Some Leaves Stay
It is snowing again and winter drags on. Yes, the days are growing longer, but – Yes, the calendar promises spring soon, but— —I am staring into the flat, gray panel of this day and see only dreary doubt. More than warmth, more than sun rays, I am wanting for color.
Leafless and bright in contrast to grim sky, the Woodland Garden sycamore tree is wearing a Josephs’ coat for winter. Its patchy bark is broken into individual flakes in satiny shades of olive, milky chartreuse, cinnamon, and pale ochre. But the Garden specimen lacks the chalky white patches usual to our local sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) which suggests to me that it might be a plane tree, itself a hybrid of local sycamore and Asian sycamore (Platanus orientalis). I will know more when it leafs out, and remember to post the answer here.
Extant since at least the 1800s, the plane tree is a salt- and soil-tolerant plant that thrives on the grit of city living, and proves it with a century of success beautifying the streets of Paris, London, and New York. It is one of those trees that is ubiquitous in the image and experience of city life, and has been woven into the background cloth of our urban consciousness. Severe and continual pruning is tolerated to the extent that the plane tree is widely trained into street-side topiary: witness the row of them flanking The Terrace; witness the double row reflecting in the Art Museum lagoon.
The native sycamore is a denizen of Ohio’s river bottoms, where life favors those who can outgrow the dangers of flood and ice. Often clinging to collapsing mud banks, sycamores rocket up to the sliver of sky above the water, attain great height early, and save commensurate girth for later in life. They are prolific seeders, and employ wind and water to spread their future. Older survivors thicken and roughen and boast gashes like trophies in their trunks from annual warfare with river ice and the spring thaw. And, if we don’t have one living on our ten acres, there are a few chalky-white native sycamores growing along M.L.K. Boulevard.
More color at the far end of the C.K. Patrick Walk. An Asian spicebush (Lindera orientalis) there hangs bright, strappy leaves like feathers made of hammered copper. The spicebush is dormant and deciduous, yet its leaves persist. The leaves are dead but for the twig-end of their stems. Their separation (due to abscission, a hormone-regulated, compartmentalized cell death and subsequent tissue separation) was halted last autumn and will be completed this spring, and there’s a 25-cent word for it: marcescence. It is also common with many of our oaks (see them around Gateway) and young beech trees. If marcescence is considered a juvenile trait, I’ve met many mature oaks that would argue about that. With Asian spicebush it is complete and quite formal, for no leaves will drop until buds begin to swell.
More color. Nearby, tucked in the Rose Garden border, grows a mass of evergreen azaleas. The slender, hairy-like-a-fly leaves vary in color from earthy green to rust. This variety, ‘Cascade,’ is necessarily a hybrid of Japanese azaleas, since all of North America’s are deciduous. It has white flowers in spring, and golden leaves in autumn. Curiously to me, white blooming evergreen azaleas have golden autumn foliage, and red-blooming have ruddy or bloody autumn foliage. Evergreen azaleas are actually partially deciduous, and will lose less or more of their leaves from year to year, depending on each winter’s severity.
More color. Still in the Rose Garden, the glossy evergreen leaves on a holly bush attract my attention. In this light, they absolutely glow. Holly is a tribe of (mostly) evergreen plants that inhabit North America, Europe and parts of Asia. This one is an inkberry (Ilex glabra), and aptly bears black berries each autumn. Like all hollies, plants are male or female, and both are needed to set fruit. This Eastern U.S. native makes an interesting garden alternative in those places where you might usually plant a bay. Prettiest in winter, inkberry is slow growing, soil tolerant and generally well-behaved.
The plant world exhibits a continuum of leaf habit from fully evergreen to fully deciduous. Each variation is a particular tactic to a shared problem; water availability. To plants it makes little matter if it is Cleveland’s winter drought, or Madagascar’s desert drought: to survive, they must lose leaves or waterproof leaves, or a little of both.
And to my delight, in battleship gray Cleveland, they do so in color.
Posted by Mark Bir
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