus. The bright red berries, tart but edible, much like the cranberry, however, clearly distinguish the pimbina from the mountain maple. Both of these bushes have lovely flowers which makes them interesting as ornamental species in small gardens or to fill a small space in a big garden. In fact the Latin name of the mountain maple, Acer spicatum, refers to the spike shape of the white blossoms which appear after the leaves have opened.

I invite you to spend a few minutes in both sectors I’ve described along Olmsted Road. You’ll recognize the large, bright green, horse hoof-shaped leaves of coltsfoot, the first flower of spring. At the foot of the big staircase, you may also recognize jewel weed, a native impatience, growing tall in blue-green leaves and sporting small and bright, orange-speckled, pitcher-shaped flowers.

A last word about location. I made an error last week when describing the location of several black maple trees. In my centralist Montreal vision, I saw the river as the north branch of the St. Lawrence when, of course, the proper name is la Rivière des Prairies. My apologies if I caused any confusion.

island of trees: Black maple, silent sweetie of the Montreal forest

2011-08-12T22:46:00.001-04:00

Next tree walk: Parc Westmount, en français, le mercredi 17 août, 5:30 - 7:30 pm. On se rencontre devant les serres à côté de la bibliothèque, 4574, rue Sherbrooke O. Inscription: bronwynchester@gmail.com/514-284-7384, $15. For other treewalks see blog below.

An old black maple grows on the grounds of École secondaire Sophie Barat not far from the ruins of the original school built in 1858. Note how the unusual leaves consist, mainly, of three shallow lobes, and are soft and fuzzy on the underside and have the overall appearance of being wrinkled. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Forest, forest of Montreal isle, which tree has the sweetest smile?

Ah, good dwellers of the green, the answer is but seldom seen.

Black s/he stands, tall and wide, bark in ridges like red oak’s hide

But the leaves do give the clearest sign, dark green and droopy, with hairs so fine

That when you touch the underside, of this maple leaf unusually wide

You’ll think of velvet, fine suede or antler fuzz, and that is because

The three-lobed leaf, sometimes wilted and curling, is hairy on the underside, once finished unfurling

Black is the name of this maple so rare, with sap the sweetest of all maple fare.

So next you spot this shy tree, be sure to stop and pay your fee

Not in coin, of course, as Black has no need, but in simple recognition of all it feeds.

I’ve long waited to write about the black maple, Acer nigrum, l’érable noir, but hadn’t found the individual tree that would be easy for you to locate. Like the cottonwood poplars, present along much of the coastline of our island, the black maple has a particular affinity for Montreal. Similar, in size, structure and sap, to the sugar maple – of which it is sometimes considered a subspecies – the black maple, likes a slightly wetter and warmer habitat. It’s territory stretches south and west from Montreal, along the Ottawa river valley and south in the States. In Montreal, the tree is found in the lower lands of such forests as the Bois-de-Saraguay, in the St-Laurent borough.

But it’s difficult to describe the location of a particular tree within a forest -- at least until the forest has some interpretive panels, which the Bois-de-Saraguay ought soon have now that it’s been classified as a Parc nature. However, until that time, I am pleased to direct you to a fine grouping of black maples, some situated in an impressive collection of trees on the grounds of École secondaire Sophie Barat, in the Ahuntsic borough, others just beyond the ruins of an old stone school, next to the high school, in the forested remains of the walled convent that once belonged to Les soeurs de Sacré-Coeur.

The area seems fixed in time; the trees growing close together over uncut grass, give a sense of the bayou. Though the ground was not wet on the hot day we went exploring, it’s clear from the species of trees growing between Gouin Boulevard and the St. Lawrence River, between Georges-Baril and St-Charles avenues, not to mention the shallow valleys in the roads leading to the river – a sure sign of old river beds - that this is a humid spot.

Gouin Boulevard is one of the city’s oldest streets and Sophie Barat, opened in 1858, is one of the oldest schools. Someone, roughly 80 years ago, planted an unusual collection of trees on these grounds, a part of which is the remnant of a graveyard as is evident by the grove of Japanese yew, a common cemetery tree. Alongside the yews, among what look to be the original trees are catalpas, ginkgo, musclewood (aka American hornbeam and blue beech) sugar maples and at least two black maples. The black and sugar maples are the same height and shape but the colour of the bark and the colour and disposition of the leaves signal difference.

Some leaves of the black maple are so rounded and their three lobes so shallow that they resemble the broad, heart-shaped leaves of the nearby catalpas. Should you be able to reach a leaf or find one on the ground, pick it up and feel the velour of the underside. Do the same with the five-lobed leaf of the nearby sugar maples and you’ll see and sense the difference between these sweet-sapped cousins.

If you venture behind the ruins of the old stone school, you’ll find a pathway into the abandoned forest behind the monastery walls. Head through the woods towards Gouin and you’ll see a long row of old sugar maples mixed in with the black. If you’d like a different view on the maples, follow the stone wall along Gouin, walking west from the high school, then south on St-Charles and you’ll have a good view on the varying shapes of maple leaves as well as the leaves of numerous other species introduced in this column: slippery elm, Manitoba maple, silver maple, red ash and Norway maple, the latter being easy to identify by the fungal spots on the leaves.

What’s heartening is to see so many young black maple growing in the underbrush. There are many native and several rare species, like the black maple and the butternut, growing in this forest remnant. The remediation of this forest, which would involve the removal of the invasive species, such as the Norway maple and the European buckthorn, would be a great, and longlasting, science project for Sophie Barat and create another great spot, close to a concentrated population, for learning and loving our native forest.

island of trees: Southern catalpa find comfort by northern home

2011-08-06T07:41:00.001-04:00

PLEASE NOTE LIST OF UPCOMING TREEWALKS IN THE PRECEEDING BLOG:

NEXT TUESDAY: PARC LA FONTAINE

This southern catalpa, Catalpa bignonioides, has grown for at least a century beside this Westmount home at the corner of Forden and Montrose streets, a stones throw from Murray Park. Note the unusually shaped leaves, as compared to the more common Northern catalpa, Catalpa speciosa, and the smaller seed pod. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

I left my doctor’s office last week with an assignment. “By the way,” he said, while writing my prescription. “There’s a tree you have to check out. It grows at the corner of Montrose and Forden. It’s an old ginkgo and has beautiful flowers.”

“Doesn’t sound like a ginkgo,” I said. “They don’t have flowers.”

Nevertheless, my interest was stirred and I stopped at this corner, just a block east of Murray Park, on my way home. True, this was a stunning tree and I could see how the shape of this old dowager might by taken at a distance for a mature ginkgo. The two burnished trunks angled outwards and the branches spread laterally giving the tree an Asian look, something like an overgrown bonsai.

Up close, the long, thin bean-like fruit and the large, generally cordiform (heart-shaped) leaves made the genus easy to identify: Catalpa. No other tree sports such a fruit. While the 25-centimetre long pod looks much like a very thin bean, its inners tell a different tale. In fact while cleaning out my purse, I got a bit of a start by what looked like winged bugs nestled in the weave of the fabric. I quickly realized, however, that the catalpa pod I’d picked had split and these were the winged seeds. I should mention that this pod was last year’s, now dry and burgundy-coloured on the branch, while this year’s immature pods are bright green.

As it turns out, the Catawba First Nations, who lived on the Catawba River in the Carolinas, also saw the wing-like whiskers on either side of the centimetre-long disamara (2-seeded winged fruit, like maple keys) and named them Kuthlapa, meaning “head with wings.” This, I have learned from one of my favourite tree books, Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest, by Diana Beresford-Kroeger.

While all of the world’s 11 species of catalpa feature this seed structure, I’m not sure that this Westmount catalpa is the same one known to the Catawba people. That catalpa, Catalpa speciosa, is the most northerly of the two North American catalpa species and is the most common one in Montreal, found frequently on the grounds of the old mansions of the Golden Square Mile, on the McGill University campus and in La Fontaine Park. You’ll find more on that tree in my column of June 20, 2010.

Tall and narrow in stature, the northern catalpa, features uniformly huge and heart-shaped, alternate leaves of a bright apple green. The leaves of today’s tree, however, are highly varied, some cordiform, some round, some with three lobes, and all with a soft velour on the underside. Having studied the leaves illustrated in The Sibley Guide to Trees, I have to conclude that this sprawling variety of catalpa is either the southern catalpa, Catalpa bignonioides, native to the southern Mississippi and southwestern Georgia, or the Chinese catalpa, Catalpa ovata, or the common cross between the two.

This is a rare tree in Montreal. The only others I’ve seen live in Ytizhak Rabin Park in Côte St-Luc, and in front the nun’s residence at Hôtel Dieu Hospital, at the most westerly entrance off Pine Avenue. From what the owner of the century-old house told me about the grounds surround the house she has occupied since 1960, the original owner, Robert M. Ballantyne was a man interested in exotic trees – or had a gardener with such interests. The actual owner, a white-haired woman with warm brown eyes, spoke lovingly about her catalpa that flowers each June, or early July, its panicles of orchid-like white flowers, later falling like confetti on the grass beneath.

“But before the catalpa, my favourite was the tulip tree that grew by the back steps,” she said from the southern entrance to her house, motioning to the slate-roofed garage. “The flowers were lime green just like your jersey,” she said.

That tulip tree, assuming it was planted at the time the house was built in 1903, may have been the first ever planted on the island. That tree, another southerner, though native as far north as southwestern Ontario, along with the catalpa, the saucer magnolia and the European spindle tree growing south of the house, all tell the story of someone with a good knowledge of trees and an interested in trying them out beyond their northern limits. Clearly, this southern catalpa found comfort close to the warm brick of this northern house.

UPCOMING TREEWALKS: Wednesday in the Woods/Le mercredi des arbres, and more

2011-08-06T07:24:00.000-04:00

Last summer in Parc La Fontaine photo:

Please note the change to TUESDAY August 9, for walk in Parc La Fontaine. Same hours and place as indicated below.

Bonjour tout le monde/Hi everyone,

Voici une série de visites guidées des arbres les mercredis soirs pour le mois d'août, suivi de quelques promenades du jour déjà organisés pour cet automne.
Inscriptions: bronwynchester@gmail.com/514-284-7384

Here is a Wednesday night series of treewalks, followed by some daytime tree walks already scheduled for this fall.
Registration: bronwynchester@gmail.com/514-284-7384

SVP, tenez-compte du fait que même si une visite est offerte en une langue ou en l'autre, tous les matériaux sont en français et anglais, et toutes questions posées seront répondues dans la langue de la question.

When I have indicated one language or the other, please keep in mind that all material is in both French and English and questions will be answered in the language in which they are asked.

Westmount Park
Wednesday, August 3, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m
$15
Meet at the greenhouse next to the library.
4574 rue Sherbrooke ouest
Autobus #24
In English.

Parc La Fontaine
le mardi 9 août, 17h30 à 19h30
$10
On se rencontre au coin nord-ouest du parc,
rues Rachel et de La Fontaine
Metro Sherbrooke
En français

Parc Westmount
le mercredi 17 août, 17h30 à 19h30
$15
On se rencontre devant les serres à côté de la bibliothèque.
4574 rue Sherbrooke ouest
Autobus #24
En français

Parc Laurier
le mercredi 24 août, 17h30 à 19h30
$15
On se rencontre devant le pavillon principal,
Rue Laurier est et Christophe Colombe
Metro Laurier
Bilingue/Bilingual

Parc St-Viateur et les arbres d'Outremont (circuit de 4 parcs)
le mercredi 31 août, 17h30 à 19h30
$15
On se rencontre à l'entrée du Parc St-Viateur, rues Bernard et Bloomfield
Metro Outremont
Bilingue/Bilingual

***********************************************************************************

FALL TREEWALKS/PROMENADES GUIDÉES À L'AUTOMNE

Cimetière Mount Royal
le dimanche 18 septembre, 10h à midi.
suivie de rafraîchissements
Gratuit
On se rencontre à l'entrée principale au bout du chemin de la forêt
En français

Mount Royal Cemetery
Sunday, September 25, 10 a.m. - noon.
followed by refreshments
Free
We meet at the main entrance, at the end of chemin de la forêt
In English

McGill Campus Trees/Les arbres du campus McGill
Sunday, October 15, 9:00 a.m. - 11 a.m.
$15
We meet on the steps of the Redpath Museum/On se rencontre sur les marches du Musée Redpath
Metro McGill
Bilingue/Bilingual

island of trees: Is the fig a fruit, the banana a tree?

2011-07-29T19:07:00.000-04:00

This week's Wednesday in the Woods Treewalk: Westmount Park, August 3, 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm, Meet in front of greenhouse, next to library. $15. Registration: bronwynchester@gmail.com/514-284-7384

This is one of several species of banana, Musa sp, found in the Montreal Botanical Gardens in the Tropical Food Plants Greenhouse. (Sorry, the illustration of the details of the banana fruit and flower is missing until next. Wednesday. Illustration: Charles L'Heureux

I have an apology to make. Two columns ago, I misled you into thinking that the fig is a fruit. It isn’t; it’s a synconium. What’s that?, you say. Well, a synconium is the name given to the casing in which a cluster of hundreds of fig flowers reside. So, you may be wondering how on earth those flowers are pollinated. As Mother Nature would have it, each fig species has its own species of wasp that manages to enter the synconium by a single entrance at the opposite end of the stem. The wasp lays her eggs in the female flower, inadvertently picks up some pollen on her body, from the male flower, then exits by the same hole and goes on to the next fig, and, potentially, pollinates the female flowers, then dies.

What, then, is the fruit of the fig? A tiny druplet of flesh with a seed in the middle. The fruit-enclosed seed, in fact, gives the fig its gritty texture.

But, where the common fig, Ficus carica, is concerned, the story is even more unusual. Some 11,000 years ago, peoples around the Mediterranean Sea began to domesticate a mutant fig, which required no pollination, and, therefore, no wasps. However, it did depend on humans for its continuity; to this very day, the common fig is propagated via cuttings rooted in soil.

The phenomenon of fruits produced asexually is known as parthenocarpy, meaning “virgin fruit,” according to Wikipedia. Another parthenocarpic fruit, even more popular than the fig, is the Cavendish banana, Musa acuminata, the more common of all bananas eaten in North America. Like the fig, the banana is one of the oldest plants in cultivation. Australian archaeologists believe it was first cultivated at least 7,000 years ago in Papua New Guinea. Those species of this multi-species genus of plants, however, would have been seed-bearing as most of the numerous species of Musa were in their original territory of the Indo-Malaysian region, stretching south to northern Australia. By 300 BC, the plant had made it to the Mediterranean from where it made its way farther south into the African continent.

It was the Portuguese who brought the plant in the 16^th century from West Africa to South America, which remains the leading area of banana/plantain production in the Americas, while India leads in Asia.

You may have noticed that I don’t call the banana plant, a tree and that’s because it isn’t. If you make your way out to the Tropical Food Plants Greenhouse at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, you will see why not. There’s no wood in the stem of these huge, herbaceous plants. The “trunk,” in fact is a cylinder of leaf sheafs, from the middle of which grows a single stem with a large, deep red, tapering bud, the size of small melon. As each bract (the individual leaf-like scale) of the bud lifts, a row of flowers is exposed. The upper ones are male and don’t form fruit.

The lower ones, are female and, once exposed to the light, rapidly form a hand of tiny bananas. What’s harvested form plantations is the entire stem, full of dozens of hands of bananas. Once the fruiting is over, the stem dies and the tree sends up another shoot and the process is repeated.

I have to admit that understanding the reproduction of both the domestic fig and sweet banana, has been arduous and Stéphane Bailleul, one of the botanists at the gardens has been a great help. The sexuality of plants is complex, to say the least, in contrast to animal sexuality, but these two genuses are particularly complex and highly interwoven with human history and intervention.

What I suggest is that on the next stinking hot day, you venture out to the gardens and take refuge from the sun in the (slightly) cooler, green shade of the amazing plants in the Tropical Food Plants Greenhouse. Completely revamped a few years ago, this greenhouse is a treasure trove of beauty, perfume, and information on the trees and herbaceous plants that produce many of our daily staples. In addition to the spectacular banana plants, many of which are bearing fruit, you’ll find coffee trees, guava, citrus trees, avocados, the cinnamon trees and numerous other spice plants. And, of course, there’s a fig tucked away in the corner.

I’d also recommend you visit the potted fig trees behind the restaurant. One of them is thick with large, almost ripe fruit – oops, I mean synconiums, or is that synconia? - while the others are just beginning to form directly on the trunk, so you be able to observe them at different stages of development. You’ll also get a good look at the leaf. Be sure to feel it, to know the soft pubescence (hairiness) of the leaf.

Island of trees: Widespreading relatives: the Mulberry and the Fig

2011-07-23T07:55:00.001-04:00

This rare, mature mulberry tree grows on Gatineau Street in Jean-Brilliant Park, in the Côte-des-neiges borough between Jean-Brillant and Swail streets. Gatineau runs parallel to Côte-des-neiges Road, beginning at Queen Mary Road. You can't miss the tree for its wide spread, the sound of birds foraging with excitement on the fruit, and its location across from the Boucherie de Paris. Should you decide to picnic on a baguette sandwich from the boucherie, under the low branches of the roughly 50-year-old tree, desert will be free. The berries, which look like elongated raspberries, are now ripening to their dark red colour. Note the wide variety of leaf shape, common to both the white and red mulberry trees. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

In one of the opening scenes of the film The Tree, a truck pulls a house across the arid landscape of Queensland, Australia.. “Wide load,” reads the sign on the back of the house. The words, black on yellow, resonate throughout the film. Grieving the death of one’s dad is also a wide load. And so is the Moreton Bay fig tree in which a daughter finds solace.

