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Branching Out - The Enduring Joy of Trees
100 Plays1 year ago
This week on Hort Culture, we take a break from the usual growing and marketing topics and delve into the sheer wonder of trees. Join us as we reminisce about the towering giants that have graced our lives and shaped our experiences.
We'll reflect on the simple joys of childhood spent climbing branches, building forts in their cool shade, and the thrill of conquering the highest limbs. We'll discuss the changing seasons through the lens of a tree's transformation, from the vibrant greens of spring to the fiery hues of fall.
Trees aren't just a source of beauty; they're silent companions, witnesses to life's milestones. We'll share stories of how these giants have provided solace in times of hardship and served as a backdrop for our celebrations.
This episode is a celebration of the arboreal wonders that surround us. We'll explore the ways trees have influenced our decisions, perhaps inspiring us to pursue careers in horticulture or simply reminding us of the importance of spending time in nature.
So, grab a cup of coffee (or tea), settle in under your favorite tree (real or metaphorical!), and join us for a heartwarming exploration of the enduring joy of trees.
Tree Selection and Planting for the Kentucky Landscape
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Hort Culture
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, wonderful friends. Hello, listeners. How are you?
Exploring the Kentucky Coffee Tree
00:00:20
Speaker
We're talking about trees today. Super awesome. Super excited. Just jumped in there with trees. Why not trees? The Kentucky coffee tree that Alexis just ate. And no, it doesn't have caffeine. Remember Brett taught us that there was only one tree and he's growing it and I forget what it is. It's a Holly. My germination wasn't good, Alexis. My seat starting was disrupted by
00:00:46
Speaker
unforeseen events, but we'll try again in the future. But I do have a lot of a disturbing amount of other little tiny trees that are disturbing formats, but how could that ever be disturbing? I like it. Even if the tiny trees were coming for me personally, I don't even know if I'd be disturbed. I'd be like, you know what? I deserve this. Take me, take me now. I want the trees. I feel disturbed. I don't know. They're not disturbing, but
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah.
Growing Up Among Trees
00:01:17
Speaker
Ray was, Ray was saying, you know, as we were, we were warming up before the podcast is where sometimes want to do, and then Ray will drop these authentic stories about the early 1800s, can it 15 seconds and share it now. But you, what were you, you were just saying that.
00:01:37
Speaker
I stopped you before I could feel the authenticity coming and I stopped it before it before the day. Yeah. Yeah. But what were you saying? What did you do as a child? You know, we did we were talking about trying to formulate, you know, some plans for episodes. And, you know, I think it was you, Brett, that threw this out, you know, let's talk about the joy of trees or how, you know, kind of do a reflective piece. And I got to thinking about that. And I grew up in the eastern foothills of Kentucky in a county that was a little over 80 percent forested.
00:02:05
Speaker
and grew up on quite a few acres and a lot of that was hillland based. But yeah, I got to thinking about this topic and I was like, wow, trees have always been a part of every, just from day one for me, having grown up close to the woods and ran in the woods. And my father worked in the logging industry, which is in forestry.
00:02:27
Speaker
and uncles having been loggers and going with them, some of my earliest memories, are grabbing Stanley Thermos, you know, holding their Stanley Thermos. It's the OG Stanley Thermos. It's not the trendy ones for all of you millennials up. But grabbing that old beat up thermos for my Uncle Walter and jumping in the truck and us going way back into the woods and
00:02:47
Speaker
and just sitting on the tailgate or kind of riding along with him. And, you know, as they did logging operations and stuff, but so many cool memories of trees, but not just of cutting trees down, but just loving trees throughout, you know, my life. It's had a big impact on me. Yeah. I love trees grew up in the green cathedral is what my dad always called it. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. From the beginning.
Career Influences from Nature
00:03:10
Speaker
So trees, a big impact.
00:03:13
Speaker
I, um, I think I was always meant to be a horticulturist, even when I thought I was going to go be an engineer and then realize I'm bad at math. I'm good at the horticultural math for what it's worth, but how much math do you need to drive a train Alexis?
00:03:32
Speaker
Surprising amount of calculus. The liver does a lot nowadays. I was going to be a naval engineer in the coast guard. That was like my career path.
00:03:48
Speaker
But I was like, oh, right, I don't actually love the ocean. So, soil is where I belong. Or bath. Or boats. Or boats. Or sharks. Other than that, you were ready to go, though. I was like, I'm also not a strong swimmer. So, I just really nailed it. But anyways.
00:04:08
Speaker
trees. My mom was a weird plant nerd as well. And I think I like just grew up with that. And she would she would always call trees by their latin name because she thought she was fancy. And so I just like remember growing up hearing her. That is fancy.
00:04:24
Speaker
It is fancy, right? She'd be like, oh, the Quercus, you know, it's like an oak tree mom. But she'd be like, oh, yes, let's hang your little reading chair in the Quercus. And I'm like, the what? Yeah, I was like, what's going on here? She put the quirk in Quercus.
00:04:45
Speaker
She had like a little book that she would carry around, like a tree ID book, and we'd like walk around the woods when I was little. Was that Alexis you're talking about? Is that like the northern? Like central Kentucky. Yeah. Central Kentucky area. When I was really little, we lived in Winchester. So we had some woods out there and then. Yeah. But yeah, we'd walk around, you know, barefoot little homeschooled child with the tree book. And I know everyone's like, oh, it makes so much sense. I get it.
00:05:15
Speaker
So many things clicked into place. So many layers of the onion have been peeled back. Yeah. Welcome to my doc show. Things are starting to come together. It raised from the 1800s. I was homeschooled. We get it. OK. Josh and I are both bald, and that was revealed episode one. So we're all out of the open now. What species come to mind when you think, oh, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. When I ask you.
