Behold the last flowering tree in my DC neighborhood (actually my yard) to bloom!
This dogwood tree outside my building on the east side of the driveway has taken forever this year toa) bloom, and
b) bloom long enough for the flowers to develop into their present creamy yellow.
While the same kind of dogwood on the WEST side of the drive blossomed and then lost all its petals--this tree's blossoms stayed the same color as the leaves. (Find the first blossom in the top photo to the left--taken at least 2-3 weeks ago.)
Last week after a good rain, it sped up its transformation. (In the bottom photo to the left, some of the blossoms are not quite fully yellow.)
Finally NOW you can SEE all the blossoms (or you could if you were standing on the roof), and they are beautiful!
Next step will be the fruit!! Goddess only knows how long it will take for that to appear! Each fruit will be cherry-colored but composite, like a raspberry, with a long stem.
The dogwood was my mother's favorite tree. I am confused, however, by seeing blossoms on trees that have already leafed out. I didn't know that they did that!
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CC: they do, indeed. guess it depends on which kind grows where you live. I've never seen one WITH flowers that had NO leaves. but there are two kinds: deciduous and evergreen. (The one in the photos is an evergreen variety, although it tolerates only a light frost.) Thanks...you always have something interesting to say...:)
ReplyDeleteI know nothing about Dogwood trees so was surprised to read that they bear fruit. Is it edible?
ReplyDeleteDarlene: It's cute as it can be, but it's NOT EDIBLE! It has almost no taste or juice or anything. I'd be interested to find out whether it's actually toxic or just totally unappealing.
DeleteDarlene: p.s. In Iowa, they have a lot of mulberry trees growing wild. People hate them in town because the berries fall on cars and sidewalks, get crushed, and stain everything purple. When we lived on the tenant farm that one summer and worked in the fields walking beans, I'd always stand a minute or so in the shade of the mulberry trees by the fence line and grab a handful. The juice was not especially flavorful, but it quenched my thirst completely. Very refreshing! And of course, the birds LOVED them.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, and don't we love how the birds excrete the purple poop onto freshly laundered linens that hang drying on the line? *chuckling*
DeleteCop Car
CC: purple poop....loved to say it. only thing better is
Deletepurple bird poop
one thing about getting old, it's easy to amuse yourself.
That's one gorgeous tree! I remember seeing the dogwoods bloom in the Pennsylvania woods in spring. And I had wall paper with a dogwood blossom print in my bedroom in the first house my parents bought, from an old German guy. And there was a big oxheart cherry tree outside my window.
ReplyDeleteLinda: We had a dogwood tree outside our back door in Fargo, but it was more of a shrub. I don't remember the flowers--just the red bark. Maybe it was too cold in Fargo for them to bloom. My mom focused on raising asparagus, strawberries, and gooseberry, raspberry, & currant bushes. We got an apple tree about the time I left home, so I don't know if that produced anything.
ReplyDeleteLinda: P.S. You had wallpaper!! Wow. I was allowed to draw on my walls with crayons when I got older. (My room was a former sewing room off my parents' bedroom--about like a closet with a window. I let my kids do that, too, in the downstairs bathroom in Iowa. They were quite talented.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if Linda's wallpaper was the same as what I had on one wall of my bedroom in Kansas City MO?
DeleteAs to drawing: I gave our daughters the opportunity to finger paint in the glaze coat on the tops of their small bedside chests - gifts of unfinished pine from grandparents.
Cop Car
CC: Another wallpaper person!! I do love the stuff, though....once I found out about it. It was not part of my youth.
DeleteI got three rolls of William Morris print wallpaper (you'd probably recognize the name of the British purveyor if I could remember it) (Sanderson?) at the big hardware store in Cedar Rapids for 85c apiece!! And used it to decorate one wall of an upstairs hallway to great effect.
As for the fingerpainting on their bedside chests....Isn't it wonderful how much children love to do that? And how glorious their drawings are?
XE--Whoo, boy! It was my mother who loved wallpaper. I don't know any wallpaper makers.
DeleteEvery few years Mom and Dad would get out the paste and paper and hang a few rolls - doing a terrific job of choosing and of hanging.