We don’t see wide trees too often. In the forest, trees grow straight and narrow, vying for light with all the other competitors. On the sidewalk, they must be trimmed to accommodate pedestrians, buildings and motor vehicles. So, that leaves the parks. And yes, we do find widespreading trees in our parks but, usually, the lower branches are trimmed, reducing the possibility of climbing in such trees as oaks, walnuts, willows, sugar maples, apples. I suppose the fear of accidents and insurance claims, plus plain old breakage of branches, accidental or intentional, keeps us out of the trees.

Still, we can always lie down beneath a wide load tree, and let the imagination climb, wandering through the hundreds of metres of branches. You probably have a tree like that within your landscape. A few that come to mind are the black walnut to the west of the Roddick Gates, on the McGill University campus and a sprawling old sugar maple that stands solo in a wide open field in Notre Dame des neiges Cemetery, just west of the main gates on Côtes-des-neiges Road.

Nor far from that maple, in Jean Brilliant Park, stands another sprawling tree, its branches reaching wider than high, are heavy with berries, now ripening, and in various stages of white to dark red colour. Feasting birds are thick in the upper branches, while a young family of humans looks for the ripe mulberries on the lower branches.

Sonya Nseke and her children, Noah and Sarah, pass by this mulberry tree twice per day on their way to the children’s daycamp. A few years ago while watching, first a Latino family, then a Chinese family, Sonya learned that the fruits were edible

“We like them best in the morning,” says Nseke, who grew up in France with origins in Martinique and Guadeloupe. “They’re cooler and juicier then.

Interestingly, George Moumouris, said the same thing last week, when referring to his figs. And both fig trees and mulberries are members of the Moraceae botanical family, a family which includes such huge and stellar trees as the banyan of India, Australia’s Moreton Bay fig, the Bo tree, under which the Buddha received his wisdom, and the Asian white mulberry, Morus alba, le mûrier blanc, without which we would not know the pleasure of silk.

For the quest to produce silk, as proficiently as the Chinese had for centuries, drove Europeans to plant the tree in their own lands and in North America. While the silk worms never adapted to the North American climate, the tree did and hybridized with the native red mulberry, which grows in southwestern Ontario and farther south, in the United States.

In fact, I can’t tell you if the mulberry of Jean Brilliant Park is red, white or a cross. The city tree inspector for the borough wasn’t sure but he is sure that this tree is one of the oldest mulberries in the city and one of the few mature ones, its trunk measuring 60 cm in diametre. “In parks, we could plant more mulberry,” notes David Lecroulant, “because we don’t have that constraint of the fruit staining the sidewalk.”

A few years back, I identified my first mulberry after months of being mystified by a self-seeded alley tree with a cinnamon-coloured bark and the strangest of leaves; some were shaped like three or five-fingered mittens – much like the figleaf – while others had a more standard oval shape. The unusual leaf, as well as the berry, is behind the creation of the ornamental, weeping mulberry which attracts birds to gardens.

While the white/red mulberry will grow wider and wider, it will never pose the sorts of problems that the Moreton Bay fig can: lifting sidewalks, and invading water systems.( That particular species, Ficus macrophylla, much like the banyan, Ficus benghalensis, can expand for as long as it finds water, due to the fact that its branches, once they touch the ground, become roots.)

So, I recommend that you recommend to your local municipal arborists that they plant more of this interesting tree with the delicious fruit. After all, citizens of Montreal with roots in Asia, North Africa and the Middle East have been eating the fruit for a long time, both fresh and dried. I’d see mulberries well in a schoolyard where the children could learn to respect trees long enough that they might climb them and eat their fruit in future years, perhaps alongside their own children.

island of trees: The fresh fig of Esplanade Street

2011-07-16T00:16:00.004-04:00

Tree walk this Wednesday 5:30 - 8 pm. Mount Royal. Details at end of blog.

This small, potted figtree is well known to Mile Enders. Planted in the ground 20 years ago by Spiros Moumouris, the tree grew to the height of the second floor balcony and produced up to 250 figs per year. Moumouris wintered the tree underground, in his garden at the corner of de l'Esplanade Ave. and Groll Alley. Eventually, the process of uprooting the tree and burying it in a metre-deep trench became too laborious and he transplanted the tree into a large pot so that the tree could spend winter in the basement. Note the round-lobed, mitten-like leaves of Ficus carica, the common fig.Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

The proper way to eat a fig, in society,

Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,

And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower....

But the vulgar way

Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.

D.H. Lawrence, from the poem, Figs

If you’re of my generation and born in this country, you, like me, most likely grew up knowing figs as those sweet and gritty, dried up brownish fruit that grew in groups on an circular, straw-like stalk. And then, sometime within the past 10 years, you would have discovered the other fig, That pear-shaped fruit of green-to-aubergine hue, measuring roughly 6 cm. by 4 cm. at its widest, and tasting nothing like its dried version. Smelling a little like melon, the combination of the pale green flesh, surrounding the amoeba-shaped pink cloud of seeds, is a challenge to the senses. I mean that in the sense that it’s hard to put words to the overall effect of the fig’s appearance, taste and texture. Not particularly sweet, nor juicy, nor crisp – the sorts of adjectives we use for fruit – the only word that comes to mind is freshness.

Perhaps that’s because the fruit of Ficus carica, or the figue commun, in French, can only be fresh. Once picked, figs stop ripening, so the fresh figs, now in the shops, are only days away from their place of origin, which, at this time of year, is Greece. The fresh figs to arrive later in the summer, come largely from California. Unless, of course, you have the good fortune of living in the neighbourhoods of Mediterranean Montreal, where Montrealers of Greek, Portuguese and Italian origin have planted fig trees, either in large pots or right in the ground.

I’m afraid that’s not the case for me, but in researching the location of a fig tree visible either from the street or alley, I recalled hearing about a fig tree in Mile End, planted in the ground, and uprooted and buried, almost a metre underground, each winter, to be resurrected each spring. That sounds like a lot of work, and it was for Spiros Moumouris, but, as described by his son George, it was clearly a labour of love, as was tending all his other Mediterranean children: the olive, lemon tree, pear, and four varieties of grape: Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Canadian. “My mother would have to coax my father in for supper,” recalls George Moumouris, describing not only the care his father brought to gardening but his capacity for sharing both the bounty and his gardening skills.

When father Moumouris became ill, so did the olive. “It dried up when my dad got sick,” recalls George Moumouris, tilling the soil around his begonias. The fig, on the other hand, continues to thrive although in smaller form as it must be trimmed so as to fit in the basement during the winter. Before Spiros Moumouris died in 2008, the tree stayed outside, and one can still see the slight depression in the family garden, at the corner of de l’Esplanade Avenue and Groll alley, under which the tree laid for its first 15 winters. In fact, there’s even a shoot coming straight out of the ground next to where the tree was uprooted in order to put in a pot when it became too arduous for Spiros Moumouris to do the annual burial.

“Each fall, that shoot dies back, then returns in the spring,” notes Moumouris, chuckling at the tree’s tenacity.

George isn’t sure there’ll be many figs this year, due to a recent radical trim. In good years, however, there have been 250, enough for his extended family and to offer curious passersby. Up the street, however, just a few doors south of the Club social café, another small, potted fig tree is covered with small fruit, growing directly form the trunk at the axis of each of the mitten-like, alternate leaves.

“That tree grew from a branch my father gave to his Portuguese neighbour,” says George, explaining that it’s easy to propagate fig trees from cuttings. In fact, the fig is a tough, dry climate tree, that, in Greece, even seeds itself, with help from birds, alongside highways.

Should any of you see the film, The Tree, you’ll see the Moreton Bay Fig, an Australian member of the 750-species fig genus. Ficus macrophylla is an enormous tree with enormous importance to a little girl. I’ll come back to this film, and the fig next week.

bronwynchester@gmail.com

island of trees: Cottonwood: Pioneer in sand and concrete

2011-07-09T17:54:00.000-04:00

A determined Eastern cottonwood sapling grows from a crack in the angle between the paving stones and the stone wall of one of the old fur warehouses on Ruelle Chagouamigon, running south from St-Paul Street, one street west of the Palais royal. The almost anonymous laneway which dates from from 1683, was once the site of the Western palissades of Fort Ville-Marie. While Eastern cottonwood was likely as plentiful as Quebec's other tallest tree, the white pine, the latter were used in the early palissades of Quebec because, in the forest, they grow straight with few lower branches. Cottonwood, on the other hand branches early and the fast-growing tree produces a weak wood. Note the tiny seed, produced in the thousands by each fruit capsule, and transported by its own wind-powered parachute. Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux.

The Online Etymology Dictionary ascribes the origins of the word, pioneer, to the Middle French term, pionnier, “a foot soldier who prepares the way for the army.” When used to describe trees, pioneer refers to species able to grow in the poorest conditions, such as the corner of a parking lot, a mined out quarry, a crack in the alley asphalt. Sun-worshippers all, pioneer trees do well in such shunned territory until they reach a certain size and begin to create too much shade for their offspring. Think of the eastern cottonwood, Populus deltoides, and peuplier deltoide, in French, a common pioneer species in Montreal and the island’s biggest tree.

Fast-growing and weak-wooded, cottonwoods die relatively young, in the 75-year range. During their lifetime, however, the leaves they shed and branches they drop serve to create a rich layer of humus, paving the way for such longer-serving officers of the forest army. Given the huge dimensions they may attain – think of the titans of La Fontaine Park and those lining the shores of many sections of the island of Montreal – eastern cottonwoods, once fallen, create topography; the small hills and dales formed by a trunk or branch, create mini-ecosystems, some low and humid, favouring the growth of such trees as black ash and red maple, some high and relatively dry, favouring the likes of beech and ironwood.

I recently camped in a spot where it’s possible to see the succession in the forest and appreciate the tenacity of the eastern cottonwood. Sandbanks Provincial Park, located on the south shore of Prince Edward County, a substantial peninsula jutting into Lake Ontario from Belleville, is composed of two huge sandbars, deposited by the glaciers and closing in two inner lakes, East Lake and West Lake. Collectively, the dunes on each sandbar are among the world’s largest freshwater dunes. What’s fascinating in both the East and West Lake sections is how the interplay of natural and human forces has shaped the dunes and the role played by the eastern cottonwood.

The East Lake sandbar is highly vegetated. Aside from the actual beach, the sandy-soiled area is well vegetated. The dunes immediately in from the beach are protected by a roughly two-kilometre long palisade of cottonwoods, all clapping their plastic-like leaves in the frequent winds. Beyond them, the well-worn dunes are held down by poison ivy, wild grape, star-flowered Solomon’s seal and maran grass. Still, the sand is visible and it’s possible to meander, barefoot along the well-worn paths – provided you’re good at identifying poison ivy!

A little farther inland, however, where the campsites are located, the vegetation is far more complex and the sand hardly visible. This may not be the primeval forest, which was cleared in the 19th century, but I’ve seen white ash, red oak and white cedar that are more than a century old. Largely a cedar-white pine-red oak forest, this undulating sector is still home to a few towering cottonwoods that must have begun their lives as foot soldiers while the other species were mere seedlings.

On the West Lake sandbar, on the other hand, the cottonwoods dominate the massive dunes which stretch 10 kilometres along Lake Ontario. But this was not always the case. Until the mid-19th century, this sandbar, like the East Lake one, was densely forested. Once the enormous cedar and white pine were cleared and sold, the settlers saw an opportunity for farming and cattle ranching. Little did they realize that beneath the thin layer of topsoil that had been held in place by the trees, was fine sand. Once the cattle had browsed the grass and bushes, the sand was free to roam, creating a nightmare for those whose homes and hotels were flooded with the restless grains.

Today, the dunes are, for the most part, still spectacularly naked, but the loyal cottonwoods, some standing on their tiptoes, where the wind has blow out the sand in between their roots, still lead the way in preventing erosion. Fellow foot soldiers include maran grass, wild peas, cedar and white spruce, as well as locusts, both the black and honey species.

All told, it’s a spectacular environment to explore. When Charles L’Heureux, illustrator of Island of Trees, alerted me to the feisty young cottonwood pictured here, I couldn’t help but compare the beauty and toughness of the dune environment to that of Old Montreal.

island of trees: Black willow takes messiness to new heights

2011-07-02T19:17:00.000-04:00

This old black willow, Salix nigra, and saule noir, in French, growing in St-Viateur Park takes 25 paces to circle. Tallest of all the local willows, the range of this tree stretches from Trois-Rivières to the Gulf of Mexico. Its dark bark, size and the stipules (the small leaf-like structures) at the base of the leaf help distinguish it from other willow. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

In last week’s column, you might have detected a note of disdain in my attitude to those who complain of “messy” trees, or les arbres sals. It’s a comment I hear often when I ask people how they feel about the tree in front of their house, which goes something like this: “The flowers are pretty but they leave such a mess.” That particular comment was in reference to the crabapple - the tree of Montreal, no less – and the commenter didn’t like the squashed pink mess on the sidewalk.

My feeling is that the broom is the best line of defense and offers the possibility of collecting the petals – or seeds or leaves, whatever the seasonal “mess” - and distributing them around the base of the tree where they will have some earth in which to degrade. If “mess” on the sidewalk or parked cars were not a problem, we might, for instance, have more colour, interest and –God forbid – edible fruit in our street trees.

There remains, however, a question of culture. Because our various city governments are long in the habit of keeping the sidewalks clean, many of us don’t have the impulse to look after the stretch in front of our homes. And, from a municipality’s point of view, having to clean up squashed petals or dried up bean pods - in the case, for instance, of the honey locust - is a lot of time and, therefore, money. So, often the path of least resistance is taken: plant the trees requiring least maintenance and yielding fewest complaints from citizens.

Today, however, I’d like to introduce a tree for which messiness is a badge of honour and survival. Like the black knight in Monty Python’s In Search of the Holy Grail, the black willow is prepared to lose leaf and limb in defense of its riparian territory: the riverbank, drainage ditch or lakeside. Earlier this week, while driving back along the 401 from Picton, Ontario, there were numerous such trees, displaying large branches, split and fallen from the course-barked trunk of these wide-and-low branching trees.

But, no worries. Fallen branches degrade and enrich the soil, and provide the conditions necessary for new plant life, while the hole in the tree creates habitat for birds and small mammals. Next time you walk by one of these knights of the water table, take a moment to observe any hollow and you may be lucky enough to spot a young raccoon as happened to me on one occasion.

From the black willow’s point of view, however, it’s the loss of small branches directly into the waterway closest at hand that is more important to its legacy than the donation of big branches or whole trunks. You see, all willows are constrained by the fact that their seeds have only a one-to-two day lifespan and, carried by wind on fine wisps of cotton, they must land in a wet and sunny spot in order to germinate and grow.

But willows have another strategy for reproduction and that is via the rooting of dropped branches. As many of you will know, when you put a willow twig in water - such as the pussy willow or corkscrew willow branches often found in floral arrangements – it roots in no time. Take that shoot, plant it and keep it well watered and you’ll soon have your own tree.

In the wild, these twigs, while being carried along the stream, develop roots and once snagged on the shoreline, they stand of chance of taking root. Should there be enough sun and space, the emissary branch will begin its life as a tree.

This habit of the willow is beneficial both to the shorelines and to the soil; the fibrous roots prevent erosion and, in agricultural lands, the black willow absorbs the herbicides and remedies the soil. In fact, the tree is one now studied for its capacity in phytoremediation of polluted soils.

On the island of Montreal, black willows are found only where there is water and plenty of space. This must have been the situation for the massive three-trunk willow growing in St-Viateur Park, in Outremont, just south of Bernard and Bloomfield avenues. This park likely dates from a century ago when the neighbouring houses were being built. Is the tree a vestige of the pre-park vegetation running alongside the now-buried Ruisseau de la montagne? It’s hard to say because willows grow very quickly and don’t generally live beyond 85 years. There are always exceptions, however, and it’s appealing to the imagination to envision this young, brookside tree, being saved by the park designers for its perfect placement on the park’s island.

island of trees: The Russian olive that isn't

2011-06-25T17:34:00.000-04:00

Russian olive trees are easily identified from afar thanks to their pale silvery leaf. This roughly 30-year-old individual grows in Troie Park at the intersection of Queen Mary and Côte-de-neiges roads, and offers shade and honey scent against the surrounding cacophony of construction. Note the four-petaled, half-centimetre wide flowers now covering the tree. The silver coloured fruit, mature in the fall, are edible but more interesting to the squirrels than us.Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Early in spring, while the leaves of trees emerge in different shades and at different paces, the palette of greens varies widely between the darkness of the Norway maple to the bright Granny Smith green of the Northern hackberry, to the chartreuse of the “sunburst” cultivar of the honey locust. As the season progresses, however, the greens darken and blend, becoming less distinctive. But there’s one greenleaf tree – as opposed to the red-burgundy leaf trees – whose colour doesn’t change from spring through fall: the Russian olive, Eleagnus augustifolia, and olivier de Bohême, in French.