00:05:46
Speaker
When I say tree, is there a specific tree that comes to mind in your mind's eye?
Favorite Trees and Memories
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah. Not even a specific species, but even a specific tree. Oh, like a place in time? It could be like this one at this place. Yeah. And what is it?
00:06:07
Speaker
I mean, when we were talking about this episode, I remember the photos of the angel oak in South Carolina. And so I got oaks in general are what come to mind when I think of trees, especially older oaks that have this enormous canopy. And frankly, I am still enchanted by the vision of a single oak in kind of a
00:06:30
Speaker
hill a hilly savannah sort of like the oaks of anna that was supposedly here i remember being a child not in this environment and thinking of that as like tree but specifically i mean everybody was talking about
00:06:47
Speaker
their first memories of trees. And mine was also an oak, like the live oaks in Florida, the ones that have like the Spanish moss and stuff. So picture those vividly, which fun trivia, Spanish moss is not native to Spain and it is not a moss.
00:07:04
Speaker
It's in the Botanical Witness Protection Program. It's on the hideout because it's actually part of the Pineapple Family Mafia. Oh. Isn't it like a lichen or something in that family? It's not a lichen either. It's literally a- An air plant, bromeliad of some kind? A bromeliad air plant, yeah, yeah. So it is the Pineapple Family. Yeah.
00:07:27
Speaker
Anyway, cool stuff. But yeah, that every time I picture is like big, huge live oaks with that, just kind of like hanging everywhere, playing with it as a kid. Very graceful. What about you, Brad? Oh, no, I'm asking you first. Yeah. Well, for me, I think, I think of a, um, there was a silver maple that was in my parents' backyard that had
00:07:52
Speaker
it had
00:08:03
Speaker
get a little running start and hop up on it and kind of sit on it like a motorcycle or a horse or some other imaginative straddled seat type. And I fell out of it a bunch of times. Nice. Four feet's not too bad. Yeah, that's true. I'm not a graceful faller, but. It's bad enough when you were younger because a percentage of fall is greater. I don't know, man.
00:08:30
Speaker
Okay, funny story. There's a tree just like that at Shaker Village, which is close to where I live, and I took my best friend there.
00:08:48
Speaker
I'm allowed to have a female best friend. Anyways, I took my female best friend there and we were like, we were like, we're going to jump up on here and take a cute picture together because she lives out of town. And, uh, so she went to go jump up on it and it was one of those, like, you.
00:09:03
Speaker
jump and you just kind of get stuck and you're just like holding onto it and she was... Oh, your legs kick like a dog trying to get on the couch? Just a couple inches off the ground and she just slow motion just kind of fell off backwards. And it was the funniest thing. Every time I think of it, I laugh, but hey Vic, love you so much. Shout out. But it hurts more when you're older. So like there's less to fall, but also your body is
00:09:28
Speaker
desiccating as we speak. It hurts more in the retailing. All your bones shatter immediately. I said to my husband last night, I was like, you know, we're basically just rotting in place, right? And he was like, I move around. Come on.
00:09:44
Speaker
I saw a meme that all tattoos are temporary. My vision of this tree, I think of the whirly birds coming down and getting all over the place.
00:10:04
Speaker
Uh, what else? The bark is pretty like of a silver maple bark is pretty distinctive, you know, kind of that flaky gray. Um, it's not, you know, it was just not a particularly special tree in any sort of botanical or otherwise sense. And it was toward the end of its, you know, as one of the classic, like,
00:10:23
Speaker
aging silver maples in the 50s suburb, many of which have fallen on houses and all kinds of other stuff like that. I live in a very similarly aged neighborhood now, and we're gradually losing more and more of the silver maples as they reach the end of their road.
00:10:41
Speaker
But that's that's the one that comes to mind for me is like the just the oh, that's a tree. You know, it's interesting. I was thinking about how like like the trees that are on their own in our built environments, the trees like the the tree that I mentioned, the tree alone on the hill. These are trees that are like not having the protection of their community. And there's like this kind of
00:11:03
Speaker
You know, when I was younger and thought of the tree alone on the landscape, it was like, oh, look at this, you know, resilient thing that's lasting or whatever. I don't really know what I was thinking. It looked cool. But looking at it now from like an ecological perspective, there's like something.
Ecology and Sentimentality of Lone Trees
00:11:16
Speaker
that's kind of like sorrowful about like a tree on its own in these places because like the lonesome around time they need our help if they're going to survive we can't just you know ignore them or treat them like they they got it all under control it's like they're they're alone and they need us
00:11:35
Speaker
Anyway, didn't need to get all weird. I almost had a moment there where have you ever seen, there's a meme where it was like a person saying, oh, my kid said this really profound thing, you know, like they're three years old and made up a complete sentence. And you're like, no, they didn't, Susan. And I feel like that was the moment I almost had with you, Josh. It was like, did you as a child, did you think that?
00:11:58
Speaker
tree big I'm sure that's incredible but you're right yeah this kind of idea of lonely lonely tree it's it is as you age they
00:12:10
Speaker
They need their family. And let's talk about the saddest book that is ever written and that ever will be is the, what is it, the giving tree? The giving tree? I don't mean to traumatize and bring up that kind of trauma, but I need to share it to get it out of my system just a bit. I need to share my trauma. As a parent, you share that with your kid to guilt them. Yes. So that they don't leave you. It's another version of tiger power. A tree would never write that book to us. Tree is like, that's a lot of giving, I'm just saying.
