An Extraordinary Dogwood Season

Missouri's state tree (the hawthorn is the state flower) is currently in bloom! Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida) is probably the most beloved of flowering trees and rightfully so as its flowers are surrounded by showy bracts that outlast petals of other spring flowering trees. We expect peak bloom to last for another week here at Powell Gardens. This classic white dogwood is a tree we grew from seed and can be found behind the Chapel Trolley Stop.


Our butterfly bench is surrounded by the pink-bracted forms of Flowering Dogwoods a.k.a. "Pink Dogwood." We planted Pink Dogwoods around the Visitor Center because their spring color contrasts with our limestone walls better than regular white Flowering Dogwood.


Pink Dogwood's botanical name (Cornus florida 'Rubra') is really a catch all phrase for dogwoods with pink bracts. Typically it is a soft pink when in bloom as depicted. This is the second dogwood tree along the dogwood walk from the Visitor Center and is our best Pink Dogwood. The bract color on pink dogwoods can vary from almost red to light pink.


There are select cultivars of "pink" dogwood that are clones. This is the cultivar 'Cherokee Brave,' which has exceptional disease resistance and vigor. The bracts emerge almost red and fade to a rich pink -- this one also has a soft heliotrope fragrance that is very noticeable on warm, sunny evenings. Look for it as the third dogwood tree along the dogwood walk from the Visitor Center. It is becoming readily available at local nurseries too.


The "Red" Dogwood is usually the cultivar 'Cherokee Chief' depicted here. The bracts emerge almost ruby red but fade to deep pink as they age. Most visitors barely notice the subtle variations in bract colors but as a designer it is fun to play with the color variations.


Our "reddest" Flowering Dogwood at Powell Gardens was purchased as a Pink Dogwood! It has smokey rose mature bracts that are even deeper colored than 'Cherokee Chief.' Look for this dogwood right outside the Cafe. If you are in the market for a dogwood, go to your local nursery now and buy them in bloom! You are sure to get the flower color you want that way.


We have a very diverse collection of Flowering Dogwood cultivars along the Dogwood Walk outside the Visitor Center. The uniquely double bracted cultivar depicted is 'Springtime Double.'


Springtime Double Dogwood looks almost like a gardenia but without the scent. I think the double dogwoods are very beautiful but they do not set fruit for birds and wildlife.


Our seedling dogwood depicted in the previous blog with peachy young bracts has now aged to a beautiful pink blushed white. I am very fond of this plant behind the Chapel Trolley Stop. You can't find a dogwood like this at local nurseries!


This is a bird planted seedling dogwood growing near the dogwood walk. I had the gardeners save it because its spring foliage is almost purple. I knew it would have dark colored bracts and here it is for its first bloom! The flowers are almost red with a white center. Our gardener Barbara Fetchenhier has labeled it 'Rich's Red Hot' after Horticulturist Richard Heter who is in charge of maintaining the dogwood walk. We have two golden leaved dogwood seedlings also growing near the dogwood walk.

We are always on the lookout for unusual garden seedlings--that is how new cultivars of plants are discovered and introduced into the nursery trade. Dogwoods are not the easiest of flowering trees to transplant but are definitely worth the challenge. Balled and burlapped trees are easier to establish so I recommend purchasing them.

Established dogwoods are relatively carefree and are exceptional four season plants. They have beautiful sympodial branching, alligator hide-like bark; red fruit in the fall that is an important fuel for migrating songbirds, and the best reliable and long lasting fall color of any tree here. Come out and enjoy young dogwoods planted throughout Powell Gardens -- they are putting on quite a show this year!

Glorious Redbuds

The extra 10 day wait of this slow spring has been worth it: the redbuds are in full bloom! Most American native, spring flowering trees are white but the Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) defies this color constraint with a shocking raspberry sherbet haze across local landscapes and woodlands. The nectar rich blooms are edible to us and attract a wide array of pollinators and beneficial insects.

Redbuds are a personal favorite not only for the color of their bloom, but also for their strikingly artistic trunks, often cloaked in blue-gray and golden-green lichens and flowers too! If you like sculpture, their is no finer organic artisan than an aged redbud.