Many of you will have spotted the clouds of silvery green that the Russian olive leaves alongside railroad tracks, roadsides, in parks and private gardens. First planted in the late 19^thcentury in hedges on the North American prairie to curb wind erosion of the topsoil, this native of west-central Asia rapidly naturalized and its seed was carried, inadvertently, east by trains and travellers. In the west, many consider the Russian olive an invasive species as it can outcompete other tough prairie dwellers such as the cottonwood poplar.

In the east, however, where there are many more species of native trees than in the west, the tree poses no such threat. Instead, the Russian olive tends to be appreciated for its foliage and meandering shape. Both traits resemble those of the Mediterranean olive we love, and even the fruit looks like a slim olive. In substance, however, the true olive tree, Olea europaea, which grows only in warm climes, is unrelated to its northern look-alike.

The Russian olive, also known as the oleaster and Jerusalem willow, belongs to the elaeagnaceae, or oleaster, family which includes other silver-leafed trees and bushes including the autumn olive, silverberry and sea buckthorn, all of which can tolerate extreme cold and drought, as well as salt.

Twenty years ago when we were landscaping our dime-sized front garden, Ken Taylor, founder of Green Barn Nursery on Île Perrot, recommended trees in the oleaster family for their hardiness, as well as for the pollen, nectar and fruit they offered to wildlife. True to Taylor’s claims, all three trees are thriving, and the Russian olive, while billed as a small tree, has made it to the third floor window.

Not everyone, however, is fond of this unusual tree. My neighbour complains of its ungainly shape, and its “cochonneries,” meaning the piles of dried up flowers that accumulate on her balcony and our shared stretch of sidewalk. I often think that if we applied the same standards of housekeeping to the reproductive system of our species, we would have died out centuries ago.

My neighbour does, however, have a point about the tree’s shape. Our Russian olive needs a trim. There are lots of small, dead branches, which is par for the course with this tree, and it seems to be striving simultaneously upwards and outwards, towards the sidewalk. Not surprising, given where the sun shines brightest.

Fortunately, Russian olives take very well to pruning, and the soft wood is easy to cut. A number of years ago, a neighbour cut her tree back to a single branch, and, in no time, it had made a nice compact ball. In fact, my second Russian olive – Ken Taylor was an excellent salesman! - in the backyard received a severe buzzcut this past weekend. The man with the chainsaw pruned the thick, upward growing branches, and kept the lateral-growing ones, so that the tree will soon form a wide screen against the view across the alley.

If you’re a neophyte tree-pruner, the Russian olive, ever-forgiving to the mistakes of beginners, is a great tree to start on. Just be sure to prune the branches at the axis where they leave the trunk or a main branch so that the tree can heal the wound. If you chop midway along the branch, the tree can’t form a seal over the open wood and is susceptible to disease, fungus or attack by insects.

Should you be thinking of planting a Russian olive, or any of its relatives, you might want to visit Green Barn Nursery, where Taylor also sells the “cherry” olive, Elaeagnus umbellata. This small and bushy cousin of the Russian olive produces masses of juicy, slightly sour, red fruit, which are high in anti-oxidants and vitamins, including vitamin C. Steve Leroux, Taylor’s stepson and business manager of the nursery, says it’s great hedging material as it yields fruit and attracts pollinating insects and loads of birds. Vive le paysage comestible!

For more information on Green Barn Nursery, see: greenbarnnursery.ca.

island of trees: Basswood: Biggest heart in the forest

2011-06-18T08:39:00.003-04:00

Sacred Trees of McGill University: Solstice tree walk: Monday, June 20, 6 - 8:30 pm, meet on steps of Redpath Museum, $15, register: bronwynchester@gmail.com, 514-284-7384, Limited to 20 spots.

This basswood/linden, on the right grows on du Bullion St., just south of Ste-Catherine where, at the corner, this sprawling garden, created by Sentier Urbain, offers reprieve to the heat and hard edges of downtown Montreal. Notice the asymmetry of large, heart-shaped leaves of the basswood/linden, Tilia americana, known in French, as tilleul. Illustrations: Charles L'Heuruex.

I must confess that there are times when my choice of tree for Island of Trees is – in part, at least - a pretext for bringing you to a particular spot or theme. This week, I happened to be walking home from Chinatown and inadvertently found myself beside the area cordoned off after the shootings, by police, of Patrick Limoges and Mario Hamel.

Continuing east on the south side of Ste-Catherine street, on this sunny day, I arrived at an exceptional garden. There, at the corner of du Bullion Street, stood an English garden, sprawling over small mounds and shallow valleys. The mauves, yellows, whites, pinks, reds and roses of the irises, peonies, roses, clematis, lilies, strawberries and borage emanating movement, colour, texture and perfume, softened this brittle strip of Montreal’s downtown and beckoned this weary walker in.

I looked around for a tree to write on; there was a graceful young Siberian elm growing against the brick wall of the Guérin bookstore, two cottonwoods, one of each edge of the garden, a plucky black walnut sapling – likely planted by a squirrel – a shining blue-grey sea buckthorn and a verdant highbush cranberry holding out its last trays of white flowers. Impressive all, but either I’d already written on these species or they risked being less impressive by the time you’d be reading this text.

I left the garden to walk around the perimetre. To the south, where the garden is dedicated to agriculture, I noticed a basswood tree growing in front of what appeared to be a rooming house. Men’s’ shirts were hung on hangers in the tree. “Ça vous plaît?” asked one of the men. “Trop petit,” I returned and we all laughed.

Here was my tree though never had I imagined writing about such an urban representative of this gentle giant of the maple forest. But the setting was perfect. Basswood – also known as linden, lime, tilleul, bois blanc, and beetree - is the biggest heart in the forest. Its toothed leaves are, literally heartshaped, though asymmetrical at the base. Should you be walking in the any of the island’s bits of forest, you will recognize basswood/linden by the size and shape of the leaf, the thin corduroy-like grooves in the medium grey bark of the mature tree, and by the common site of numerous shoots growing at the base of the tree. This is where the leaves are largest.

But the heart of the tree goes beyond the leaf. Name for its “bast,” the old English word also common to “basket,” the stringy fibre found immediately below the outer bark, the basswood tree was essential for native peoples of both North American and Europe (home to several species of the tree) for the making of cord, fishline and nets, woven mats, cloth and thread, long before hemp was available. The tree is at the source of the sewing term, baste, meaning to stitch together loosely.

Basswood is known for the honey scent of its ample flowers. In a few weeks time, you’ll be able to collect the flowers and their attached bracts, the long leaf-like bit, to make an herbal tea. The tree also provides the best wood for carving; Quebec’s churches are full of sculpture and decorative trim in this soft, even-grained wood.

The essence of basswood is yielding; it offers itself to be transformed. And I couldn’t help but think of what an apt symbol it was not only of this oasis-in-a-vacant-lot but of the changes needed in our approach to public security.

I also learned from Vincent Hamman Benoit, the gardener of the Pré fleuri du monarque, as this spot is called, that this is the garden’s last season. The land, lent by its owner, Guérin éditeur, since 2008 to le Sentier Urbain, an organization dedicated to urban gardening and biodiversity, will soon be developed. The plants will be moved to the organization’s five other gardens. Still, I thought, what a loss to the street. It then came to me that this garden, with its calming effect on a hard-bitten neighbourhood, ought to be preserved as a memorial to Limoges and Hamel, and the move to buy the land should be led by the police brotherhood, as a means for its members to extend a hand towards a shaken public and re-examine their role as guardians of public safety. The biggest heart in the forest would lend its blessing.

Tuliptree: flowering far from home

2011-06-11T08:33:00.000-04:00

Treewalks, today and tomorrow, 10 - noon, Mount Royal Cemetery, meet at main entrance, free.

If you look up while strolling through the McGill University campus toward the Redpath Museum, you'll see the goblet-shaped flowers of the tuliptree growing near the Three Bares sculpture to the right of the museum. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux.

Tulip season may be over but if you happen to look up while strolling through the McGill campus towards the Redpath Museum, you’ll have the opportunity to see some tree-borne tulip flowers. Admittedly, these are tulip-like flowers in colours I’ve never seen in the bulb-grown tulip: six pale yellow petals which appear to have been watercoloured with flames of orange. Shaped like a goblet, 5-cm across, the 100s of flowers on this tuliptree exude a perfume that’s more cloves than honey, and attractive to pollinators, all the same.

Beyond the unusual flowers of this tall tree, growing close to the southern edge of the Three Bares (the fountain/sculpture of the three naked men to the right of the museum), are the leaves. A quick glance, and our maple-biased vision likely says: Some sort of maple tree. Look again and you’ll notice that there is not top lobe. In fact, this shape of leaf is known only to the tuliptree genus, Liriodendron, and there are only two species in the world: one native to the Carolinian forest of eastern North America, including the southwest corner of Ontario, the other to China.

A member of the magnolia family, which explains the leather-like petals, adapted to withstand the weight of the pollinators of the Cretaceous period that had yet to evolve wings, the tuliptree is not, in fact related to the tulip plant. Both the bulb, which is native to Turkey, and the tuliptree, however, have known great popularity in Western Europe, with beginnings in Holland. Many of you will be familiar with the fortunes made and lost in the Dutch tulip trade of the 1630s. What is less known, however, is that Europe’s first tuliptree was seeded, not long after the first tulip bulbs, in 1663 in the Hortus Botanicus, in Leiden, Holland.

One of Europe’s oldest tuliptrees, planted in 1771 at Versailles for Marie-Antoinette only succumbed in 1999 in a violet windstorm. According to Wikipédia, a limited number of knives have been made from the wood.

Following the eastern white cedar and the black locust, the tuliptree was one of the earliest and most popular of North American trees exported to Europe, thanks to its great height and beauty. On its home continent, however, the tuliptree is better known as a commercial species than an ornamental. Among the tallest of all broadleaf trees, rivalling the great cottonwood poplars, the tuliptree was exploited for its finely grained lumber. Similar to the white pine in grain, lightness and floatability in water, the tuliptree was used much like the giant conifer, though on a much smaller scale. Easy to carve out, the old, wide-girthed trees of the southern Appalachian forests were hollowed out to make dug-out canoes, including Daniel Boone’s. No wonder that in the United States, the tree was better known as canoewood, yellow poplar (due to its fluttering leaves), whitewood and popple.

In Canada, there were never enough tuliptrees to make it viable commercially. Besides, at least in the 19^th century, the supply of white pine seemed infinite. But even as an ornamental, the tree seems to have been forgotten by all but a few individuals who decided to take it from the forest or the open fields, where it will also seed itself, and try it in gardens and city parks. Fortunately for Montreal, R. Darnley Gibbs, a long-time McGill botanist of the mid-20^th century, made the experiment, planting the Redpath tuliptree with the graduating class of 1949. That tree may well be the city’s oldest and is certainly the easiest to observe thanks to the fact that the observer may see the flowers at eye-level as the tree is planted in the hollow. Otherwise, given that the trees can reach 35 metres, it can be difficult to see the flowers.

I’m pleased to note that more and more tuliptrees are being planted in such places as the Mount Royal Cemetery, behind Le chapel de bon pasteur and even in city parks. As long as they’re far from salt and high traffic areas, the tree appears to adapt well to the city. If you’re considering one for your garden, you might consider the columnar, “fastigiata,” cultivar as it will produce flowers at roughly 10 years of age, while the natural Liriodendron tulipifera, may take 20 years before yielding one of its sumptuous goblets.

Island of trees: A living fossil, not far from home

2011-06-03T07:47:00.000-04:00

This dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides, métaséquoia) would appear to not want to grow up. Planted in 1949, it was one of the first ever planted on Montreal island. In its native China, this evergreen grows straight and attains heights of 40 metres. You will note the bright green, soft green needles and cones that appear to be made of interlocking wooden shapes, on this specimen, #99, as found on Chemin de la fôret, and easily located on the Mount Royal Cemetery's map of trees, available free at the main office. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Twenty years ago, I met a tree I will never forget. While it appeared to be a coniferous tree, its bright green needles were as soft as a freshly emerged oak leaf. Not more than three metres high, its graceful branches falling then turning up at the ends, the tree was an exclamation mark in this garden composed of large-flowered plants and trees. In winter, once its needles had fallen – just like the tamarack – this red and stringy-barked tree joined the ranks of the garden sculptures, fashioned from local debris. André Comeau, a painter, had planted this tree in the vacant lot he’d taken over next to his dilapidated turquoise brick house. This was back in the last years of Le Plateau, le pauvre, when artists could afford to buy the broken down houses of the once working class neighbourhood, and vacant lots were not uncommon.

Comeau left not long after we moved on to Drolet Street, his house was flattened, the empty lot cleared out, and condos went in with parking on the alley side. Not a crack of free earth was left. The dawn redwood, thankfully, was spirited away before the great paving. No doubt, Comeau took it to his next home. He must have identified the tree for me that summer of ‘91, for this was before I’d started to identify trees on my own.

As I later learned, this is a tree that had only been identified for a first time in 1943 by Chinese botanist, Zhan Wang. Until that time, the tree was known only in the fossil record from the Jurassic, more than 140 million years ago, and believed extinct. Botanists the world over were excited by the discovery in the Shui-sa valley, in Hubei and Sichuan provinces, but, with the war on, it was only in 1948, that a delegation from Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum could visit the small forest and gather seeds.

What’s extraordinary is how quickly those seeds were planted and young trees sent to all corners of the temperate world: Eurasia, North America, New Zealand, places in which ancestors of the “Chinese dawn tree,” were once native, before the break-up of the megacontinent Pangaea, 180 million years ago. By 1948, for instance, the first seeds were planted at the Montreal Botanic Garden and a number of them remain in the Alpine section.

A year later, Henry Teuscher (1891 – 1984), the landscape architect and longtime curator of the MBG, planted a young dawn redwood by the gravestone of his mentor, Ernest “the Chinese” Henry Wilson, in the Mount Royal Cemetery. This was a particularly poignant choice of tree for Wilson. Keeper of the Arnold Arboretum from 1927, Wilson is credited with collecting 2,000 plants from China, including the Chinese handkerchief tree and the regal lily. Had he not died prematurely in a car accident in 1930, the world-famous plant collector would have undoubtedly been part of the Harvard delegation to collect seeds from “the living fossil.”

Fittingly, Teuscher’s own tombstone is direct behind Wilson’s though you’ll have to push away the lower branches of the burning bush obscuring the small stone.

This corner of the cemetery, the first intersection with Chemin de la forêt as you walk south (uphill) from the main gate, is rich in Asian botany (see Lilac Knoll on the maps given free at the office). Across from the dawn redwood is a Katsura tree, another relatively recent introduction to the Montreal forest, the oldest being roughly 60 years old, and, on the other side of the chemin, an Amur cork tree smelling strongly of citrus.

Next weekend, I’ll be guiding a tour of the cemetery trees. Given that this is the International Year of Forest, I will – where possible – connect those among the dead who’ve had a strong influence on the forest, with the trees themselves. Elsie Reford, for instance, founder of Les jardins du Métis, and Frank Harris Anson, found of Abitibi Power and Paper Company, will be on the tour as will Harris, Teuscher and numerous others.

Tours are free and take place on Saturday, the 11^th, in English, and on the Sunday in French. Both run from 10 a.m. to noon and start at the main gate on Chemin de la forêt.

island of trees: The apples of our eyeland

2011-05-28T06:33:00.000-04:00

This apple on the right is the last tree in a short 'n sweet path leading through a variety of fragrant trees at St-Joseph's Oratory, directly above the gift shop. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Tree tour this morning, 10 - 12: On Sulpician Ground: The Trees of Cabot Square, Dawson College, Queen Elizabeth Park, and the Sulpician Seminary. Meet at Ecoquartier Peter McGill, 1414 Pierce St., one west of Guy, just north of Ste-Catherine. No charge.

When it comes to apple trees, we Quebecers show a distinct preference for the fruit of the tree over the flower. Every fall, we head to Oka, Mont St-Hilaire, Rougemont, Mont St-Grégoire, and Mont St-Hilaire to pick our bags of fruit. And yet, at this time of the year these same Monteregian Hills are lovely and fragrant, rimmed as they are by numerous apple orchards. Hiking or driving through the orchard lands to find one’s way into the walking trails in the forested higher sections of these mountains makes a nice transition from agricultural zone to wild zone. And yet, I’m not aware of any Festivals des fleurs depommiers to mark this time of year, our own version of theHanami celebrated in Japan when the cherry trees blossom, our Pommami.

The apple trees on Mount Royal are now sparse but there was a time when our own Monteregian hill was rimmed in apples on all but the most rocky and northerly faces. In fact, the very first apple orchards in Quebec were planted by the Sulpician order in 1660 in the area where their seminary still stands at Atwater and Sherbrooke streets. Today, only one vestige of that era remains, the orchard growing on the grounds of Villa Maria School, located behind the Villa Maria metro. The orchard may have been planted around 1804, the year the Sir James Monk family opened moved into their new home, ‘Monklands.’ I’ve had a peak at them one year when the gates were open because it was a school day but, in general, these trees aren’t easily seen.
Not far from this site, however – at least, as the crow flies - is a hidden away apple tree that is, nonetheless, on land that is imminently accessible to the public: St-Joseph’s Oratory. Like all apples, it is now heavy with white blossoms and a few dark pink flower buds, yet to open. Each flower has five petals and five sepals, the pointed star-like structure supporting the petals from beneath which is also visible, later on, in the base of the fruit. All members of the rose family, rosaceae, from the tiniest wild strawberry to the towering black cherry, exhibit this structure of flower. Crabapples too, now also in bloom, exhibit similar flowers though in a far wider range of colour, from an almost white through to a deep fuchsia pink. Apple and crabapple, distinct from one another only by the size of their fruit, share the genus, Malus, meaning melon in Greek.