00:12:41
Speaker
there's a difference between us boundaries people boundaries yes exactly yeah it's hard to it's hard to think about trees I don't know there's there's so many different ways we could go and and
00:12:54
Speaker
just it's a part of every and that's something that hit me you know I mentioned that you know dad was you know in the sawmill industry but I would see all the products that came out of trees and and that they were everywhere's and now we learned later that like papers made out of trees and and all of these products and it's so integrated into everything we do and having grown up in the middle of the trees and
00:13:16
Speaker
And it's no coincidence that fall, when the colors come on, is my absolute favorite time of the year, because I love, I just know the Sumacs, you know, and all the, you know, the maples and all the beautiful, vibrant colors are coming. I know that's coming, so I love that time of year.
00:13:35
Speaker
But yeah, trees for me have always kind of marked time. I don't know about your all's families, but, uh, you know, when someone would pass away or someone was born, it's not uncommon tradition in my family for a plant to be planted. And in this case, you know, trees to be planted on my family graveyard, that's in the heels of Johnson County. You know, the last tree that was planted there, that's a memorial tree was a dogwood tree, but they sort of marked time for me. And when I was younger, I thought, well, that's odd.
Family Traditions and Trees
00:14:02
Speaker
putting a plant of some kind in the ground. In most cases, it was a tree. But that kind of elevated the importance of trees to me, that they were good markers of time. And that was an interesting kind of thing for me. I guess it just elevated the importance of trees. I didn't quite understand it, and I still don't fully understand how we got to that tradition.
00:14:04
Speaker
We're.
00:14:23
Speaker
But as markers of time, I'm always curious when I go through, you know, some areas of the country and you can see trees, you know, that have sustained damage during the Civil War. And there'll be markers there that will show cannonball damage on a tree that stood there on that hill during the Civil War. And it's amazing to me the history. And I always think, what is that tree scene? And I'm very fortunate here in Bourbon County, I do lots of site visits and a lot of the horse farms have
00:14:54
Speaker
There's lots of records here in Bourbon County of oldest, biggest trees. These trees that were here on these horse farms and all of the surviving ancient trees, they all have lightning protection and they've been fenced around and somebody has been good stewards to keep those trees there. Hundreds of years old, these oaks that were in pastures and somebody had the forethought to protect those. But I think in my mind, what kind of history has this tree seen?
00:15:23
Speaker
But it's kind of like that tree that stands off by itself. Josh, you were mentioning, they take special care because they're not growing in their native grove or whatever, uh, in their native, you know, ecosystem, but they're in their native location. They're just not growing with their buddies. But I think when I think of trees, I think, think of what great markers of time they are. Uh, I always think about that, uh, trees always strike that chord in me.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, oaks, I think. Well, I mean, there's like that angel oak I mentioned. Yeah. One of the coolest trees ever. Yeah. Yeah. Super wild. When I was in Japan, I had the fortunate sort of experience to go to this island called Yikushima that has many trees that date from, you know, 4,000 years plus old. Right. Like I saw a tree that is unbelievable, like 6,800 years old. It's crazy.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's hard to wrap. I mean, even the 300, 400 year old tree is like, wow, that's incredible. This organism has been here for that long and survived. But yeah, it's definitely the passage of time and thinking about like, what has occurred in the duration of this one organism's life.
Ancient Trees and Adaptation
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah. And it's amazing when I, you know, hiking in rocky areas and you see, you know, these little scrub pines growing out of a rock essentially. And you're like, wow, that dang thing is a survivor. And it's probably hard telling how old when you go out with nature's bonds eyes. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful. They're crafted by nature and sculpted by nature, but it's hard telling how old some of those trees are. Uh, you know, they're not a huge, magnificent canopy top specimen, but, uh, yeah, they're interesting because, you know, they're contorted and they've
00:17:06
Speaker
you know, adapted and blended in with their environment. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool. Yeah, I think the the ancient tree phenomenon is something that captivates a lot of imagination and they've actually a lot lower. Yeah. Well, there's this whole phenomenon now where there's a tension between. Do you protect the ancient trees or do you try to get people out?
00:17:29
Speaker
to see them because they can become these like tourist landmarks and the people can actually do even if they're not carving their names or doing the other stuff that gets a lot of publicity just like that many people going to a space that is not that many people has these negative effects and not to mention the effects of things like forest fires and other things that are happening on a scale that
00:17:54
Speaker
It's a, it's a faster scale than the evolutionary scale on which many of these trees have operated in the past. There's this really, there's an interesting group out in the Pacific Northwest called the ancient forest society. And they, uh, they go and they like, it's a lot of like preservation and conservation. And they have a couple of ecologists and some wildcard logger, reforest or tree planter people. And.
00:18:20
Speaker
They have their website's really cool. If you'd go and find them, they like climb the giant sequoias and like to collect seed cones. So replant and then they do some replanting and stuff like that. But that's really a really neat one. Another one, if you haven't come across them, I have a picture of it in my dining room of one of the bristle cone pines, which are some among the oldest trees in the world.
00:18:46
Speaker
There's these very contorted, they're not as visually impressive as the sequoias or the redwoods or something like that, but they're, they're very, uh, yeah. One of the people that I follow in the bonsai world is he's kind of a lot. I think he's a genius and also intolerable sometimes, but he, uh, his name is Ryan Neil.
Trees in Human Narratives
00:19:13
Speaker
And I think he would probably accept that as a fair characterization of himself, but he, uh, he talks about how he came across something that said described trees as like the constant protagonists in the human story. It was like trees don't really do any, like they're never the bad guy. And I thought that was kind of an interesting fun thing, but I mean, even, even like there's this phenomenon, I don't know if you all have heard about it,
00:19:39
Speaker
this idea of the microforest in urban environments. So as Josh was kind of pointing out in his soliloquy to the lonely, the lonely- Shrub in your front yard. No, I think it's a really good point that there's all kinds of strange plant interactions that happen when plants grow closer to each other versus in isolation.