Senior Gardener, Janet Heter, maintains the redbud collection at Powell Gardens, which is found on the walk to and surrounding the Faye Jones designed, Marjory Powell Allen Chapel.

Wild and planted Redbuds refresh the scene and paint the woods edge near the Chapel Trolley stop.

A real pink flowering redbud? Yes, this is the pink-pink flowering cultivar 'Tennessee Pink' Redbud which is in full bloom at the entrance to the woodland walk to the chapel. Look for other varieties of redbud in this area!

Gazing down the woodland walk to the chapel it opens up to reveal the chaple landscape surrounded in blooming White Redbuds (Cercis canadensis 'Alba'). Wild native redbuds splash their color as a backdrop that highlight the white-flowering beauties.

A White Redbud blooms beyond the Faye Jones designed fountain in front of the chapel.

A view to the west sparkles with White Redbuds in bloom along the woodland's edge. White flowering trees and white flowers have symbolized purity across many religions so their use in the chapel landscape is most appropriate.

Flowering Dogwood is the classic companion to redbuds. We planted Flowering Dogwoods (Cornus florida) that we grew from seed near the Chapel Trolley stop and they are beginning to bloom well. It takes 6 years for a seedling to flower. I actually like the rich colors of their bloom in its emerging stage (you can see them at this stage throughout the gardens).

This seedling dogwood we grew has interesting peach pink bracts that open to apple blossom pink, blushed white flowers. This demonstrates the value of growing some of our plants from seed! (See the prior "Birth of Trees" blog). We have a unique dogwood you can see nowhere else -- it is just behind the Chapel Trolley stop and is still a young tree.

Be sure to look down and see the native Toadshade Trilliums (Trillium sessile) blooming along the walk to the chapel. Look for these wildflowers as well: from Cream Violets and Virginia Bluebells to Woodland Phlox and Merrybells.

We have some unusual colored Toadshade Trilliums too. This one has atypical lighter colored blooms.

And as a footnote to your visit to Powell Gardens in redbud season, the Baltimore Orioles made their epic journey last night and returned along with fallout of countless Neotropical Songbirds. The gardens are alive with their calls and donated oranges have been placed outside the Cafe so we can lure them in for you to get a closer look. (The picture is from Betsy Betros of a Baltimore Oriole on a peanut feeder last year).

Come celebrate the rebirth of the growing season with spectacular birds and bloom at Powell Gardens. The colors and song of spring should last into mid-May. Peak redbud bloom will be this weekend, peak dogwood and azalea bloom in an additional week.

The Birth of Trees

The old saying from tiny acorns, mighty oak trees grow is a good one. Trees, some of our largest living organisms, begin life from seeds. Powell Gardens does propagate some of its trees from seed. If we want to protect and display a particular population of plants, this is often the only way to do so. Why protect a particular population? We know that the wild trees from a specific area often have traits that make them more adapted to a particular region. It is well documented that many trees with widespread ranges (say Eastern North America), those from the more southern part of the range may not be winter hardy in the northern part of their range and those from northern parts languish in the heat when planted in the southern part of their range. Trees from drier regions of their range are often more drought tolerant is another example. Sometimes certain populations have more disease resistance too.

Here is a tray of young Butternut (Juglans cinerea) trees that have germinated from butternuts collected from underneath a wild tree not far from here. Butternut is a tree in trouble -- an imported canker disease has wiped it out from much of its range. Where I grew up I have watched all the mature trees die, a few saplings still grow but all are infested with the canker. Before long, they will be gone as remaining trees never live long enough to produce nuts (their seed). Powell Gardens is just past the butternut's native range, so trees planted here do not yet get canker disease.

Here is a closer look of young butternut trees. Seeing the luxuriant growth of these young seedlings inspired me to write this blog. I hope one day they will grow and produce the tasty, football shaped nuts beneath their uniquely flat-topped crowns. Their beautiful silvery plated, charcoal striped trunks protect a most beautiful light colored wood -- too rare to be of commercial importance.