Back to the sweet-fruited apple of the Oratory. If you’re up for a climb, take the main steps up then walk along the road that passes in between the church and the gift shop/cafeteria. (You can also take the free shuttle bus up the hill). As you follow the cliff on your left, you’ll see the white blossoms of both self-seeded apple trees and choke cherries. At the end of the cliff, roughly 20 metres, you’ll see a sign for “Salle Pichette, niveau 156,” and the beginning of a delightful path which takes you under an arbour and back towards the Oratory. Starting with a mass of roses, then winding through lindens, black locusts and honey suckle, this will be a fragrant passage for some time to come.

After passing le chêne des bénévoles, an English oak planted 10 years ago to thank the volunteers at the Oratory, and continuing past a bright red Japanese maple, this short and peaceful trail winds up in a mass of white petals, our apple. Have a look at how the leaves and flowers are positioned on the twig, and how the fruit begins. Charles L’Heureux, who illustrates this column and knows the trees of the Oratory grounds like the back of his hand, assures me that the pale green apple produced by this tree is sweet and blemish free.

Was this tree planted or did it seed itself from an old member of one of the many Côte-des-neiges orchards that covered much of this face of the mountain as recently as 1950? It’s hard to say. But if it is self-seeded we’re lucky for most apple trees grown from seed produce small, sour fruit, like the crabapple, reverting to their original wild state, as found in their ancient homeland of Kazakhstan.

However, surprise apples, both sweet and big, occur regularly in the world of Pomme, and when they do, farmers and, before them, the monks of Europe and China, seize the genetic material, in the form of twigs or buds, to graft onto another apple or crabapple tree, to keep the sweet fruit going. That’s why we still have the McIntosh, 200 years after Ontario farmer John McIntosh found the firm red apple in his field, along with 7,000 other species of apple from around the temperate world.

island of trees: Magnolia the magnificent

2011-05-21T07:29:00.000-04:00

The pink of this magnolia is in perfect contrast to the grey stones of this 19th century house on Laurier East, between De Gaspé and Casgrain streets. Just around the corner, on the east side of Hôtel-de-ville, south of Laurier, you will find a red elder growing in front of a modern apartment building. Congratulations to the landscape architect of the era, roughly 20 years ago, for planting this often forgotten tree. The 100s of tiny flowers in each pyramidal cluster of elder flowers are just emerging in white from their purplish buds and are in stark contrast to the enormous, single, magnolia flowers. illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

They are undoubtedly the most flamboyant flowerers of spring. Their flowers are the biggest of any in North America save the water lily. Ranging from the pale pink of the commonly planted saucer magnolia and the early white of the star magnolia, to the delicate yellow of the ‘Elizabeth’ (named after Elizabeth Scholtz, former director of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden where the hybrid was created), to the popsicle grape of the ‘touch of class’, the magnolia family of trees can only be described as magnificent.

In our cold climate, the magnolia flowers appear in spring like a tropical apparition, a pastel oasis. But this ancient tree of the cretaceous, among the first of the flowering trees, 60 million years ago, is not a tropical tree but a tree of the southern temperate forest. Surprising as it may seem, there are two species among the eight native to North America that grow in Canada, the cucumber tree and the tulip tree. I’ll come back to these when they’re in flower as there are good representatives of each species on the island or not far off.

The saucer magnolia, Magnolia x soulangiana, on the other hand has its roots both in China and in France. Etienne Soulange-Bodin (1774-1846), botanist, physician and retired cavalry officer in Napoleon’s army became, in retirement, an enterprising horticulturist. At his chateau near Paris, he created a botanical garden to rival Britain’s Kew Gardens, L’Institut d’horticulture de Fromont, and, according to Wikepedia, “assembled every new vegetable he could find.” One of his creations was a hybrid between two Chinese magnolias, the liliflora and the Yulan, or lily tree. So successful was his flower-abundant 1820 “Soulangiana” that the new tree rapidly entered cultivation in Europe and North America.

I’m not sure when the first saucer magnolia was planted in North America but one of the oldest on the island of Montreal may be seen just inside the entrance to the Morgan estate on Senneville Road, on the western tip of the island. At a diametre of roughly one metre, this century-old tree is the parent of the also impressive saucer magnolia found in Blossom Corner of the Morgan Arboretum. If you get out to the arboretum this weekend, you will catch the magnolia in bloom along with the last blooms of three old pear trees, and the early blossoms of the apples. All of these trees were planted in the late ‘50s when Blossom Corner was created.

While the saucer magnolia likes moist, rich soil in a sheltered setting, it also does remarkably well in urban settings. The one illustrated here, for instance, has withstood salt spray and atmospheric pollution for the roughly 25 years it has stood on Laurier Avenue, a busy street. A glance at the garden both in front and behind this house, however, and one is reassured that the tree is in caring hands.

This is a highly satisfying tree to grow. My own saucer magnolia, planted 17 years ago almost to the day on the event of my second son’s birth, flowers faithfully each spring, event producing a small second blooming in August. I have, however, seen a few well-established magnolias blacken and die so it would be worth while asking your nursery or the Botanical Garden of Montreal, whether there are precautions to take in the location and care of the tree.

While the name magnolia suggests size and magnificence, its origins, in fact are in a man that travelled neither to Asia, where the vast majority of the world’s 80 species of magnolia grow, nor to the Americas. Pierre Magnol (1638 -1715), Director of the Montpellier Botanic Garden, on the other hand, was so respected as a botanist and physician (the two went hand in hand in those days) that his contemporary, Father Charles Plumier, named the magnolia he saw in Martinique in 1703, after him.

In tomorrow’s walk on Mount Royal, we will see no magnolias but we will see the red elder of last week’s column and if any of you have difficulty finding the elder growing in the oak, I’ll be able to point it out to you. We meet at the George-Etienne Cartier monument (the angel), on Park Avenue at the foot of Mont Royal at 2 pm. The walk is free but please register at bronwynchester@gmail.com.

island of trees: The flute, the forest and the elder

2011-05-14T02:46:00.000-04:00

You won't miss this red elder growing from a hollow in an old red oak as it's the only oak on this path sporting bright green leaves. All the others oaks are still naked, as their buds have yet to open. This host oak is located, just in from Camillien-Houde Drive in Mount Royal Park. Beginning at the look-out/parking lot, which overlooks the east side of Montreal, walk along the rough path inside the guard rail for roughly 200 paces. There, you will arrive at a dirt road, heading into the park, closed off by a chain. Turn onto this road, past the first red oak (it will be the biggest tree, with the deeply grooved charcoal bark), until you get to the second oak. Here's where you'll find the elder. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Forests for People. That’s the slogan of this International Year of Forests. Seems to me that forests have always been for people. That’s where we’ve found food, shelter, shade, protection, transportation, fibre, fuel, tools, chemicals, building materials, bounce, waterproofing, recreation, and inspiration for creation.

I would have thought People for Forests might have made more sense, given the precarious state of many of the world’s forests.

And yet, there’s something I like in Forests for People, something that responds to the crying need for many of us to recognize that our forest is for us – not for us, alone, to be sure, but for us nonetheless.

When I say recognize, I mean that in both senses of the term: we need to acknowledge and appreciate the innumerable services and pleasures afforded by our silent neighbours; we also need to be able to identify, name and know our great partners on Earth. (Remember, while we may be top dog of the animal kingdom; trees rule the plant kingdom.)

Why? Because if we don’t know our fellow members of the forest, we don’t know where we live, on what ground we dwell. We are lost and, consequently, insecure.

So, I say, yes to Forests for People but with the amendment: Forests for Teaching People. And I have just the teacher for the task. His/her name is Sambucus racemosa and s/he lives in the fork of the second great red oak you meet, when you descend the first official path leaving Camillien-Houde Drive, downhill from the look-out parking lot on Mount Royal.

You’ll recognize the oak because of the flourish of bright green compound leaves half way up the trunk on the otherwise leafless tree. Now, go to the front of the tree to meet Sam (also known as red elder or sureau rouge).

Note the ash-like leaf of the elder and the pyramidal shape of the cluster of flowerbuds which will shortly bloom in white. In mid-summer, the bright red berry-like fruit emerge.

Likely deposited by a squirrel into its leaf-stuffed drey (oaks are favourites for mountain squirrels), the seed that gave rise to Sam must have found the perfect combination of humus and cool humidity that this early-flowering elder likes. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear Sam’s flute, telling you which trails to follow for a 20-minute introduction to his forest. (In Europe and North Africa, where some of Sam’s relatives live, flutes are made from the easily hollowed out twigs.)

First, however, take a moment to admire Sam’s flock: white trilliums, false Solomon’s seal, looking a bit like small wind generators, the yellow flowers and mottled leaves of the trout lily, and the bright green, shamrock-like leaves of early meadow rue. The chartreuse colour in the skies emanates from the tassel-like flowers of the old sugar maples, while the young ones are fledging their reddish-green leaves.

Take the path immediately to Sam’s left, then the first left after that. You’ll see the big, oddly lobed leaves of the bloodroot, whose flowers are largely finished, and the tulip-shaped leaves of the purple cohosh. Continue on the gradual downhill and you’ll see a very droopy yellow flower on your right. This is the large-flowered bellwort and there are very few of them on Mount Royal. Take a close look at how the flower stalk seems to have pierced its own leaf.

Now, turn right at the next intersection and walk down the small path towards an old stump and green wire enclosure. Many of the May apples, with their single round leaf, have escaped their sanctuary and you may find some flower buds under the leaf.

That’s it. Sam’s stopped playing and you have only to follow this wide path back up hill to come full circle and get back to the #11 bus stop. If by chance, you’d like more visual information on the spring forest, I highly recommend the book, Arbres et plantes forestières du Québec et des Maritimes by Michel Leboeuf. Compact and inexpensive, it provides the libretto to Sam’s tune.

When you’re the island and the trees are the water

2011-05-07T10:23:00.000-04:00

At a circumference of almost three metres, this London plane-tree is among Quebec's biggest. You'll find it at the corner of Queen Mary and Hampstead Roads on the grounds of the house once owned by Jack Vincelli, founder of the Montreal West nursery of the same name. Due to its maple-like leaf, the London-plane may be mistaken for a maple, but its leaves grow alternately on the branch, as opposed to oppositely, like all maples. In addition, the London plane's bark is like no other, peeling in different coloured bark when young, then bleaching into a rough ash-like bark. Illusrations by Charles L'Heureux.

Life sometimes throws a curve ball and mine landed me this week at Hôtel Dieu Hospital. Fortunately for me, my room, in the Pavilion Royer has a direct view on the little stone chapel that stands in the middle of this 19^th century walled garden. Beyond the wall, the coloured husks of cars slide up and down on the wet sheen of Park Avenue.

For many of us, the garden hidden behind the seven-metre high stone wall is a mystery. True, we can see the tops of the row of old Norway spruce, leading up the chapel and from far, the green spherical flowers of the Norway maple are colouring this grey Wednesday sky.

I have walked in this garden before. For the past few summers, Le musée des hopitalières de St-Joseph has opened the doors to the secret garden and for an hour or so, one gets to see the mountain, the traffic, and the airborne volleyballs from the sanctity of what was once a working garden. In the early years of Hotel Dieu, there were numerous kitchen gardens and apple orchards supplying the hospital kitchens.

Now, the gardens are largely decorative although the few vegetables still cultivated no doubt end up in the meals cooked for the remaining nuns, in their residence off Pine Avenue and for the guests of the auberge, run by the nuns, for people wanting to be close to loved ones in hospital.

I love the mixture of fresh spring green and the grey of stone. Perhaps it’s the fulfilment of the expectation that old stone buildings stand forever and green returns each spring to lap at their shores. I was very moved by Kate Middleton’s decision to place six field maples and two hornbeams along the grey stone isles of Westminster Abbey – especially by the fact that the trees were in no way decorated. The trees were themselves the decorations.

Field maple, Acer campestris, is Britain’s only native maple. A small tree, it was planted traditionally in hedgerows, where it supported vines. Once the grapes were fully formed, the leaves would be picked, to allow the grapes to ripen, and fed to animals. The mailp - maple in Old Gaelic - is symbolic of fertility and love.

Hornbeam, on the other hand, Carpinus betulus, or charme, in French is symbol of seduction. It would seem that the Hornbeam, a small tree in the birch family of extremely hard wood (whose North American version is known as musclewood or American hornbeam) has already done its job.

Britons love their trees – or, shall I say, they love the trees they have appropriated. Because of the paucity of native trees in Great Britain, due to the ravages of the last Ice Age and the early exploitation of the wildwood for both fuel, construction and building the navy, the British Empire was one of the first to import trees from the colonies. From North American came the white pine, red oak, sitka spruce, red oak, Eastern white cedar, black locust, catalpa, honey locust and Douglas fir. Most started life in the Imperial motherland in various botanic gardens. The North American sycamore, for instance, Platanus occidentalis, was planted in the Oxford Botanic Garden, close to the Eastern plane tree, Platanus orientalis. In a botanical twist of fate, the two trees produced a fertile hybrid, Platanus – acerifolia (P. occidentalis x P. orientalis), which most of us know as the London plane-tree, that immense tree found in London parks, sporting what look to be oversized maple leaves, and peeling bark.

Because of the tree’s capacity to shed, it is well adapted to pollution – even the coal soot of the 19^th century - as it simply drops its bark once the oxygen pores, known as lenticels, are clogged. The London plane-tree is by far Europe’s most common street tree and we often see it pruned down to the trunk in order to create a ball shape. There aren’t many in Montreal though you’ll find a good collection just south of the Tree House at the Montreal Botanic Garden, as well as one young one on the McGill campus, in front of the architecture building. The 70-year-old specimen illustrated is by far Montreal’s biggest and was planted by late JackVincelli, the founder of the Jack Vincelli Nursery and Garden Center.

island of trees: The Black walnut and the meaning of May

2011-04-30T07:49:00.000-04:00

Tree walk next Saturday:
The Piedmont of Mont Royal, the trees and flowers of spring, guided walk, May 7, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., reservations required ($15): 514 284-7384
Meet at George-Étienne Cartier monument. (The angel on Park Avenue)

If you walk along this path in the Boisé Brébeuf (behind the Collège Brébeuf, corner Côte Ste-Catherine Rd. and Descelles Ave.), toward the HEC building, look on the ground for the 100s of walnut shells pierced by squirrels. The walnut trees, on the right, will soon produce their long pollen catkins as well as small, reddish-yellow seed/female flower, all on the same tree. If you've got a black walnut nearby, watch the unfurling of its 40-cm long, compound leaves. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Tomorrow is May 1, first day of Quebec’s Le mois de l’arbre et des forêts, and if there’s one tree to symbolize that event it would have to be the black walnut. Curious choice, you might say, given that the tree is not native to Quebec. But the fact is that this expansive, fruitful and long-lived tree has been naturalized here since it was introduced in the 1880s . And it’s the person who seeded it to the Quebec City region who also seeded Le mois d l’arbre, back in 1883, when it was known as La fête de l’arbre.

At that time, Henri -Gustave Joly de Lotbinière was leader of the provincial opposition. On the family land, southwest of Quebec, on the shores of the St-Lawrence River, de Lotbinière planted 10,000 walnuts - noyers noirs - from seed. Where he got the seed, I’m not sure but being the well-connected Anglican that he was, he may have collected the nuts from the grounds of the Anglican churches of southern Ontario, where the tree grows naturally until roughly Belleville.

Today, 100 of those trees still stand in what is the largest collection of black walnut in the province. I’ve never been to the Domaine Joly De Lotbinière but it must be stunning in the fall when the long multi-leaflet leaves of these 20-30-metre trees - almost as wide as they are tall - are golden. In Montreal, you’ll find black walnuts, Juglans nigra, of the same age growing on the McGill University campus, one in the dell beside the Redpath Museum, one close to the Sherbrooke Street fence, just west of the Roddick Gates.

When you find an old one in the woods, it’s usually a sign of a 19^th century Protestant landholding. Protestants were big on black walnut, as a symbol of solidity and longevity, and a reminder of the English walnut, Juglans regia, back home. The wood was also valuable and the nuts delicious, once extracted from the tough-as-nails shell. So, when Charles L’Heureux, who illustrates this column, introduced me to the row of old walnuts in Boisé Brébeuf, I wasn’t surprised to learn that prior to the purchase of the land in 1909, for the purpose of constructing a Jesuit college, these woods were part of the Leslie farm, established in the 1860s when Côte-de-Neiges village was incorporated.

What’s fantastic about this forest remnant is that it shows elements of both the original forest, and the landscaping done presumably by the Leslie family. So, amidst the old and craggy sugar maples, black cherry, bitternut hickory, white ash and some of the biggest ironwoods I’ve ever seen, is a row of 130-year old black walnuts, planted alternately with catalpas.

Best of all are the understory plants. Walking into these woods, tucked behind the Collège Brébeuf, we didn’t know where to put our feet. Once your eyes are attuned to all the vegetation pushing up from beneath the leaf litter, the trilliums, trout lilies and bloodroot seem to be everywhere. The latter, whose white petals were still closed into small white eggs, looked like grey-cloaked pilgrims on their way to worship.