00:20:06
Speaker
In some cases, they'll grow better if they have other trees around them and you know, initially, maybe that could be water retention, it could be humidity, it could be who knows. But there's this phenomenon in urban areas of planting, there's actually one in Frankfort, Kentucky called the fantasy forest.
00:20:23
Speaker
planting these small dense micro forests, you know, and it's like diversified species, it could be that there's like maybe there's a keystone species of some sort that you is there already, right? You're not gonna plant a hundred year old oak tree. But, but you can definitely bring in other things to kind of supplement and it creates these little tiny pockets in urban areas, where traditionally, maybe you'd see one tree or one plant or you know, a line of boxwoods or something
00:20:53
Speaker
And instead it's this more like this dense little space.
Urban Microforests
00:20:58
Speaker
Some people talk about the potential that it has for addressing aspects of climate change, addressing aspects of air quality in urban spaces.
00:21:08
Speaker
But I think even that, when you go and spend time in a space like that, in canopy cover, even in a small little area, there's something, we have spent more time as a human species in the shade of big trees than we have not spent in terms of long periods of time.
00:21:30
Speaker
And I think there's something about that. And I think that plays into Ray, you're like the magic and the like, you're like, I don't even necessarily understand why we as a family attached all this into trees or like why it feels right.
00:21:45
Speaker
And I think that's kind of cool because it's, it's horticulture, but it's also anthropology. It's also theology. It's, it's a whole lot of different things. And, um, yeah. So if you haven't in Frankfurt, Kentucky, there's, uh, the fantasy forest, uh, fantasy forest, like a pocket park trees. Gotcha.
00:22:06
Speaker
Exactly. You can bring your 20 sided dice and whatever else you do with fantasy. That's where the ants live, the young ones. It's funny, it's like trees are, you know, when you start to look around and notice things, it's interculture, it's in, you know, pop culture, it exists, you know, just about everywhere.
00:22:31
Speaker
And as i said it's had a big impact on me. I just i think about the springtime in the mountains and that was my second favorite time behind fall. But i think of when like the it's a transcendental thing kind of to kind of chill out, look over the hills, fog's coming up.
00:22:48
Speaker
and see like the dogwoods and red buds blooming, it's pretty awesome. It's just kind of a special time of the year. We're driving down the mountain parkway and you see these things blooming and it's just incredible. And you know, and everybody in my family, I got to think about it, has a favorite tree. And it's just, it's, you know, mom's favorite tree is a cornice moss or dogwood, more particularly, actually the pink dogwood, the native pink dogwood, which was like,
00:23:12
Speaker
a tree of mythology with my family, we would always look for the naturally occurring pink dogwoods in the woods. That's when the crappie are biting, just saying. Yes, it is. That's a good one. That's an indicator. It's like when the Forsythia blooms as an indicator. That's a great one. You said it's a tree of mythology. You're talking of this is a dogwood, but it's a native pink. Yes, native pink dogwood. They're more smooth bark.
00:23:42
Speaker
They have a smoother bark on them and they're not nearly as common, of course, and you didn't see them very often. And that's the first plant I ever transplanted. I knew my mother loved, you know, woods. I traveled for miles with my elk hound, my dog. We traveled through miles in the woods.
00:23:59
Speaker
and dug up this thing and tried, you know, I learned a lot of valuable lessons about how hard it is to dig up things. Got it to live and I babied the thing but that's the first plant I ever transplanted that I can remember was a native pink dogwood and put it right in the middle of a sunny yard. But mom, you know, was just so proud of that and loved that tree and it never did do
00:24:24
Speaker
in the lawn because it's an understory tree. But yeah, that's, I mean, that's kind of holds this, you know, big part in my brain. It was the native pink dogwoods. But yeah, thinking about, you know, the food that trees provided and, you know, I grew up in a house that didn't have an air conditioning, an old farmhouse, which is pretty typical.
00:24:41
Speaker
back in the day, but there were maples all around that that shaded the house. And I think of all the functionality of trees and stuff. They're just everywhere. When you think about it, especially when you grew up on the edge of a forest and my brothers and I, we would just go and just we could walk for hours just in one direction and we would never get out of the forest. We would just be in the forest. And I always notice things from a nature standpoint.
00:25:10
Speaker
like the northern side of a hill had completely different plant life and trees versus the southern side of a hill. And you notice things and at an early age, and it sort of shaped me. And later on when I went to Berea and had like the toughest botanist ever, Ralph Thompson, Dr. Ralph Thompson, you know, and he just drilled us and drilled us, but I loved every minute of it because, you know, I grew up noticing these things and that's pretty cool. Pretty cool.
00:25:37
Speaker
Another kind of tree that stands out to me just from its appearance, like it's purely an aesthetic thing, was this farm that I worked on in kind of coastal Georgia area was a black willow that was, I mean, so like this area was completely built. It was like a resort community. And there was a pond that was artificial that was dug up to create an artificial island on it. And then on the artificial island, they had transplanted a black willow, or yeah, that had
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah, I just had that kind of incredible sort of almost like, it makes me think of like East Asian aesthetics where you got this kind of like drooping plant and there was like, they put a rowboat out on the island kind of thing and it was just something you'd see while you're working on the farm. But yeah, I like that sort of aesthetic in that built environment, right? It's like this lone tree also on this small island.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yeah. It's a, so you noticed that one specifically in other words, I mean, and it's funny how that left a mark. I mean, it leaves a mark when you take notice of something like that and you definitely it's, it's stayed around in your memory. So it, uh, it's kind of lives there rent free in your mind somewhere. And you can recall that anytime you want. It's pretty cool. Well, yeah, I think there's something to that. Like the lone tree also is like kind of an inviting place because it's providing that shade on like a really sunny day. And then, you know,
00:27:01
Speaker
what better place to relax in the shade, but also right next to some body of water, assuming it's not insanely buggy, which that place was. It was more of a delight for the mind and not so much a cool place to hang out. Yeah. You leave with all these insect bites all over your body. I always wanted to be up in trees. I was young and still, I'll get up in a tree if I'm walking around in the woods.