At about the time I was entering 8th grade, Mom asked me what color I wanted my room (the only one in the family with her own room!) As I kept changing my mind about what my favorite color was, Mom threw up her hands and decided, herself. She put a creamy dogwood blossoms on pastel Federal blue paper on one wall and the companion paper of the same background on the other three - with matching blue woodwork.
I'm a paint person - so much simpler and less fussy.
CC
CC: Your mom had sophisticated taste! I got acquainted with wallpaper in Iowa when we moved into our house in town. The KITCHEN had wallpaper, and it was purple flowers on a dirty gray bckground. Plus it had been hanging up there since 1947! Gah. I think we inhaled a lot of arsenic from the old-fashioned paste when we steamed it off, but we survived.
DeleteWe have dogwood - the dogwood with the bright red branches and not the flowering kind. I LOVE yours! Very pretty!
ReplyDeletePeggy: I love it, too. I love all kinds of dogwood. Who knew there were so many kinds? When I used to go to NYC every other weekend on the bus, it was always dusk when I left, yet the dogwood trees along the highway were alight with blossoms. They GLOWED in the darkening woods as if they were floating. So beautiful!
Deletexoxo, mom
Happy Mother's Day!
ReplyDeleteJust today, they cut down my neighbor's dogwood tree, which had grown so large that its branches hung over my kitchen window, and it was beautiful. My neighbor had recently moved out and left the tree behind, knowing I loved it and thinking the next tenant would love it too.
When I heard the sawing this morning I ran over, but I was too late. The tree was totally destroyed. I wept. I couldn't believe they would kill such a beautiful tree. Why?
Surely a big, beautiful healthy tree would be desirable for the next tenant? What was the landlord thinking?
Anyway, what a coincidence to see that tree gone just minutes before I saw this post with pictures of dogwoods.
How upsetting. I would have wept, too!
DeleteCop Car
Diana: What a disaster! Don't ask my opinion of the landlord! But I've come to believe that it's an atavistic thing. It seems the men I've known just LOVE to cut down trees at the slightest provocation. Women do, too, but usually because they find the tree "dirty"--that is, because it litters their precious yard with seeds, nuts, and leaves. Still, what a downer!
ReplyDeleteand thanks for the M.D. greetings. I got greetings from all my offspring this year. The end must be nigh...
Soooooooo lovely. And, yes, Diana, once where I used to live a similar thing happened. The state decided to cut down beautiful trees along a man made lake. Residents were livid...Oh we humans are so wasteful of natures beauty and bounty.
ReplyDeleteAnd Mary Ellen how lovely has become that tree outside your window. Good vibes going both ways.
Cat
cat: thanks! you're sounding less frazzled! glad you are out of the maelstrom for a bit.
ReplyDeleteWe had a pink dogwood on the grassy strip in front of our house in Portland. I don't remember that it ever had fruit. Last time I drove by there it had been cut down. It was such a pretty little tree.
ReplyDeleteWe have so many trees now in Hawaii, which I just love.
Hattie: Trees are the best. I was raised by trees...(no offense to my dear, sweet mother)...
DeleteIsn't it funny how many microclimates fit into our little yards? It's such a pretty tree.
ReplyDeleteEllen Kirkendall: One of my favorite things, the year I taught life science to a bunch of 7th graders, was having them explore the microclimates in the school yard. Desert to jungle to desert to grassland.....so wonderful!!
DeleteM.E. Yes, what a downer to see such a beautiful tree destroyed. I wonder if there is a similar pathology to tree cutting as there is to setting fires.
ReplyDelete"Oh we humans are so wasteful of natures beauty and bounty."
Anonymous, sadly all too true.
I've always enjoyed dogwoods when we lived where they grew. We have none here. I enjoy my magnolia and crepe myrtle. We had to cut down our mulberry because when it bloomed my husband had a serious respiratory allergic reaction to it. Then a huge beetle of some sort had embedded itself in my lovely red maple, destroying that tree we discovered. My city is a designated City of Trees -- lots of eucalyptus.
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