When Joly de Lotbinière introduced the bill to create a provincial holiday to celebrate trees, he hoped to encourage the citizenry to take care of such wooded legacies. Every May, from 1883 till the end of the 1970s, La Fête des arbres/Arbour Day, was marked by the planting of trees by school children, neighbourhood festivals, including dancing around the May pole, and displays of kids tree-related art in the Eaton’s window.

Then the fête died out, to be replaced by La semaine des arbres and, today, Le mois de l’arbre et des forêts. In Montreal, we celebrate Le mois du Mont-Royal, which is launched tomorrow with the annual corvé, where citizens plant trees and clean up the forest. There are numerous other events throughout the month including a walk through the spring flowers, which I am guiding next Saturday. Wherever you celebrate Le mois de l’arbre, just remember to mind your feet.

Other good locations for walnuts:

1. McGill University Campus: LadyMeredith House

At the corner of McTavish and Peel, you'll find several old walnuts, some on Peel, some on Pine.

2. Mount Royal Park, Peel Entrance and Smith House

Right across the street from Lady Meredith House are several black walnuts, planted by the City of Montreal. In addition, just beyond the main entrance to the Smith House, on the top of Mount Royal (where the café and interpretation centre are) is a grove of walnuts planted by the City.

3. Carmelitedes possibles (corner Henri-Julien and the CP tracks)

Behind the 10-metre high stone wall running along the Henri-Julien side of the Carmelite Monastery, stands an enormous walnut tree. Over the years, squirrels have carried over many nuts and planted them along the periphery of the old Canadian Pacific trainyard, across the street. Today the CP yard is called Le champ des possibles and a natural, post-industrial ecological zone, full of all sorts of interesting plants and trees, that have found niches for themselves in the relatively polluted soils. The most spectacular of the walnuts grows against the red brick wall of an old factory building running along the north side of the tracks. You'll find it in between two columnar English oaks, planted by the City.

island of trees: "Sing better with slippery elm"

2011-04-23T06:15:00.000-04:00

Mixed in with some birch and American elm, stands a lone red elm next to the sprung creek running North on Mount Royal from the McGill University residences. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

I claim no credit for this headline. It was written more than 160 years ago by the ad man hired by Henry Thayer & Company of Cambridge Massachusetts to promote cough lozenges manufactured from the inner bark of the slippery elm. This tree was plentiful at the time, in eastern North America, from southern Ontario and Quebec, south to west Texas. Now, however, due to overharvesting and the ravages of Dutch elm disease, it’s a rare species.

So, I considered myself lucky to have stumbled upon a slippery elm during a walk this week on Mount Royal. Descending the stairs from Olmsted Road, passing by the Royal Victoria Hospital parking lots and the McGill residences, I decided to follow the spring creek where it veers to the north alongside a path leading down to the George-Etienne Cartier monument.

The burble of the brook in spring was compelling. So was the vegetation in and around the small shoals that develop in the thaw waters. I’m accustomed to checking this sight for coltsfoot, a first flower of spring that resembles the dandelion. But what was this tree with the large, round and reddish buds arching over the creek? Linden or basswood seemed a possibility but these buds were far too furry.

Later, after sifting through Trees in Canada, I identified the elm. I also learned that both slippery elm and coltsfoot share not only an affinity for spring’s floodplain; both offer remedies for sore throats. Coltsfoot, Tussilago farfara, was brought over by European settlers because of its use in remedying colds and coughs. Tussilago is from the Latin, tussis, meaning cough, like the French, toux. (The coltsfoot has to do with the shape of the giant, dark green leaves that emerge after the flower.)

Slippery elm has the furriest buds and

roughest leaf of all local elms.

In the New World, meanwhile, the dried inner bark of slippery elm was being used by the Iroquois nations and the Algonquians. Slippery, when mixed with water, this mucilaginous flour, made from pounding the inner bark into a powder, works to sooth mucous membranes from the lining of our gut to the throat and nose.. High in starch, B vitamins, mucilage, the slippery substance attached to the fibre, and with a good measure of protein, slippery elm bark was listed in the United States Pharmacopoeia from 1820 to 1936. It was also a source of nutrition in tough times.

George Washington is reputed for having used slippery elm poultice to treat the gunshot wounds of his soldiers during the American Revolution. Iroquois women drank ahkaratsi (pronounced a gàr atsi) tea in the last days of pregnancy to facilitate childbirth. I clipped a twig of this week’s tree, slipped off the outer bark and chewed on the inner, which was sweet. In fact, I’ve been using slippery elm powder this week to calm a recurrent case of heartburn. It’s definitely soothing and pleasant to the taste. A spoonful mixed with water to form a paste tastes much like certain baby cereals.

Given the scarcity of the tree, you may be wondering if it’s wise to collect the bark. It turns out that La clef des champs, the herb company in Val David that supplies many Quebec health food stores with medicinal herbs, gets their powder from Washington. So, while Ulmus rubra (red elm is another name) is not native to the West Coast, it is cultivated there as it is in China. Sadly – for us, at least – the tree likely does much better in these two regions which have not been affected by Dutch elm disease.

For us, here in Montreal, there are few to see. The Botanical Gardens have only small ones and the Morgan Arboretum is not certain to have any. How today’s tree got to be where it is I’m not sure. I combed the surrounding woods but could find no parent tree. Elm seeds, however, can travel far by wind or water, carried in their paper-like envelopes, or samaras, so it’s quite likely there’s another slippery elm, higher up the mountain.

Today’s tree is a good specimen to observe because the branches are low and you can easily reach the buds. Two American elms grow closely and, if you sit down on the bench by the brook and look up, you’ll see how their buds have already opened into spider-like flowers, while the slippery elm buds are still closed. Take a minute and sing a song for Earth Day. On second thought, don’t. Listen instead to the Earth’s own songs.

island of trees: A tom cat of a pussy willow

2011-04-16T08:19:00.002-04:00

Thick with furry buds, this pussy willow grows through the southwest corner of the fence surrounding the houses in the St-Urbain Street Cooperative, running south on St-Urbain from Duluth Street. The island of green of the shared gardens sits in the parking lot of Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. Beyond is the walled garden of Les soeurs hospitalières de St-Joseph, and beyond and, in the distance, Mount Royal. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Pussywillows, cat-tails, soft winds and roses

Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian singer-songwriter, 1968

While Lightfoot was singing the softness and perfume of the Canadian landscape, thousands of people from all over the world, were getting a concentrated dose of that same landscape while meandering the grounds of Expo ’67. One of those was Garth Gilker, then a 17-year-old, driving the trolley train, “La Ballade.” As he ferried people to the various sites, Gilker observed the numerous plantations of native plants, designed specifically to represent the different ecosystems of this country and was impressed by the power of landscaping to create a sense of shelter, belonging and beauty.

A few years later, Gilker used those lessons to landscape the vacant lot behind the apartment he rented, in hopes of saving his triplex and the row of dilapidated triplexes to the south, all slated for demolition. “I said to myself: ‘I’ll make a garden, then let them try to take it away,’” he mused, earlier this week, overlooking the cedars, now 35 years old, that are central to the garden.

Gilker transformed the garbage-filled empty lot behind a plumbing store that had stood for years at the southwest corner of Duluth and St-Urbain streets into what, today, many of us know as the Santropol Café terrace. Once he’d convinced les Soeurs hospitalières de St-Joseph, owners of the buildings, not to sacrifice housing for parking spaces, he set to landscaping behind the entire row. Favouring native species, Gilker chose a pussywillow to replace an old silver maple that had to come down in the southwest corner of land behind the most southerly of the triplexes.

“I had fond memories of pussywillows from my childhood in the Gaspé and I thought, pussy willows are bushes. They won’t get too big,” recalls Gilker.

But, as is obvious from where the fence has been cut away to accommodate the substantial main branches of this tree, pussy willows too become trees. Standing in the parking lot, you can observe the 100s of soft and furry silver pads of this surprising tree – surprising not only because of its size but because of its location.

The fur insulated the ripening stamins of the male flower (bottom) will soon yield the bright yellow pollen-clad anthers. The female catkin (top) is slightly whiter and longer than the male.

I wrote last week about the difficulty of finding pussywillow in the city because of its need of a source of constant moisture. Why then, would this tree thrive on the fringe of a parking lot? As Gilker and other members of the St-Urbain Housing Cooperative discovered 30 years ago when they found water gushing from a fractured clay culvert, an old stream passed directly below.

Willows and poplars, fellow members of the Salicacea family, are often indicators of underground water. In front of the cooperative, for instance, is a massive cottonwood poplar. Both willows and poplar are dioecious, the sexes occur on separate trees and rely mostly on the wind for pollination. However, the pussy willow, Salix discolore, and saule discolore, in French, has fragrant pollen which serves as the earliest food to waking bees, and other pollinators. So, a degree of pollination among pussy willows is assisted by insects.

Since cutting a few twigs of pussy willow, which I found two weeks ago growing alongside the road leading to the Heritage sector of La pointe-aux-prairies nature park, the silken hairs insulating the flower parts have yielded to bright yellow stamens. Having placed a few twigs of pussywillow, another type of willow I’ve yet to identify, and a full bouquet of silver maple branches in a vase, I’ve had the great pleasure of watching them evolve. The male maple flowers have developed their numerous tassel-like filaments, each topped by a small, nubby anther in which the pollen is produced. Meanwhile, the mustard yellow scales covering the buds of the other species of willow - incurved like sharp and narrow fingernails - are yielding leaves.

The many species of willow comprise a colourful genus, both in the literal sense – wispy branches ranging from pale yellow, to dark orange, and even red – and in their capacity to supply food and shelter for numerous species of bird, mammal and insects. We may complain about Montreal’s leaky water works, but I’m inclined to think the escaped water does not only go to waste, it goes to willow – at least the few we permit in the city!

island of trees: Quicksilver in our midst

2011-04-09T08:26:00.008-04:00

One of the island's oldest silver maples at the Pointe-aux-prairies Nature Park, on the eastern tip of Montreal island. Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux

There are two trees that merit the quicksilver award for being first to flower in the spring: the pussy willow and the silver maple. Like the alchemist’s quicksilver, an early name for mercury, both of these trees are quick to respond to rising temperatures. Only one, however, is easily found. Pussywillows, like all willows, need moisture. To find them, you have to get to the margins of the island where there are still creeks, wetlands or drainage ditches.

Silver maple, on the other hand, is one of the most commonly found trees on island Montreal, both in street and parks and in the floodlands of our remaining creeks and lowlands. Whether you know the tree or not, you’ve probably noticed the bulbous red buds growing at the ends of its branches. When you find such buds, follow the path through the enlarging branches all the way down to the great trunk, which is grey and possibly showing a little red beneath its shaggy bark. If it’s not too wet, lie down beneath the tree to appreciate the beauty of the buds against a blue sky. I did this last Saturday while walking in the Mount Royal Cemetery. There, close to the road leading up the funeral complex, are two enormous silver maples (one of which is labelled!), long-time witnesses to the pond that once covered this area before it was drained to make way for the construction of the tunnel for the train between downtown Montreal and the Town of Mount Royal.

As I took in the view, I noticed something swinging way up high. Oops, no two large things, one in the tops of each centenarian. Squirrels, unusually quiet, working away on the twigs. Ah, so this what I’d read about. These resourceful canopy dwellers were nibbling away on the twigs to get at the sap. In a few days, they’ll to the same spot to eat the sugar, after the sun has evaporated the water. According to Iroquois legend, a boy observed squirrels licking the twigs of the maple and tried the same. The rest, as we know, is sweet history.

Half as sweet as the sugar maple - though, reputedly, of a “finer grade,” according to 19^th century American botanist, François Michaux - the silver maple is less exploited than the sugar. In part, that’s because it doesn’t grow in the same numbers. It’s also because it’s a floodplain tree and has its roots in water in the spring. Mario Bonenfant, who taps silver maples every spring for his Érablière urbaine in the St-Laurent borough, sent me photos of men in hipwaders, zipping from tree to tree in an outboard motorboat, emptying the buckets attached to a grove of silver maples somewhere in the Lac St-Pierre area. Quite a contrast to our vision of the sugarbush!

1. Pale green-yellow male flowers 2. Female flowers red and raggedy, in appearance. Both flowers usually present on the same tree. After pollination by the wind, maple keys (fruit) grow rapidly and fall to ground roughly as leaves are unfolding.

Having lived much of my 30 years in Montreal in the shade of a silver maple, I’ve long been curious about the tree in its natural habitat. So, last Monday in the pouring rain, Charles (the illustrator) and I set out to the Pointe-aux-prairies Nature Park, at the most easterly point of the island, home to one of the oldest silver maples on the island. Leaving the interpretation centre at the Bois-de-l’Héritage sector (reached from Sherbrooke St.), and following the path over the bridge, then to the left, there was no doubt that we’d found our tree. Massive, with at least 10 major branches, leaving from the main trunk at a height of roughly two metres, the tree displayed its classic shape. (In the city, the lower branches are trimmed before being planted.)

And true to form, two major branches had fallen, exposing rotting wood down a length of the trunk and a great hollow in the centre, just the place for a squirrel or racoon to make its nest. In a month’s time, the red female flowers now opening will have developed the masses of heavy fruit, or helicopters, typical of the tree and we’ll hear them clacking down onto the pavement – all before the leaves have fully emerged! True to its nature, the silvermaple has to release its fruit early enough in the spring so that the floodwaters are still high enough to carry its seed far and wide. Only then, will we get a view of the silver-backed leaves that give this tree its name.

island of trees: Joyce Park and the Japanese Tamarack

2011-04-02T08:42:00.003-04:00

Note the widespreading branches of this Japanese larch in Joyce Park, Outremont, at the corner of Bernard Street and Rockland Road. Last year's cones are open and woody, while this spring's new cones will be red and flowerlike, and appear at the same time as the bundles of leaves sprouting from the knobby spurs on the twig.Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux

One of the great things about writing this column is the opportunity it offers to connect to Montreal’s history. Best of all is when I’m able to find an elder Montrealer whose got stories to share. André Girard is just such a person. Past president of the Société d’histoire d’Outremont, Girard lives a stone’s throw from Joyce Park, home to an usual mixture of trees, including the Japanese larch.

Leaving his home on Kelvin Street and walking downhill towards the park, Girard points to the S in the road leading toward Côte Ste-Catherine Road. “This is where Alfred Joyce’s house stood before these roads existed,” he points and I later find an archival photo of a massive Elizabethan style house (see my blog) that once overlooked the park. Built in 1830 by fur merchant, John Clarke, the house was bought in 1883 by Joyce, a one-time mayor of Outremont who ran a chocolate import business, then located next to Burke’s Jewellers in Phillips Square.

Looking north from Rockland, a view of Beaver Lodge, as Alfred Joyce's house was named by the original owner John Clarke. The house was demolished in 1937. See this link for a close photo showing the location of the ginkgos as young trees.
The only remnant of the estate buildings is the old coach house, now the tennis club. However, there are numerous remnants of the arboretum Joyce created on his land. Walking into the park from Bernard and Rockland streets, you will see two lines (one more intact than the other, I’ll admit) of old sugar maples inside of which was likely the road leading to the stables and coach house and further up hill to Joyce’s house. At the top of the line are two of the city’s oldest ginkgos, a male and a female.

The maples look to be at least 150 years old and likely date from Clarke’s time. The ginkgos, however, were planted by Joyce who was particularly interested in trees from Asia and had the good fortune of having a missionary brother in China who sent him seeds and plants. Girard says that numerous other ginkgos in Outrement were started for the seeds of Joyce’s female tree.

Other Asian trees likely planted by Joyce include the numerous Japanese yews growing on “la montagne sacrée” as Girard’s granddaughter calls the rocky hill in the centre of the park, an old Japanese lilac tree, and three Japanese larches.

Leafless, yet bearing cones, you might take the larches to be dead, given that conifers are usually evergreen. But the larch is the exception that proves the rule: conifers aren’t always evergreen. Growing perfectly straight, their long and drooping branches casting a wispy burnished colour in the sky, these trees are clearly a source of food for squirrels and material for nest-building. The ground below is littered with nibbled off twigs, heavy with the 3-cm long rounded cones that have at their centre what resembles a tiny, wooden rose, which is characteristic of the Larix genus, including our own tamarack or Eastern larch.

One of the reasons I’m suggesting you pay attention to the larch is so that you observe it as awakens in spring. Japanese larches, Larix Kaempferi, mélèze du Japon, in French, are among the most common in Montreal parks. But whether your closest larch is Japanese, European or native is unimportant for they all have particular traits not seen in other conifers. And the fact that they are leafless in spring, allows us to witness the process of leafing and the emergence of the cones far more easily than in an evergreen conifer.

Take the spurs, the stubby leaf buds on the twig from which clusters of at least 30 tender green, flat needles will emerge in late April. No other local evergreen has this structure. While these small explosions of green are spectacular, the red seed cones (female) to emerge from the centre of the needle cluster are sublime. The scales of these upright cones remain open until the wind has deposited the pollen from the smaller, flimsy male cones, growing on the same branch.