00:27:29
Speaker
I won a lot of flashlight tag back in the day because I would just climb a tree. So you're basically a squirrel. I knew it. You're a squirrel. I can see that. I was fascinated with like I really wanted a tree house and so the closest I got was like a little bit of like there were four trees you know it was it was really just one main trunk but it had split and it was an older it was a hickory and like thinking back on it I'm like that was a hickory and it so it had kind of four main trunks and
00:27:57
Speaker
So dad just kind of put, made a little platform that sat in between those chunks. And man, I spent so much, and it was on the, like right as a hill crested. So you could kind of look out over the woods, you know, going downhill to the creek and.
00:28:10
Speaker
That was the place to be in my youth. Oh, there's been a lot of love for deciduous trees so far, but I'm just going to give a shout out to the conifers. I love conifers.
Appreciating Conifers
00:28:25
Speaker
I think that speaks a little bit to our particularly Kentucky geographic location that we have such an affiliation with the
00:28:36
Speaker
the ones that lose their leaves, the deciduous angiosperms, I guess. We have a lot of water here, lower elevations, hot clay soils, all those things can kind of contribute to that being the association. But it's higher elevations in Kentucky and then obviously other places across the United States. I think one thing about this time of year in particular in the spring that when I was growing up, I thought of
00:29:05
Speaker
evergreens as like they're just sort of evergreen. So they just like hang out and they're just green there, right? Like, and I thought I knew that, you know, that pine tree is bigger than that pine tree. And I just, I guess they thought they were born that way or something, but
00:29:25
Speaker
But if you look this time of year, you'll actually see the process of where the buds from that formed kind of last year and then through the early spring start to extend out. And then I don't know if it's a broader term in the plant world, but in the bonsai world, they refer to these as candles, because they look like the tip of the branch is holding this little tiny candle on it. Like a, I don't know, candlelight vigil or something like that.
00:29:53
Speaker
And, um, I just think that that and the new, new needles emerge from that candle. And in, depending on, depending on the species, some of them will hold onto their old needles for multiple different years. This is a pine tree, you know, a pine tree specific phenomenon that's happening. But, uh, so if you, if you see a white pine around or Virginia pine or pitch pine or any of the other ones that, you know, can be sprinkled throughout
00:30:19
Speaker
Kentucky or much, you know, all of the different ones that exist across the United States and across the world. Springtime is a really cool time. Spring into summer, you know, June up until about June is just a really fun time to watch some of the change and you can see them lose their winter color. And so that, yeah, they're evergreen, but they're like,
00:30:38
Speaker
50 different shades of green, depending on when you observe them throughout the course of the year. And if you'd never pay attention to it, you never, it's just, I don't know, it's just a tree. And they do lose their needles. I get a lot of calls certain times a year where people are like, my pine is dying. And I'm like, it's not, it's just shedding its old growth. There's nothing any better than being in, I mean, I'm going to say white pine. We had a lot of Virginia pines as you progress towards Virginia pine.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah, especially what you have this kind of mysterious they're always mysterious to me and kind of exotic on. You know a grouping of countries because it's dark under there and if it's something like a white pine you've got this bed of needles, it's quiet everything is muffled because the nature of.
00:31:21
Speaker
you know, that area of trees and I love getting under there. There's nothing I love more than during a heavy snow. And there were some areas of white pines that I would go to or Virginia, but more so white pines. When the snow would start to fall, I would put on my coat and walk a couple miles to where these areas were because they were large trees and the snow would be falling. It's like you were in your own playhouse. You would go under there and there's no snow under there. So quiet. Yeah. And everything was, I mean, that's
00:31:50
Speaker
And that's my favorite sound. It's funny. My favorite smell is associated with trees. My favorite sound is associated with trees, white pines, the wind through a white pine. There's nothing any better, you know, to me than that. My favorite smell is the smell of sassafras leaves. We used to sell a lot of those. As we cut those, us, you know, dad would let us boys then gather the leaves and sell those to herbalists. And for medicinal purposes, there was a buyer. The witches of Eastern Kentucky?
00:32:19
Speaker
Yes, there you go. They bought those things in mass. Said in a good way. Yeah, yeah. But sassafras is my favorite smell, and my favorite sound is those white pines. But yeah, evergreens, Brett, were sort of exotic to me a little bit, because once I started getting down in the hollows, I would hit big groves of hemlocks. And the sun never saw.
00:32:42
Speaker
where the hemlocks grew, the sun never reached down in there and it was the blue side of the mountain, what we call the blue side of the mountain. Oh wow. In Eastern Kentucky and that's where the sun didn't go. And you get down in there and the plant life, you started picking up all the ferns and just talk about exotic. You would get into those really, I'm convinced that fairies must live there.
00:33:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. That's a fey trap if I ever heard one. Oh yeah, yeah, but evergreens are sort of, since they were not as common, I don't know why, or that they provided all this shade and this darkness and this quiet. It's one of those things that's been kind of the mystery side of trees for me is these groves of pines.