Marie Frye (Senior Gardener -- Plant Records & Collections) is in charge of growing all our unique trees. Here she takes a closer look at her baby butternuts as today they will be transplanted into individual deep, open bottom pots so that they can grow strong roots that will be naturally "air pruned" as their roots reach the bottom of their new container. This is a good way to grow plants that have deep tap roots as seedlings.


Marie planted many Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata) nuts too. See my Old Hickory blog for part of their story. These are grown in competition for a national program sponsored by a local garden club. Shagbark Hickories grow roots and not crowns for the beginning of their life so are not available at local nurseries (they are not cheap to produce and take time). They are very ornamental and important trees and these will be planted at various locations around the metro so their kind will not be lost.


Here are seedlings of Cucumber Magnolia (Magnolia acuminata). Cucumber Magnolia is a large shade tree native on the west side of the Appalachians from Ontario to Alabama and makes a fine shade tree here but is rarely if ever available at nurseries. These are grown from seed of the magnificent tree near the Southwest corner of Loose Park.



Sometimes we do propagate trees from cuttings to ensure an exact clone of a plant. This is a cutting grown young Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora). Because we are at the northernmost place where they will successfully grow outdoors, we have propagated some of the region's best examples to find a more hardy one for local gardens.


It hard to believe that this tiny seedling is from the largest tree in our region! This is a seedling of a Baldcypress (Taxodium distichum) grown from a massive, 8 foot diameter trunked tree near Mayview. Eric Tschanz (Powell Gardens Director) and I stopped in to visit its owner and collect seed on the way back from a meeting in Columbia. Obviously this tree has the genes to be a survivor in our region. Someday I would like to propagate all of Greater Kansas City's champion trees for planting at Powell Gardens.


These are seedlings of wild Flowering Dogwoods (Cornus florida) grown from trees on the western edge of their range not far from here. We hope they are better able to survive the vagaries of our weather as Flowering Dogwood can be fickle here -- if planted from too far south it is not hardy or if from too far east it doesn't like our lower humidity and rainfall.



This is a Dwarf Hackberry (Celtis tenuifolia) seedling from a local wild tree. Dwarf Hackberry is not the most ornamental of trees but is very heat and drought tolerant, hosts 5 species of butterflies' caterpillars, produces sweet berries for us and birds, and grows only 15 to 18 ft. tall at maturity.



Speaking of edible plants, these are seedlings of some of our select Pawpaws (Asimina triloba) now growing in the yet to open Heartland Harvest Garden. Maybe one day they will produce the best tasting pawpaws ever! A good way to find new varieties is to plant out seedlings and test them over time.


This seedling has traveled around the world. It is a Pistachio (Pistachia vera) grown from the hardiest known Pistachios in Uzbekistan. We purchased it from One Green World which is a great nursery that introduces hardy edible plants from around the world. This is one of 3 seedlings -- Pistachios are male and female plants and you can't tell the boys from the girls until they start to bloom. These seedlings will be planted in the Fun Food Garden section of the Heartland Harvest Garden.



The tall spindly tree in this picture is of a very special plant started from a special population of trees. It is an Oklahoma Live Oak (Quercus fusiformis) donated by Steve Bierberich,owner of Sunshine Nursery in Clinton, OK. It is grown from a relic, disjunct Oklahoma population of the Escarpment Live Oak (the same live oaks you see in Austin, Texas). It has proven to have good hardiness into the lower Midwest! Our two trees will be planted in the Vineyard portion of the Heartland Harvest Garden where they will add to the Mediterranean theme of that garden. The acorns of this species are very low tanin and were once an important human food source.

May this blog inspire you to plant trees, from seed or from your favorite nursery: just get out and plant them! As 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai, who started The Green Belt Movement to plant trees and restore the environment and democracy in Kenya, said in her acceptance speech "to give back to the children a world of wonder and beauty." Wangari Maathai also has a Greater Kansas City connection as she received her bachelor's degree in biology from what is now Benedictine College in Atchison, KS.
All photographs were taken in Powell Gardens' greenhouses on April 15, 2009.