André Girard remembers when the trees in Joyce Park were labelled with plaques attached by gold chains. None of these remain but the borough of Outremont has planted a few nameplates in the ground. The larch have yet to be labelled but its peculiar traits are enough to spell its name, all by itself.

island of trees: The prickliest spruce in Colorado

2011-03-25T23:06:00.000-04:00

Aside from having the prickliest needles of all local spruce trees, the Colorado "blue" spruce, is also remarkable for the pale, golden brown colour of its 10-cm long cones, which may be seen in the upper branches Also, the tip of each scale in the cone, is forked into twin peaks, reminding us of the tree's Rocky Mountain homeland. The Colorado spruce of Pratt Park, in Outremont, make it clear that some of their species are bluer than others. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Blue spruce is the spruce we know. It’s the blue conifer that grows tall and full in front of many a home built in the 1950s and ‘60s. Some of them have outgrown their settings and you can sense both tree and house are in competition for light and space. And, these stiff and upright conifers don’t take kindly to being pruned. In fact, they lose their identity altogether for the essence of the blue spruce is its plush and regal, symmetrical bearing.

I have to admit that I like my blues in groups and not too close to houses and that’s just how they grow in Pratt Park. The numerous groupings of blue spruce were laden with snow last Monday, but when I bent down to pick up a cone beneath one of the trees, I could hear what sounded like rain. Odd, as the sun was shining.

Once close to the branch, I realized that it was only snow melting from the tree’s densely needled and highly prickly branches. The snow had become its own private raincloud.

What’s charming about the location of the two main groves of Picea pungens (picea, the genus of all spruces, means pitch or resin, in Latin, while the species name, pungens, piercing), is the nod to the tree’s natural mountain habitat, albeit in the southern Rockies. The higher grouping is at the edge of the upper pond, at the foot of a small cliff, where Mount Royal rock is exposed. It’s hard to say whether, the cliff is a vestige of a quarry on the farmland, once owned by John Pratt (1812-1876), of the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company (which became Canada Steamship Lines), or if was created through dynamiting either for the golf course that occupied this land from 1902 to 1921, or for the park, created in 1931.

In either case, the spires of these spruce, which would be at least 80 years old, have certainly witnessed great change in the park. In their early years, they would have heard the screeches of children sailing down the toboggan run - built in the 30s in the style of Quebec City’s structure on the Dufresne Terrace – towards Van Horne. They would also have witnessed the planting of an oak and a maple on May 12, 1937, when George VI was crowned. I have to admit I didn’t find his oak, and I’m not sure which of the maples, among the silvers and Norways, was for Queen Elizabeth.

All the pomp and circumstance of Pratt Park suits the ornamental side of our tree. Prior to 1862, however, the blue spruce was a wild forest tree, known by its proper name, Colorado spruce, and was more green than blue! There, in Colorado and Montana, south to New Mexico, amongst the trembling aspen and dogwood, the dark green of the spruce contrasted with the autumnal yellow leaves and red bark of its mountain companions. However, once a blue specimen was spotted by a local doctor and the seeds sent to Harvard University, the destiny of the Colorado would change forever from being a mere shelterbelt tree (planted in hedges to curb wind erosion around farmlands) to being a horticultural favourite.

Dutch and German plant breeders were quick to get in on the business; by 1865, the Hoopsi cultivar, named after the German nursery, Hoops, was on the market, to be followed in 1885 by the Dutch, Koster, named after horticulturist, Arie Koster.

I can’t tell you which of the bluest are Kosters and which are Hoopsis. All I can say is that most of the island’s spruce trees are Colorados, and most of them aren’t blue at all. So, to be absolutely certain of this trickster’s identity, think of it as the prickly spruce. Grasp the 2 cm-long needles, bristling in all directions around the branch, and if it hurts, it’s a Colorado!

island of trees: Matchmaking in Jarry Park

2011-03-18T22:23:00.000-04:00

These Norway spruce in Jarry Park are distinguished from other spruce by
their long (15 cm.) cones and dark green, draped branches. The only
other local conifer with such a long cone is the white pine. Note the
towering old elm in the distance. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

Writing this column is a feat of matchmaking. Each week, I try to match a specific tree with a person, place, event, or moment in the tree’s life cycle so as to locate the tree in space and time, as well as make it memorable. I have to admit that some matches are better than others. Last week, for instance, try as I did, I couldn’t find the perfect match for the white spruce. Sure, the story of the 1950s’ “coupes de la moralité” to the understory plants of Mount Royal Park is an episode in the history of Montreal that warrants knowing. And the white spruce is one element in the legacy of Mayor Jean Drapeau’s extreme governance. But the choice of the white spruce to correct the mayor’s error had more to do with what saplings were available in large quantities and small price, as opposed to the inherent value of the tree.

In fact, my first choice for a match for the white spruce was Jarry Park. Why? Because right across the street from the park, near Villeray Street, stands Les pianos André Bolduc. Mounted on one of the walls of this sunfilled showroom of grands, uprights and apartment-size pianos is a great sheet of blond wood, cut in the form of the grand piano and crossed at regular intervals by narrow slats of the same wood. The wood is white spruce, harvested mostly in the forests close to St-Joseph de Beauce where Les pianos André Bolduc makes soundboards for such big name pianos as Fazioli and Heintzman.

“You see how the rings in the wood are closer together on the ribs at this end as compared to the other end. That’s why the higher notes have a sharper resonance,” explains the store manager David Lapierre.

Earlier in the week, speaking from the Beauce, André Bolduc, who founded his company in 1978, told me that he scouts white spruce that are at least 100 years old, in order that the wood has a close annual grain. “They need to be at least 24 inches in diametre,” he said.

All but the cheapest pianos feature sound boards made from spruce because of the high ratio of strength to weight that allows for the maximum transmission of resonance from the vibrating strings to the soundboard. In North America, white spruce is most commonly used, followed by the less abundant red spruce (confined largely to the Maritimes), while in Europe, Norway spruce, Picea abies, is the traditional choice.

So why couldn’t I match the white spruce to Jarry Park? Because the tree isn’t there. The Norway spruce, however, is abundant in the groves of conifers planted in the late ‘80s on the eastern border of the park, and since it too has a link to pianos, it’s an acceptable match. This spruce will be familiar to the gardeners among you because the graceful draped appearance of the mature tree makes it a popular ornamental.

Next time you’re in Jarry Park, I suggest you go to the gazebo, close to the Villeray Street entrance to the park, where you’ll get a good view of the towering Norways. Built in 1928, the gazebo is among the city’s oldest. Some of the violins played on this stage would have made from Norway spruce.

François Touchette remembers attending Campbell Concerts there as a child. Now in his 60s, Touchette is the founder of La coalition des amis du Parc Jarry and he’s working to bring more culture and trees to Jarry Park.

“We need more conifers back here,” he says, pointing to the area to the north of the pond. “It’s very windy here in winter for the skaters and we need the trees to create a windbreak.” He’s thinking of some type of conifer, of course, because of the effectiveness of evergreens in winter. If I could do a little matchmaking here, I’d get Touchette and Bolduc together to plant a grove of white spruce. Then, when the coalition launches his audioguide – now in preparation - to the history of the park, the white spruce would have a resounding presence!

island of trees: Women, trees and the white spruce

2011-03-12T08:04:00.003-05:00

This lone white spruce, Picea glauca, stands by most easterly curve in the serpentining path leading from Peel Street up to Olmsted Road on Mount Royal. You can distinguish this native spruce from the more commonly planted Colorado blue spruce by its shorter and less prickly needles and overall narrower and looser shape. In addition, the seed cones of the white spruce are smooth-edged and, at 3 - 6 cm. are half the length of those of the Colorado spruce, which have a wavy edge. Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux

Last Tuesday was the 100^th annual International Women’s Day and I wondered what tree I could choose that would be in someway representative of women. To Europeans, the linden tree is a symbol of feminine grace but I’d already written on the tree. Besides, as beautiful, fragrant and generous in fibre and carvable wood as the linden is, the tree didn’t quite have the combativeness I was looking for. White spruce, on the other hand, seemed to fit the bill.

This tall, straight, conifer with supple– at least relative to the stiffer and more commonly planted Colorado (also known as blue) and Norway spruce – bluish-green branches yielding toward the ground is a tree that’s been in the back of my mind, for some time, largely because of its relative invisibility. A workhorse of the Canadian economy - a top tree for lumber and the pulp that makes this newspaper possible – and at the same time, a most resonant wood, giving it world status in piano soundboards, the white spruce has one of the widest growing ranges in the country, stopping only at the treeline, and just before the Pacific coast and just below the most southerly triangle of Ontario.

While it is most populous in the boreal forest, where it rules alongside the more narrowly clad black spruce, and birch, aspen and balsam fir, the white spruce is flexible as long as the winters are sufficiently long and cold. Tolerant of shade and a variety of soils, it seeds itself readily in disturbed forests and abandoned farmers’ fields, giving it the nickname pasture spruce.

While there was probably never a preponderance of white spruce growing on the island of Montreal – white pine, hemlock and eastern white cedar are more common evergreens in our sugar maple-bitternut hickory domain – there were likely scattered trees where the soil was too shallow for other trees. So why, you may be wondering, is there so much white spruce growing in Mount Royal Park where it is, arguably the most common conifer?

Two answers: its ability to adapt to curb erosion in shallow soils by spreading its roots near the surface, and the surplus, in the 1960s, of white spruce saplings in the provincial forestry nurseries. You see, in 1961, Mount Royal was known as Mont Chauve, or Bald Mountain (see photo below), because Mayor Drapeau in his haste to appease those Mount Royal homeowners bothered by the illicit activities in the undergrowth, ordered “la coupe morale,” the axing of the undergrowth. As you might imagine, no undergrowth means no young trees and nothing to hold the soil. Erosion rapidly became a problem and 30,000 white spruce were deployed to save the day.

Mont chauve in 1964.

Fifty years later and the remaining white spruce are waning. Without the right conditions to thrive and reproduce, the trees are dying and those growing between the two radio towers are gradually being chopped down. None of the Mount Royal spruce are as resplendent as the ones we see in the Laurentians, where the trees are clearly in their element. However, there’s a superb specimen in the Morgan Arboretum, planted in 1952 just beside the Chalet Pruche to commemorate the foundation of the Morgan Arboretum and Woodland Development Association.

Similarly, there are fine samples of the tree in the arboretum of the Montreal Botanical Gardens and, appropriately enough, the supporting beams of the MBG tree house are made of white spruce.

I’m particularly fond of a white spruce, planted last summer just off Bernadette Street, one block west of St-Denis Street, running south from René Lévesque. At the head of the former alley, the spruce stands facing the serviceberry tree planted at the opposite end of the large garden. “I call this bed and breakfast,” says Huguette Trudel, coordinator of greening projects at the Ecoquartier St-Jacques and, with 12 years under her belt, is Montreal’s longest reigning Queen of Greening Paved Surfaces . “The white spruce provides shelter for birds while the serviceberry provides fruit.”

These are the white spruce on the ski path on the top of Mount Royal approaching the cross. They are gradually being cut and replaced with wind-blocking conifers native to our forest such as Eastern white cedar and white and red spruce. Photo: Bronwyn Chester

island of trees: Grey marks the spot

2011-03-04T14:10:00.002-05:00

The grey birch is the white birch that doesn't peel. The mature tree is smaller than the white and frequently has numerous bendy trunks marked by black, eye-like triangles at the base of every branch. Liking sandy, sunny soils, the grey birch is also distinguished by the curving wings of the tiny samara (1a), in which the seed nutlet (1b) is contained. These hang by the 100s in one big cluster known as the seed catkin. The elongated leaf (3) too, resembling a dunce cap, differs from the oval shape of its more famous cousin. Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux

The grey birch has a special place in my heart just as it has in the heart of Carole Turcotte, the concierge of a St-Kevin Avenue apartment block in Côte-des-Neiges. My associations with the tree have to do with the joys of seeing, of an e. e. cummings line from his poem I Thank You God for Most this Amazing: “the eyes of my eyes are opened.”

This pretty, multi-trucked birch grew in between the two houses where we, students of the flora of Mont St-Hilaire, slept during the two-week McGill University course. In the early morning sun, I would sit at the picnic table beside the tree and review my notes. I’d grown up on a street called Silverbirch, in a house surrounded by white birches (the developers got the name wrong) so I felt I knew a white birch when I saw it and if you’d asked me, I’d have identified that tree as a white birch. But our teacher, Isabelle Aubin, had us look carefully a the bark and the shape of the leaves.

White, yes, but not peeling. Hmmm. And the leaf was more triangular that that of the white birch and came to a thin, curled over peak. “Grey birch, bouleau gris,” said Aubin. Who knew there was such a tree?

Well, now we all knew and now we all were beginning to appreciate the subtle differences between species of the same genus. After learning the identity of that grey birch, Betula populifolia (so named in Latin because of the similarity between its leaf shape and sticky buds with those of the trembling aspen, a poplar), my feelings for the tree were forever changed. This is where I began to read the forest, literally, learning to decode, one trait – or letter – at a time, in order to read the full name of a particular species.

Carole Turcotte’s love of the grey birch is the love of the small forest she and her late husband, Daniel Turcotte, grew from an overgrown lawn that surrounded the building they moved into 18 years ago. They were the concierges of what was, initially, a run-down apartment block. Daniel Turcotte, a carpenter from the Beauce, was determined to improve the grounds. “He was a ‘gars du bois,’” recalls his wife of 36 years. “He wanted nothing to do with nursery trees. He only wanted native trees.”

Even today, it’s not easy to find native trees in nurseries. So when Carole and Daniel Turcotte found a farmer with forest trees for the taking, they were elated. “We were at St-Lin, in Lanaudière,” says Turcotte, “to buy our 50-pound sack of potatoes. The farmer told us he was clearing more land for potatoes. When my husband asked if we could buy some trees, he said he’d give them to us.”

Two trips and, roughly 30 trees later, husband and wife now looked out their ground floor window at the metre-high saplings of Eastern white cedar, white spruce and grey birch they had planted on their fertile slope on St-Kevin Avenue where not so many years earlier potatoes too had likely grown. That was 14 years ago. Today, Carole Turcotte, 67, looks out at the white and greens of snow and birch bark mingled with the evergreen boughs of a mature grove.

Since her husband’s death four years ago, the trees have taken on a special significance. “His ashes are there,” she says, pointing. “His favourite tree was the bouleau gris at the end, the one with two trunks. He would sit outside every morning with his coffee and look at that tree. Then we’d take our walk and look at all the trees.”

Turcotte, herself, has no favourite tree. “I love them all,” she says. She continues to care for the trees, feeding then fertilizer from time to time, as she learned from her husband, and planting more and more perennial herbaceous plants for colour. Roses, tulips and day lilies. “When I’m working out there, I’m visiting with Daniel and I like the grounds to look nice for him.”

Thanks to Charles L’Heureux for introducing me to his concierge. For information on the course on Monteregian flora, see: http://biology.mcgill.ca/undergrad/courses/c240t.htm.

island of trees: Charmed by le charme

2011-02-26T08:01:00.003-05:00

The east side of du Bullion Street, north of Rachel and south of Marianne streets, is home to the musclewood tree, a rare species in Montreal's sidewalk plantations. Planted 30 years ago, only four trees remain out of the 20-30 originally planted. The musclewoods are easily distinguished from the red ash, linden land Norway maples, also found on the street, by their small size, and meandering branches and, especially, by the muscle-like striations in their smooth, grey bark. Some individuals keep their dead leaves in winter. In fall, the musclewood's finely toothed leaves (3) turn a spectacular orange, while their fruit clusters (1) are pale green. Each nutlet (2) is housed in 2 cm-long bract (looks like a small leaf) which separates from the cluster in late fall. Illustrations:Charles L'Heureux

Certain tree names are common to many cultures. Ironwood is one of them. Gerry Waldron, in Trees of the Carolinian Forest, says there are 11 North American species known as ironwood, and 80 worldwide. Fortunately, for us, there are only two in the local forest, laying claim to the name.

You met the first of them, Ostrya virginiana, last week. Where this week’s ironwood is concerned, it’s hard to nail down the most common name for there are so many names for Carpinus caroliniana and each evokes a different aspect of this alluring, yet little-known tree. So, I propose you choose your own from the following list:

1) Musclewood. The striations in the trunk and branches of this small tree make it obvious why this name is attached to the tree.

2) Blue-beech. There are similarities between the smooth grey bark of Carpinus c. and the smooth bark of the beech. The leaves too share a similar shape and shade of bright green but the leaves of the smaller tree are sharply toothed, which is typical of all trees in the birch family (like last week’s Ostrya v.), while beech leaves are smooth-edged. A wonderful place where you can see a large concentration of both beech and blue-beech is at the Boisé Papineau on Ile Jésus, at the crossroads of highways 440 and 19. The beech trees are on their preferred higher ground, while the blue-beech is in the lower, wetter grounds, close to La Pinière Creek.

3) American hornbeam. This distinguishes the North American Carpinus c. from the English hornbeam, Carpinus betulus. Beam, like the German, baum, means tree, while horn means hard.

4) Which brings us to the scientific name: Carpinus, which is Latinized Celt for wood (car) and head (pin or pen), referring to the jokes, or head pieces, for oxen made from this extremely hard, uncracking and weather-resistant wood. No doubt, in the 18^th century, when Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus created the binomial system for naming plants, the use of oxen to pull carts and farm machinery was in full force.