00:33:23
Speaker
And I love going out west and getting in these big groves of pines and then seeing them kind of together like that. And the thing that's really fascinating to me that you're describing is that you
00:33:36
Speaker
are walking and you're experiencing all of these relics of different evolutionary phases coexisting and kind of existing according to whatever conditions are best for them in a given space. You have ferns and then you have conifers and then you also have these big
00:33:56
Speaker
highly advanced, you know, deciduous trees. Yeah, it's cool. The blue side of the mountain is like some charming stuff, right? Yeah, it sounds like a good album name. Like your memoir. Like the steel drivers probably had an album named Blue Side of the Mountain. I think Chris Stapleton, who grew up, he was five miles from me. But yeah, he may have a song with that in there. He knew about the Blue Side of the Mountain as well. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah.
00:34:21
Speaker
I think I just didn't really understand the conifer stuff. And other things too, like, you know, we have a lot of people don't like them, but what we call Eastern Red Cedar, there's actually a juniper. There are not a lot of mystery to those for me, but I appreciate them. I do love them. I do love them. As a sort of like pioneer species reclaiming areas that would have previously been forested and are no longer,
00:34:48
Speaker
has this kind of role of growing quickly and harboring Cedar Apple rust. I'm glad you brought that up succession because on joining our property, the farm I grew up on, there was a large strip mined area and it looked like a moonscape with some of our earliest memories. It looked like a moonscape and they were just pulling out and it's doing what reclaimed areas do. But I had the fortune of watching that area
00:35:17
Speaker
It was perfect, Brad. It grew up into the early successionary trees first, like cedars, and then went to locusts. And later on, it was an absolutely beautiful place. It looked like a savanna that you would see out west in Montana or someplace. It became this beautiful place from a moonscape. And I watched that for the most part. Yes, they did plant some young trees there, locusts and things, to get those growing again.
00:35:44
Speaker
that that left a big impact on me watching that place transform over the course of 20 some years from a moonscape into this beautiful savannah top situation that had the cedars and had the all of the locust trees and other trees came in after that and all of the grasses and stuff i think they planted some native grasses that actually took hold up there and it was just acres and acres and acres of this stuff
00:36:07
Speaker
talk about an awesome experience is watching nature take its course from zero to 100. It's really super cool. It's an interesting aspect of just like spending time in the woods that people sometimes like what we are what we are often seeing in most of the
00:36:24
Speaker
wooded spaces that we spend time in now there are there are exceptions we are seeing kind of these uh the the way the the ripples in the pond from a logging event you know an area was logged the trees were cut either selectively or clear cut in some cases and then things re-emerge they regrow and so we think of we think of these forests as kind of these untouched spaces but they're in many in many cases they are highly impacted by
00:36:52
Speaker
Human intervention and you do have these pockets where you do have old trees truly like it's it It exceeds I think almost entirely exceeds the modern imagination what true old-growth virgin forests everywhere was like It's just it's impossible for us to imagine because it's beyond something that we can really Yeah, those are pockets like the Lily Cornett woods down in electric County has some really old trees and like there's a
00:37:22
Speaker
Some of the national parks have some areas that were protected and the further west you go, the better chance they had to just timeline wise, they had to protect.
00:37:31
Speaker
certain
History of National Forests
00:37:32
Speaker
patches and things. But yeah, if you go and look at like old growth sawmill old pictures and you see this dude standing next to the cross section of a tree, it's like three times his height. It's like, whoa. I can't even find that. What were you going to say, Josh? Oh, just that that was an eye opening thing. And my like kind of forest ecology classes was understanding that a lot of the
00:37:54
Speaker
national forest system when it was, you know, quote unquote, gifted or assumed responsible by government. It's like it had been almost completely denuded and pictures of like, you know, Sibola National Forest or wherever, when it was deeded to the government, it was like there was nothing there. Wasteland. Yeah. Which speak when we're you're talking about Junipers. It's interesting because, you know, definitely here and like the cedar trees and cedar apple rust, there's no
00:38:25
Speaker
There's definitely some hostility towards that tree, whereas like when I was in New Mexico, like the smell of the juniper is very much like a thing that people appreciated and I associate.
00:38:38
Speaker
that kind of smell with moving through those areas that are kind of where I worked at an outdoor school that was right on the border of like the northern tip of the Savola National Forest. And there's an alligator juniper there that is like kind of at the end of this really, you know, nice little hike where it's basically a juniper tree. They call it that because the bark looks like alligator scales and it's real complex and interesting. But, you know, something else you said, Ray, made me think of that. Is that like
00:39:07
Speaker
kind of my own definition of when like an area is quiet is when I can hear the wind moving through the trees and that like when I'm in one of those places and like the further away you can hear that happening you know like the quieter it is and that school had like I mean it was very it's very much out you know very distant from a lot of human activity and
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of my that's one of my favorite sounds is to like hear that at a distance. It's a different kind
Tranquility of Forests
00:39:35
Speaker
of thing when you if you're lucky enough to describe what you're describing and then you just sit there and listen you start to hear all these birds you start to hear squirrels in the tree and you hear the wind.
00:39:46
Speaker
And it's a really cool thing. I mean, uh, I take, yeah, I just don't get that kind of quiet as much anymore. I don't seek it out as much as, you know, maybe I once had in the past, but when I get to a place like that, it's still awesome. I'm like, it's, it's like, you know, time slows just a bit. And I don't know how to describe it. There's just certain parts of the woods where Tom hangs heavy.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah. And you can just, you get this, this feeling of slow time. And it's usually those areas like that have a, they're a little bit older. There's not a lot of, you know, black, blackberries and things that are growing underneath. They have a closed canopy. You can walk under there freely. It's kind of dark and it's got that mysterious thing going on, but the quiet. Yeah. It always reminds me of these heavy places.
00:40:31
Speaker
That's all good until it gets dark. The same sound when it's light outside is very, in my opinion, received very differently when the sun is set. Different meaning when it gets dark. I have bow hunted in the past. Midnight with no moon. You're out in the woods and you have to stay, like you're saying past dark, right? Because usually dusk is kind of when you see some deer move through.