And this is where the charm of the tree and its name begins. Somehow, the French worked Carpinus into charme, and the place where it was first botanized by Europeans, the Carolinas (named after Charles I in 1629), into Caroline. So, from the workmanlike musclewood, ironwood or hornbeam in English, we get charme de Caroline, in French. To our unknowing ears, be they attuned to French or English, the name evokes the muse or magic of the fair maid, Caroline.

In my explorations this week on the origins of four musclewoods growing in the hostile environment of a Plateau Mont-Royal sidewalk, I crossed two people charmed by Caroline. Most importantly is Ghyslaine Lafrenière who bought the house, illustrated here, 30 years ago when du Bullion Street was poor and treeless.

“I asked the City to plant les charmes,” she told me, “because I knew the tree from France, where I’d just lived, and I loved the smell.”

To Lafrenière’s surprise, her wish was granted and musclewood trees were planted on both sides of her block between Rachel and Marianne streets. Thirty years of snow-clearing, vandalism, bike thefts (cutting down the tree to which the bike is locked!), and construction reduced the population to four. (Even the one in front of her house was damaged and replaced by a red ash, which is apt given that Lafrenière’s name means ash grove!)

Still, the survivors are thrivers and have proven to City horticulturists that this small tree, when well watered and well protected in its early years, is a good city tree because it requires little space, may live to 150 years, stays clear of the Hydro wires, has no problems with insects and disease, and its strong wood can stand up to abuse by the snow-clearing machines.

It’s unusual and attractive shape, bark and red-orange fall leaves also attract attention. The foreman of Montreal’s city nursery, Martin Gaudet, for instance, is getting more and more requests from city horticulturists for young musclewood trees. Gaudet, who is also the author of Les arbres de Montréal, has four-year-olds coming along but says it will take another three to four years to have them big enough for the sidewalk.

“This is an under-used species,” he says, on the phone from l’Assomption. “And, once established, it tolerates well the salt and dry soils. It’s ideal for small gardens and its sinuous shape has a way of making the tree look older than its years.”

island of trees: Ironwood, the strength of small!

2011-02-19T09:28:00.003-05:00


This ironwood tree holds the massive stump and rootball of an old red oak, which succumbed to erosion last November following heavy rains. Of course, this magnificent 249-step staircase, leading from Olmsted Road up to the Kondiaronk Belevedere on Mount Royal, helps too. Ironwood wood is among the strongest of trees of northeastern North American. Its leaves (3), on the other hand, are soft as flannel. Note the small, immature pollen, or male, catkins (2), which make ironwood easy to identify at this time of year along with its shaggy grey-brown bark. In fall, look for the clusters of fruit (1), composed of tiny nutlets, each harboured in its own pouch. The hop-like appearance of the fruit give the tree its American name, hop hornbeam. Hornbeam is old English, for strong (horn) wood (beam)! Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux.

Have a look at this illustration. What you see is a slim ironwood tree, holding up the massive trunk and rootball of an old red oak that topped over last fall, its grip on the steep slope loosened by heavy rains. Of course, the solid supporting structure and the Douglas-fir planks of this Mount Royal staircase help too. But when I had a close look at this entangled sylvan couple, it was clear that the ironwood was pulling its weight.

And there’s a lovely poetic justice here. You see, ironwood, also known as hop hornbeam, due to its hoplike fruit, and bois de fer or ostryer, in French, is a discreet member of the forest understory; little about it announces its exceptional strength. The oak, on the other hand, exudes strength. It’s likely that both these trees are roughly the same age but the oak, fast-growing (at least in youth) sunsoaker that it is, has easily 10 times the girth of Ostrya virginiana.

True, oak wood, in general is strong but not all oaks are created equal. Our red, for instance, the most commonplace oak of Montreal and the dominant tree of the upper reaches of Mount Royal, is only medium strong with a Janka force of 5.7 kilo Newtons as compared to.8.3 in the ironwood. (Janka measure of hardness in wood represents the force required to push a steel ball with a diameter of 11.28 millimetres into the wood to a depth of half the ball’s diameter.)

In fact, ironwood, is so dense that it’s never cut into sawboards. Rather, the trunk and branches will be turned, using a lathe, into tool handles, as well as into the rungs of chairs or ladders. Montreal turner, Luc Fournier, tells me the wood is so dense you cannot see the rings. Years ago, farming and gardening implements, like forks and rakes, were made from ironwood.

Generally speaking, trees of the hardest wood are the slowest to grow and, therefore, among the least popular as ornamental trees. Most of us want green and shade fast. But the rate of growth in trees is also a factor of location. Ironwood, for instance, is highly shade tolerant and likes well-drained upland locations. So, in the forest, it grows narrow and of medium height in the shade of maple, oak, and ash.

Next time you walk the 249 steps of this longest and most used Mount Royal staircase, stop at the numerous landings to observe the ironwood on either side of the railing. A few even sport dried leaves. There are several ironwood growing close enough to the railing that you can touch the narrow strips of grey-beige bark, peeling lengthwise off the trunk. This trait differentiates the ironwood from other members of it botanical family, betulaceae, the birches. As you’ll see on the paper birches growing close to the stairs, their bark peels laterally.

The trait both trees – and all members of the birch family – share, however, is their flower, the catkin. And, yes, you can already see the immature birch flower, at least the male flower. Look up to see the rigid ironwood catkins, often in groups of three, looking like fledgling birds, eager to leave the nest. Now, compare these with the white birch catkins: same shape but bigger.

What’s fabulous about this staircase is that it allows us a rare perspective on the trees of the Mount Royal forest. We get to rise high into their branches, close enough to observe the intricacies of the bark, buds, and shape of the branches and overall tree.

But to get back to the ironwood and size and location. Given sun, space and scant competition, ironwood grows at a medium rate and turns into a stout, rounded tree. There’s a great example of this in Angrignon Park at the head of the main pond, not far from the main path. I’ve even seen full-form ironwood growing on a Plateau Mont-Royal sidewalk, still sporting its lantern-like fruit clusters. I’d gage it’s 20 years old, and it’s holding up well. It’s refreshing to see new bark on the block. I suggest we, and our municipalities, try it more often.

island of trees: Barking up the right cherry, the black one

2011-02-12T08:33:00.001-05:00

This old black cherry, growing behind the chalet on Mount Royal, is beginning to show the red beneath the charcoal scales of its bark. Likely a vestige of the forest that once grew in this popular spot for picnickers and cross-country skiers, the century-old tree is one to keep an eye on throughout the year. Tallest of all native cherry trees, Prunus serotina - meaning, literally, late cherry, hence its name in French, cerisier tardif - is the last of its kind to flower in spring and produces its fruit in early fall. Note the 5-petaled flowers (1) that are typical of all plants in the rose family, and the cherries - black (3) when ripe - growing in a cluster. The lance-shaped leaves (2) feature teeth which curve inwards and a mat of orange hairs along the midvein, near the base. At this time of year, its scaly charcoal bark (4) predominates. Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux

Its name may sound too exotic to be a local tree, but local it is. The black cherry, tallest of all North American cherries, is not overly abundant but is easily recognized by the charcoal grey plaques which characterize the middle-aged tree, the age-range most easily found on Mount Royal. As luck and biology would have it, we patrons of Mount Royal Park are fortunate to have a display of black cherry at easy viewing, touching and tasting distance.

Standing to the right of the steps leading up to the Kondiaronk Belvedere, take a look at the black tree trunk arching down from the rock escarpment, now shrouded by frozen waterfalls. This is not the typical shape of the normally straight-backed cherry. However, thanks to the ice storm of 1998, this is one of the few black cherries where the flowers and fruit are visible in spring and fall, respectively. Normally, they are so high up, that those of us without wings don’t get to appreciate them.

In fact, this location on Olmsted Road is also excellent for tasting the cherries in autumn. Normally, the birds take them quickly but with the high traffic of people and dogs at this spot seems to deter the winged crowd, leaving the bipeds to sample the tart cherry with the large pit. This is the same cherry of cough syrup fame and that was used, in the Appalachians, to flavour rum. Hence its alternate name: rum cherry.

To appreciate the black cherry in its upright form, follow the steps to the top. On the right, you’ll recognize the bark of this upright, though forked black cherry. Most likely this particularly cherry had its top lopped off as a young tree, causing the fork, and lending the tree the look of a slingshot. Touch the course bark and if there’s a bit loose, see if you can taste the almond-like flavour of the bark.

For a long time I believed that the bark on the mature black cherry tree didn’t change. But the next tree in this cherry trio taught me to the contrary. After making your way up to the chalet, follow the road to the right of the building and take the step flanked by some sumac. Walk to the left and look for the tall tree at the head of the descent of the ski path, leading down to the bridge. The bark will be a rough, deep grey, showing red tones. The scales of bark are less pronounced on this old tree, as compared to the younger ones seen earlier, except on the young branches up high.

Those red tones betray the colour of the coveted cabinet wood beneath the bark. Black cherry is the stuff of 19^th century wood-panelled walls, the inside detailing of fancy carriages, even the streetcars of the 20^th century were panelled with black cherry. Which may explain why so little of it is left in Quebec. Now, cabinet makers looking for black cherry have no choice but to buy planks imported from Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Unless, of course, they have a secret supply of trees or branches and can work in small formats. This is the case of Luc Fournier, a wood turner, who, for 25 years has had access to the trees cut and branches trimmed in the Mount Royal Cemetery. In his cramped workshop in the old Cadbury building on Masson Street, Fournier, 64, has countless bowls and cups in all the sorts of wood he has saved from the chipper. Black locust, Manitoba maple, black walnut and white oak are but a few of the 50-plus species.

And, of course, black cherry. Fournier pulls out an oval bowl, turned from a large branch cut from one of the 150-year-old cherries in the cemetery. He shows me the pale colour of the sap wood and the darker red of the heart wood. He has kept the bark on the edges of the bowl. “I like people to sense the tree from which their bowl was turned,” says Fournier.

Luc Fournier’s bowls will be on display at the Expo manger santé et vivre vert, March 18 – 20 at the Palais des congrès.

island of trees: Sumach, lemon of the north

2011-02-04T23:56:00.000-05:00


Staghorn sumac is a colonizer, taking over land left vacant after farming, fire or, in this case, a ski hill. The familiar red, cone-shaped cluster of tiny fruit frame this view of the old ski hill at the Université de Montréal. Found at the end of Vincent d'Indy Avenue, the hill was closed roughly 30 years ago. Since then, sumacs and fellow colonizer, trembling aspen, have closed in. Longer-living species, such as red oak and black Austrian pine, have been planted over the years and you can still see the support pole for the old chairlift. Note the fuzzy down on the sumac twigs and the numerous leaflets on the compound leaf. Native Americans aromatized their tobacco with sumac leaves. Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux.

Ever wonder where pink lemonade comes from? If you’d imagined that an imaginative marketing person decided to add a little colour to the usually clear lemon juice, to set it apart from the competition, you wouldn’t be far off. Except that, according to two circus legends, the invention was accidental: Either circus clown Pete Conklin created the first pink lemonade in 1857 when dye from a horse rider’s red tights fell into his favourite drink. Or, the 15-year-old circus vendor, Henry E. Allott inadvertently invented the pink drink, sometime in the 1870s, when he accidentally dropped red cinnamon candies into his tub of lemonade

Long before the 19^th century, however, European colonists would have coined the term, pink lemonade, after being introduced to the genuine article - i.e. the naturally pink lemonade - by Native Americans. The lemons, in question, were, in fact, the fruit of the sumac tree, and the sweetener was maple sugar. Like the bark of the eastern white cedar, the sumac fruit is high in vitamin C, and likely saved the lives of a few scurvy-plagued Europeans. Those first Europeans were so taken by the fruit and the beauty of the “Stag’s horn sumach,” as the British call it, that they took the small tree back to the Old World where it has been cultivated since 1629.

Sumac isn’t native to Europe; most of the world’s 100 species of Rhus, the Latin name of the genus, are found in southern Africa, with several in Asia and the Middle East. Only three species of this predominantly southern genus live in North America, the most common being our staghorn, Rhus typhina, whose name refers to its fuzzy, antler-like branches. This is the tropical-looking tree we know so well from the impressive colonies that grow in round-topped, pure colonies, by the side of many highways.

What’s fascinating about this tree is its lineage and its uses. Sumacs are members of the Anacardiaceae, or cashew, family. You read right: cashew, as in the nut. This family also includes other favourite fruit such as mangoes and pistachios. The structure of the flowers and fruit provides the familial thread amongst the Anarcardiaceae. Next July, have a look at the erect cluster of tiny flowers and see, on-line, how similar they are to those of the mango.

While this family produces favourite food, it also produces some high-powered poison plants, such as poison-sumac, Rhus vernix, rare in Quebec, and the infamous poison-ivy. Some, like the Chinese varnish tree, Rhus verniciflua, are used in lacquers, while the tannins of the staghorn were prized by leathermakers.

In fact, some believe the sumac takes its name from shoemaker. The predominant theory, however, is that sumac – or sumach – is derived from the Arabic “summâq,” the name given to the Middle Eastern Rhus coriaria that we know as spice sumac. Many of us are familiar with the aromatic Lebanese pizza known as za’atar and one of the key components in the spice mixture spread on pita is the crushed fruit. While thyme is the predominate flavour, the summaq lends tartness.

Could we put our sumac fruit to commercial exploitation? Apparently, until the 19^th century, pink lemonade was made from the tiny crushed fruit until it became too expensive to compete with real lemonade coloured with other red colorants, such as strawberry juice.

Personally, I fancy the idea of drinking a glass of mulled, hot sumac juice, after a day of skiing, tobogganing, snowshoeing or otherwise trekking on Mount Royal. It could even be sweetened by sugar from the mountain’s own maples, or by honey from bees fed, in part, by the generous load of yellow pollen delivered in early summer by the sumac.

Josh Freed, in his column last Saturday, lamented how we Montrealers are poor on winter culture and I agree with him. The red of the sumac is paint on a pale pallet and its juice tartness in a handful of snow. Food is the primary vehicle of culture and always attracts a crowd – even to a winter circus.

island of trees: Beeched in Montreal West

2011-01-29T07:46:00.000-05:00

These two European beeches, Fagus sylvanica, are of the purple leaf variety known as copper beech, hêtre commun pourpré. Growing in front of 83 Ballantyne North, in Montreal West, the trees date from 1907. In winter, beeches are most easily identified by their smooth, pale grey bark and their long, pointy buds (c) from which the papery-textured leaves (d) emerge in spring. In autumn, look for the fruit (b): an oily and edible triangular nut in a fuzzy, 3-chambered husk (a). Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux.

In the dead of winter, some dream of beaches. Others dream of beeches. Strange as it seems, there’s much linking these two homonyms. Warmth is the attraction of the beach when January cold is too much to bear. The beech tree too exudes warmth. Think of those translucent, softly toothed, oval leaves that warm the mostly grey tones of the broadleaf forest in winter, like sparks from a fire.

But it’s the wood beneath the bark that for centuries warmed the peoples of Eurasia, where nine of the worlds’ 10 species of Fagus thrive in the temperate forest. Beech was the main source of firewood for as long as Homo sapiens has roamed those lands. Because the tree rapidly sends out shoots once the main trunk has been cut, Fagus sylvatica was perfectly adapted to the practice of coppicing, an early method of woodlot management : these secondary trunks would be given a certain number of years, then be cut for firewood.

In North America, where hardwood trees were far more plentiful and varied than in Europe, there was no need to continue this practice with the native, Fagus grandifolia, which greatly resembles its European cousin, though its bark is slightly paler and its leaves bigger and more elongated.

In fact, the biggest difference between the European beech and the native is habitat. While both trees prefer the shade and shelter of the forest for propagation, the European is easily transplanted to parks and gardens. The native dislikes being transplanted; in fact, I can think of only two that have made the transition, one being a 15-year-old tree growing in front of the south entrance of the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry building of McGill University, the old medical faculty and a site where beech would have grown naturally in the Mount Royal forest, just as they grow in abundance in a sister Monteregian mountain, Mont St-Hilaire.

Europeans wanting the beauty and shade of the beech tree close to their homes had little choice, therefore, but to bring their own beech. The twin beeches depicted here would have been planted in about 1907, the year Scottish merchant Alexander Peden family had his house constructed in Montreal West.

Twenty years ago, when Poppy Baktis was looking for a home, she fell in love with those same trees. “Walking up that front walkway, those trees made a magical entrance,” she told me, over the phone.

In winter, the snow outlines the myriad and meandering branches and branchlets, which typify the structure of beeches growing in the open. And the primary branches begin low enough that Baktis’s three daughters could easily climb them.

Mark van Vliet, Baktis’ husband and resident historian of their abode marvels at how resilient the twin beeches are. Indeed, it’s striking how full and well-balanced the branches appear, in contrast to so many red oaks and silver maples of similar age that bear the truncated postures of the period, post-ice storm of 1998. In fact, the only trimming done by the City of Montreal West is to keep the branches free of the Hydro wires.

It’s a curious trait of the beech that while its wood is strong, its roots, being shallowly anchored, in well-drained, are weak, leaving the tree vulnerable in exceptional winds. So, there is a bittersweet poetic justice to the fact that storm-felled beeches - whose name is the root of the word, book, derived from to the easily carved surface of the bark – inspired two of the most prominent writers on trees. Both Thomas Pakenham, author of Meetings With Remarkable Trees, and Richard Mabey, author of Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees, were driven to write their books following the major losses of beech trees in the European storms of 1987 and 1999.