00:41:01
Speaker
And so you're walking out in the dark or in the morning, you're walking in in the dark. And so it is, the woods are a very beautiful, relaxing place until, for me at least, until the sun goes down and I'm in the dark. As long as I was on my own farm, I knew those trails really well. I was fine with it. Yeah. But even then there's, there's just a little bit, and maybe, maybe it's cause I'm a woman. I don't know, but like there's a little, there's that eerie feeling that in the daytime is so magical.
00:41:31
Speaker
that eerie feeling to me becomes very like, oh, like there's a danger here, which is, you know, part of what makes like nature beautiful, right? But like the day, yeah, there is that little part where your hair's on your neck, stand up and have for thousands of years kind of thing. Yeah. And you're like, okay, I'm going to walk faster. I have to get Annie, Annie on the pod to talk about, she talked, we've talked about, she and I have talked about before, like the,
00:42:00
Speaker
the gradual gradual or just cycles of change of what like the woods and wildness and darkness and like the edge between woods and meat has meant literally across the boundaries. And how, you know, for some people, the woods are a terrifying place. And then for others, it was kind of there was like an inversion of that where coming out of the woods was the thing that was more terrifying.
00:42:25
Speaker
Oh, that your description of like the woods after dark. There was what I used to work up in like the northern part of Harlan County at Pine Mountains, Pine Mountain Settlement School. It's a really cool area. There was kind of like a little hike that I had to take every day going to and from work and like, you know, when the sun starts setting sooner,
00:42:46
Speaker
Obviously, it gets dark quicker. I'm on like the northern slope, so the sun is setting at 3 p.m. or whatever. Is that the green side of the mountain or the blue? Which color-coded side of the mountain was that? I mean, they're all green. Yeah, they're all green. But yeah, so on that hike, I mean, it was an old logging cut from who knows when, very narrow, and had a few little kind of
00:43:15
Speaker
jigs in it i guess but like there were times during the year when i'd be walking home and i wouldn't have checked that like oh this is a a night with no moon or whatever and it's like it would be pitch black trying to walk through there and of course like i didn't bring any kind of like light source or anything like that but i made the walk probably like you know 150 times so i would just kind of
00:43:37
Speaker
move through the space with my hands out in front of me and the danger was like walking into a branch. It's like going to hit me right. Yeah, my fear was getting a branch in the. Right. Yeah, just some kind of broken up junk because I'm mostly I mean, there was wildlife around there and mostly turkeys, mostly deer, and they would chuff at you. And that's a weird noise to hear the first time you hear it. And then it's like, shut up. Yeah, it's no big deal. I'll tell you what you won't get used to. And I wonder if you're going in this direction. Are you going in the bobcat direction?
00:44:07
Speaker
I was going to go in the black bear direction. The first time and like the time that I got most scared was when I was coming home after dark. And luckily I was not on foot, but I was like pulling into my driveway. And as my lights are like sweeping across my driveway, which to point out, I was probably a quarter mile from my nearest neighbor or more.
00:44:33
Speaker
So it's like I'm kind of on this outer edge of the campus and my lights sweep across and I don't just see a black bear. I see a baby black bear. Oh no. This is the end. I grabbed it and I said, I love you. It'd be great for my Instagram story.
00:44:55
Speaker
I was like, can I get a selfie? I was like, hold on, that wasn't good. Let's get another one. Go stop crying, OK? Yeah. Yeah. I did not die. I just sat in the car and listened to the radio for like 35 minutes. At least you were not walking on foot. That would have been much worse. Yeah. If I was walking on foot, I would have just sat down and been like, maybe I'll make it.
00:45:20
Speaker
This could be it. This could be the end. I mean, luckily all of my interactions with black bears have always been that kind of they seem like they're really shy and they're not interested in anything. Like they're like, oh, God. And they just like wander away. Meander away. Their babies are involved, I hear. Yeah, that's where I was like, the calculus has changed. Yeah, the math is different for Alexis. The math is different.
Unique Deciduous Conifers
00:45:43
Speaker
I'm going to give one last shout out to another group of trees that we have not yet shouted out. And that is
00:45:49
Speaker
The, the niche, but lovely deciduous conifers, bald cypress, Aspen. I mean, not Aspen. Yeah, but they're neat trees though. Neat organism. Larges is what I was thinking of. But yeah, Aspen are cool. Yeah, Aspen Grove.
00:46:06
Speaker
Oh yeah. One of the neatest things ever. Tens of thousands of trees all growing off of one root system, one shared network root system. It's a weird thing. It's one tree. Yeah. I don't know. Isn't it all just one tree, Alexis? It's one tree. I don't know, technically, if we've shouted out the ginkgo, because it's in that weird category. We haven't shouted it out. That E stands out to me as just like,
00:46:32
Speaker
I mean, of course it does, but it's like when I see it represented in any way, I am enchanted by it all over again. So enchanted he smacks his microphone. I can't. This is what I was talking about with all of the weird evolutionary splitting off where
00:46:53
Speaker
You have things that they, they aren't there. They don't move. They haven't didn't move in a, you know, further down the line in terms of their development. They just sort of were able to keep on keeping on with that from half court. And they were like, boom, this is what I do. I fix what's not broken, bro. There is a, I have a tree in my backyard that actually appears to have to be one of the earliest.
00:47:22
Speaker
that it's a dinosaur in essence, where other things split off and it appears to be one of the earliest trees that was sort of left behind in the evolutionary split, that it doesn't have any, it's a Japanese umbrella pine, which is known as, it's sciaticitis. I can't remember the species name, but it's the only thing in that genus, I believe.
00:47:48
Speaker
And it is weird and it's not super happy in my, in the spot that it's in. It's kind of a weird, weird little fun thing, but to your point about the ginkgo and these other things that have adapted.
00:48:03
Speaker
I think I have a newfound appreciation for bald cypress in particular as a tree. I think that they're so cool. They got really cool fall color. And they're bald. The bald boy loves bald cypress. On brand. There's a cool one that's right by where I walk into work every day.
00:48:26
Speaker
That probably will be yeeted by future construction. Oh, no. But yeah. Yeah, so I just want to shout out. I think for me, for me, I think spring is one of those obvious times when I was younger. I didn't appreciate trees at all. I didn't really care. I just whatever.
00:48:43
Speaker
But I've gotten older and- It's like bird watching. It creeps up on you. Yeah. And I think the past of seasons, trees are one of these harbingers of the seasons.
Seasonal Changes in Trees
00:48:55
Speaker
And it's not just spring, oh man, I can't breathe because of all this pollen, thank you. And while these dogwood flowers are beautiful and redwoods are beautiful, they continue to change across the course of the year.
00:49:10
Speaker
peak summer, you can just see the color of the trees is like this virulent, aggressive green that's just going crazy. And that's crazy. It's like, it's like too intense or something for, for me at least. But, uh, and so I just think, uh, as you go, as we go through this year and as we go through the spring and the summer, take a little time to just look around and notice some of the differences in the trees as they're changing and as the,
00:49:41
Speaker
A lot of those flowers went out and they either got pollinated or didn't, and they're going to be fruit of some sort later on. That's kind of this fun dynamic to follow along with.
00:49:51
Speaker
Acorns will come out eventually at some point from some of the oak trees and the pine cones. Some of them will put on seed and pollen cones at different times. It's just a fun way to, like you were saying, Ray, to kind of track time in this very old school human way. It's like a tale of the land trees. They're a physical expression of the land and the history.
00:50:12
Speaker
and a marker of time. And ecologically, you've seen it earlier, right? Like they, they play this really big role that we, I think sometimes in the butterfly garden era, we overplay the role of the Echinacea and the milkweed, which those are great. And they're amazing. No shade to the flower people. Alexis is going to have me like this tree so much. Yeah. But I mean, they, they're so like the flowering, but also the food source, the habitat, the,
00:50:42
Speaker
Effect that it has on all the below ground stuff, the Michael Reisey with Michael Reisel relationships. I don't know. I just love trees and I know you all did too. And so
Shade vs. Fruit Trees in Urban Areas
00:50:51
Speaker
I appreciate you watching my idea of the joy of the joie de tree. This is my own little warning as we, as we close out though.
00:51:01
Speaker
don't go plant an orchard in a public park or assume that if you plant fruit trees as street trees, you will feed the homeless and everything will be okay because that's not the way it works. Yeah, it can be difficult. There's a lot of nuance there. We love us all trees, but shade trees do a lot for the environment and for people and how they feel. Put those shade trees on your streets and in your parks, maybe not so much fruit, okay? Just look
00:51:31
Speaker
Yeah. And it's to the same point we made earlier in one of our earlier many moons ago episodes that people get really hyped up on like vegetable gardens, but like there's a lot of value in planting perennial landscape plants and other types of things. And yeah, the well-intended approach to, you know, let's go put out a bunch of fruit trees sometimes doesn't work out too well. And maybe we can talk about fruit trees at some point in the future.
00:51:58
Speaker
I got to speak up for the possum in my neighborhood that really appreciates my apple tree.
00:52:06
Speaker
He's very chubby. He doesn't see very well. And every fall he comes around and it's a smorgasbord, rotten apples on the ground. He's like, thank you. But the point here is that they're rotten apples on the ground. They're probably not going to feed the world that way. No, just that possum. That possum. That possum. That's like the starfish, right? Like you're picking up starfish. Somebody says, you know, you couldn't possibly, there's tens of thousands of starfish on the beach picking up, throwing them in. He said, you're never going to be able to throw all the starfish back.
00:52:35
Speaker
You know, you're right, you're right, but you know what? It matters to this one and throws it in. That's Josh and his possum. To your possum that he is the world, Josh. I'll be a little kinship with him because in a lot of ways I look at the world as my dumpster and I am its possum. I shall go forth and say I am as full as I am now. And that is the name of today's episode. The world is Josh's dumpster and he is its possum. I mean, we have found the title of this today's episode.
00:53:02
Speaker
Definitely will have the word possum in it. I guarantee you.
Listener Engagement and Favorite Trees
00:53:06
Speaker
All right, everybody. Well, we would love if you would tell us what your favorite tree is. And, you know, in leaving us a review, tell us which one that you personally like and we'll tell you all the ways you're correct because there's no wrong answer here.
00:53:19
Speaker
for trees, except for fruit trees as tree trees. No, it's not happening. I've drawn the line. Anyways. Um, Bradford, Bradford pears everywhere. Oh, I thought you said there were no wrong answer. I mean, there's, there's ecological things, everything, and they are already everywhere. So I mean, also who is going to say Bradford pear? I just said, I got one.
00:53:41
Speaker
So if you drop that in the review or you can leave that in a comment on this week's Instagram post about trees. So you can follow us there at Hort Culture Podcast and just let us know what trees you like. And maybe if you want to hear about fruit trees and an episode, let us know about that. We have our email in the show notes, hortculturepodcast at l.uky.edu. And I know none of you wrote that down, but it is in the
00:54:09
Speaker
show notes. So if you have a question about growing trees or which tree would fit in a right tree, right place is something we say a lot. Feel free to reach out and ask those questions. We are here to help. We don't just podcast, we answer questions for a living. So you can reach out to any of us on there. But that is this week and we hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and that you will join us again. Thanks for being here.