As Irishman Pakenham writes: “When God made the beech,..., he made an architectural masterpiece, joining in design the strongest form with the finest detail. Yet somehow he forgot to put in the foundations.”

Other locations for the European copper beech:

McGill University: Just in front of Redpath Hall, running alongside the raised terrace, you will find a row of trees. The first one is a copper beech. The terrace gives you a good perch from which to see directly into the branches and observe the buds and, later on, the leaves and fruit. Next, you may go down the gentle slope to observe the bark from up close. Be sure to stand back from the tree by moving towards the Redpath Museum, to see its overall shape. And, be sure to come back in the early spring when the leaves are unfolding. If memory serves, the leaves begin in green then turn a lustrous purple by early summer.

island of trees: Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

2011-01-22T08:10:00.000-05:00

These three whispy Jack pine, behind Michel Saulnier's "Echo" sculpture, are but one of the highlights of the Domtar Garden, located at the southwest corner of Bleury Street and President Kennedy Avenue. Created in 2002 out of an old City parking lot, purchased by the Domtar paper company, the forest includes elements of both the boreal forest, including Jack pine (Pinus banksiana), black spruce and white birch, and of our local mixed forest: sugar maples, Northern hackberry (easily distinguished by its pale brown warty bark), serviceberry and red-osier dogwood. Note the tightly sealed, comma-shaped cone of the Jack pine. It takes considerable heat to coax it open, which, clearly, Montreal summers are capable of producing, as you can see by the open cone. The sparse needles of the Jack pine come in bundles of two and measure 2-4 cm. This garden was designed by Montreal landscape architect Malaka Ackaoui. Illustrations by Charles L'Heureux.

The Jack Pine is one of this country’s most famous paintings. Hanging in the National Gallery of Canada, Tom Thomson’s stylized, laconic pine, an olive green silhouette against an orange sunset in Algonquin Park, has, no doubt, been seen by far more Canadians than the Jack pine tree itself – despite the fact that Jack is our most widely distributed pine. The scrubby, wispy branched pine is a northerner, to be sure, only just extending into the mixed forest north of Montreal.

Still, planted as an ornamental in downtown Montreal, as you see illustrated here, the tree does well. Accustomed to the extremes of temperature, as well as the rocky and sandy soils of the boreal forest, the Jack pine is unperturbed by the salt and occasional droughts of life close to the street. Which is nice for those passing through the Domtar Garden, just behind the northern Bleury Street exit for the Place des arts metro; at this time of year, the light green, wispy branches of the Jack pine are a welcome visual relief from the linearity of the built environment and the naked greys of the largely broadleaf street trees.

In fact, this week as I walked to the Domtar Garden - admittedly with a conifer on my mind - I was struck by the general dearth of evergreens in the downtown core, especially in the new developments associated with Le quartier des spectacles. My walk began well enough, greeted as I was by an earful of birdsongs emanating from a grove of Eastern white cedar trees, planted on the de Maisonneuve Street side of Les Habitations Jeanne Mance – which, back in the late ‘50s, was very well planted with broadleaf trees and conifers alike.

But that was the end of the music for a good few blocks. Continuing east to the new outdoor concert space across from the Red Roof Church, the landscape was barren except for the slim, grey trunks of the recently planted Siberian elms, red maples, crabapples and honey locusts. On a cloudy, winter day that means a lot of white on white, framed in the greys of buildings. Bleak, especially if the winds are high. And yet, this area and the redesign of the median in between de Maisonneuve Street and President Kennedy Avenue is clearly to encourage people to walk close to the young broadleaf trees.

As I looked west, the dark green forms of distant conifers cloaked in white was something of an oasis to behold. There’s something warming about snowclad conifers. At Jeanne-Mance Avenue, the situation improved dramatically; stout Austrian black pine, slim white spruce and the more robust Colorado (blue) spruce, as well as a few crabs and a hedge of cedar, frame the exterior of the City parking lot on this section of the median. Once again, the chatter of sparrows resounded.

As I crossed Bleury into the Domtar Garden, I felt a certain continuity, an intensification of the diversity of plant life. Here was the Jack pine, alongside its boreal companions, the white birch and black spruce. All three trees have been important to the paper industry, and the black spruce continues to be the most important species in the pulp and paper sector.

Providers of windbreaks, habitat and visual interest, each conifer also has its own story. The Jack pine’s is Fire and Fertility. Because the cones can takes years 10 -20 years to open and yield their seeds, the tree was subject to derision by woodsmen. According to the late Donald Culcross Peattie, in A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America (1966), French Canadians feared women walking close to the Jack pine would become sterile!

Forest fire, on the other hand, turns Jack into a quick and nimble reproducer. The heat melts the resin sealing the cone and the ash and reduced competition with other species provides the perfect conditions for germination and rapid growth. In northern Canada, the Jack pine forms pure forests following fire. But the tree is quickly the victim of its own success. Intolerant of shade as it is, the second generation, following a forest fire, can’t thrive in the shade of its parents. Other species, however, such as the shade tolerant red pine, take advantage of the shelter provided by the small and scrappy Jack, and live to replace their protector. It’s unlikely the Jack pines of the Domtar Garden will suffer this fate!

Other sites for the Jack pine:

Mount Royal Park:

island of trees: Taking a birching from the silver birch

2011-01-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

An old silver birch grows in front of this old wooden house on Lacombe Avenue, just up from Decelles Avenue. Its leaf (d) more triangular than that of the paper birch and its bark less peeling, this European birch shares a similar edge-of-forest preference with its equally sun-loving North American cousin. Note the airplane-like samaras (a), which house the birch seed (b), often visible on the snow beneath birches. You'll also see the unripe pollen, or male, catkin (c) and last year's stout seed, or female, catkin (b), which falls apart easily, scattering its stack of samaras. Illustrations by Charles L'Heuruex

Sometimes, a right tree finds you at the right moment. Before Christmas, en route to an exploration of Hampstead, Charles L’Heureux, who illustrates this column, pointed out an unusual house with an unusual tree on Lacombe Avenue, not far from the Université de Montréal. The three-story house , built in 1899, would have looked northwest down the valley towards today’s Jean-Talon street and on to the cedar forests and agricultural lands beyond. And what a view the owners would have from the captain’s lookout in the topfloor gable.

Did the house belong to a sea captain? It would seem unlikely, so far from either branch of the river. Perhaps a retired sea captain, seeking the calm and fine views of the pastoral village of Côte-des-neiges, far from the noise and squalor of the port. The house certainly doesn’t resemble the old stone farmhouses that once stood in this area. And the choice of tree to shade the veranda doesn’t suggest a farmhouse; lilacs or small fruit trees were a common choice.

The birch you see in this illustration is an exotic, the European white birch, Betula pendula, better known here as silver birch or bouleau pleureur. Yes, Land of the silver birch/Home of the beaver of canoeing-song fame, got the wrong birch. Our dominant forest birch is the white or paper or canoe birch. Generally speaking, far more silver birch has been planted as an ornamental tree than paper birch, largely due to its delicate, weeping structure.

I also suspect there was a little chauvinism involved; nursery-men of the turn of the last century were largely European-born and they cultivated what they knew. The paper birch, on the other hand, was a resource tree, more associated with firewood and lumber than garden aesthetics. Given that both birch species are boreal trees, sharing a preference for sunshine, cold winters, and well-drained, upland locations of a variety of soil types, the paper birch would likely have lived just as long as this senior silver birch.

Senior it is. I can’t be sure if it is as old as the house but it is definitely among the oldest I’ve seen on the island. Its trunk darkened by time, fat lower branches curving freely, it’s a pale sculpture on a street dominated by the 1950s-era conifers and Norway maples.

If you look up into the smaller branches of the European birch, you’ll see how the bark of this birch peels in thin strips, as compared to the wide swatches that curl off the paper birch. If you look down, you may see a fallen seed catkin, the caterpillar-like fruit of the birch. Each is composed of numerous stacked samaras, the tiny winged envelopes containing the birch seed. Scattered on the snow’s crust, the tiny airplane-like structures are scattered far and wide by the wind. On my own street, where there are several silver birch, I’ve found a few self-seeded young trees, growing, splayed against house walls, safe from being trampled.

The silver birch to the Europeans was as central to culture as was the paper birch here to the Algonquin peoples. In the Celtic alphabet, beith, is the first letter because the beith, or birch, the only whitebark of the forest, is associated with new starts and purification. On the Isle of Man, for instance, prisoners would be “birched” to purge them of bad influences. Similar practices, albeit more gentle, continue to this day in the saunas and banyas, respectively, of the Finns and Russians, where birch branches, complete with leaves, are used to stimulate circulation and improve metabolism.

I’ll admit to needing a certain intellectual birching for an error committed a few weeks back, regarding the Douglas-fir. In fact, there are two species of Douglas-fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii, native to Canada, the giant West Coast rainforest variety; and Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca. It’s the latter tree that has been successfully planted as an ornamental in Eastern Canada. Used to the cold and dryness of mountain life, the Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir, smaller and slower growing than the coastal species, is characterized by a bluish hue to its leaves, hence glauca, from the Greek glaukos, meaning bluish. Thanks to Ken Farr, dendrologist in the Canadian Forest Service, for pointing this out to me.

island of trees: Anno sylvestri and the case of the Scotch pine

2011-01-08T08:28:00.001-05:00

(Please note, this photo (my own) is temporary due to computer problems in placing the illustration.) This Scotch pine, one of several in Angrignon Park, in Montreal, shows the beautiful forms this highly individualistic tree can take on. The greyish-green twisting needles of the Scotch pine measure 4 - 8 cm and come in bundles of two while the 3-7 cm-long cone is a dark green and narrow in its first year, opening into a stout brown cone in its second.

It’s the Scots pine to the Scotch, Mongolian to the Mongolians, Norway to the Norwegians, the Riga to the Latvians. Here, we call it Scotch pine. All of which indicates the spread of this most widely distributed of all 95 species of pine. Stretching from Ireland south to Spain, east to eastern Siberia and as far north as the Arctic Circle, this pine is to Eurasia what our Jack pine is to North America : the toughest and most northerly.

In Eurasia, where the tree grows straight and plentiful, it was one of the first to go for firewood, housing and, especially for the masts of sailing ships. In fact, in a Napoleonic twist of fate, the decimation of our most important pine, the white pine, was the result of the French emperor’s blockade of Baltic ports in 1812, which cut off the British supply of “Riga” pine and sent the English to British North America to cull the only trees tall enough for the Royal Navy.

Ironically, the Scotch pine itself, which has been in North American since the 17^th century, has never been of much use to commercial forestry, except as a Christmas tree. As many of you will know from the sculptural forms of the orange bark-tree that grows in numerous Montreal parks, the Scotch pine rarely grows straight in our soil. According to the late John Laird Farrar, in his Trees in Canada, this is due to the “seed source chosen by early settlers.”

(Illustration: Maine Forest Service.)

So, I was intrigued by the long line of Scotch pine growing to the left of the main driveway into the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, in Verdun. These trees are straight and it makes me wonder whether this is due to a better seed source or, simply, that the gardeners of the Protestant Hospital for the Insane, as the Douglas was called at its founding in 1881, pruned the lower branches and chose a leader branch that pointed upwards.

Walking the length of this line of trees, you can appreciate the interesting shapes of this round or flat topped tree, and understand why it’s popular in bonsai cultivation. You can also see the contrast between this pine and the Austrian black pine, interplanted with the Scotch. More common in the city than the Scotch pine, the full-figured, long-needled Austrian withstands the salt and compacted soil of high traffic areas.

Clearly, the hospital’s landscaper was enamoured by European pines. Nowhere else in the city, for instance, have I seen a line of Scotch pine. Generally, they are planted as individual species or in groups, as you’ll find in the southeast section of La Fontaine Park and in Mount Royal Park, just to the west of the Kondiaronk Belvedere (the main look-out site over downtown).

This latter site is where the tree best lives up to its Latin and French names, Pinus sylvestris and pin sylvestre. Unlike last week’s Douglas-fir of Pseudotsuga menziesii, named after two Scottish botanical hunters, both David Douglas and Archibald Menzies, the Scotch pine takes its name not from a botanist but from its environment: sylvestris is the Latin for forest. The name reminds us of the natural habitat of this tree, the European forest. While many still grow in managed, commercial forests, there are few Scotch pine left in the natural forest. My online searches revealed the tallest trees in Estonia, at 46 metres, and the oldest in Sweden at 700-plus years.

With poetic justice, Scotland too has a few remnants of its national tree. In such places as Glen Quoich, Glen Affric and Rannoch, the estimated 1% of the original 1.5 million hectares of the original Highlands pine-birch forest may be found. This being the International Year of Forests, and the Scots - and British, in general – being the tree-worshippers that they are, the ongoing efforts to bolster the paltry remains of the wild wood will no doubt be reinforced. I’ll be writing more on the implications for Montreal on this UN initiative. But, for now: Happy Anno Sylvestri!

Island of Trees: Scots of the fir trade, Douglas and Fraser

2010-12-31T00:44:00.009-05:00

This pair of Douglas-firs grows on the grounds of St-Joseph's Oratory to the right of the road amongst a nice variety of trees including an old ginkgo, an Austrian black pine and a willow, easily identified by its yellow branches. Look up to see the cones characterized by three-pronged bracts. A West Coast legend has it that the bracts are mice tails left over from a time when, during a forest fire, the mice leaped into the cones, knowing they would not burn. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux.

Being Montrealers, when we hear of the Scots of the fur/fir trade, we think of those who made fame and – sometimes - fortune from the animal pelt sort of fur. Their names are the names of such Montreal streets as (Simon) McTavish and (James) McGill. A visit to the Fur Trade Museum in Lachine is a visit to the glory years of the Northwest Company and the foundation of Montreal’s wealth.

But, at least two Scots, are associated with the other fir, the fir tree, which I introduced last week with the white fir. Douglas and Fraser are two familiar fir-associated names and both were named after the Scottish botanical explorers who brought them from North America back to the United Kingdom.

The Fraser fir, Abies fraseri, a native of the upper altitudes of the southeastern Appalachian Mountains, where Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee meet, has become a favourite Christmas tree due to the fact that it keeps its needles longer than the balsam fir. While the tree’s natural habitat is restricted to a tiny area - as compared to the balsam fir, which grows in most of central and northeastern North America - it is widely cultivated throughout the eastern seaboard, including Quebec, and in Europe, as a Christmas tree.

John Fraser (1750-1811), a Scottish draper turned plant collector, discovered the tree during his exploration of the Appalachians. Fraser was correct in his identification of the tree; true to fir form, the Fraser has upright cones, and flat and flexible, non-prickly needles, growing only on the upper half of the twig (as opposed to spruce trees whose needles are, generally, more prickly and grow all around the twig). Like all firs, the tree has a regular branching pattern, wide and sloping gently upwards at the bottom, narrowing to a well-defined spire at the top.

If you don’t have a Fraser fir in your house, have a good look at Christmas trees in other houses or in public places, to see how the Fraser’s needles curve upwards, while the balsam’s needles are more lateral – and, in my estimation, more fragrant.

Douglas-firs, on the other hand, are unlikely in any easterners’ house. In the west, however, it’s a common Christmas tree. I have to say that I was very surprised to learn this, envisioning, as I do, the legendary giants of the west coast rainforest, second in height only to the redwood. But, of course, all trees, great and small, start out small, just as our white pine, the tallest conifer of the east coast, has also been used as a Christmas tree.

Named by David Douglas (1798-1834), another prominent Scottish botanical explorer, the Douglas-fir too has upright seed cones – at least, upright until pollinated by the smaller and pendulous pollen cones. Once pollinated, however, the plump 6-9 cm cones bend downwards. Douglas must have missed this stage in the tree’s cycle, in addition to missing the unusual three-pronged bracts growing amidst the scales of the cones.

Or, perhaps Douglas did notice these traits but didn’t know where else to classify this unusual conifer. In fact, the Douglas (non!) fir has been a taxonomic nightmare for numerous dendrologists as you can tell by its Latin name : Pseudotsuga menziesii, meaning a false hemlock. The species name, menziesii, is for Archibald Menzies (1754-1842), another Scot, who first described the tree in 1792, as Pinus taxifolia, meaning a pine tree with leaves like yew trees! When Douglas later saw the tree in British Columbia in 1825, he was able to collect the seeds from the unusual cones and grow them in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew where they grow to this day, as well as elsewhere in Britain where the humid climate is not unlike the North American west coast, assuring the tree its place as the tallest in the U.K.

The Douglas-fir was also planted in eastern North America, including Montreal where, thanks to its unusual cone and bright green new growth on the fir-like needles, it’s relatively easy to identify, especially at the entrance to the Botanical Gardens where there are a number of them on the left, all named, as are the other conifers, so you can stand back and observe the differences. In Westmount Park, there’s a fine specimen, second in the line of tall conifers running south from the library, on the east side of the tennis courts.

These two illustrated are among the easiest to identify as they are the sole conifers growing on the grounds in front of St. Joseph’s Oratory, aside from a lone Austrian black pine. Slower to grow here, where winters are colder and there’s less humidity in the air than on the west coast, these two are 60 - 80 years old. Will they reach the 500 years and 60 metres height, common among their Western compatriots?