Tuesday, November 15, 2005

On one of my recent walks home from work, I decided to pick up a couple Honey Locust pods. Figured I'd try growing my own as a project over the winter. We have a lot of them in my neighborhood, and I've grown to love them in all their thorny glory. In the spring, they give us beautiful white-wisteria-looking flowers whose scent could never be bottled. In summer, sunshine filtering through the lacy-patterned compound leaves illustrates the term "sun dappled" perfectly for me. In fall, those same leaves turn the color of school buses before falling off - a nice change from the drabber yellows of the Norway Maple and Ailanthus. In the wintertime, the spiked varieties look a little bit like characters from a Tim Burton story; kind of sad and grotesque at the same time. It's always a relief to see them bud again come spring.

Karen, who spends a good amount of her gardening time battling the seedlings, told me that they're very prolific and they grow fast. Guess I'll have to choose wisely where I plant, then. (Maybe will give Pablo's backyard a present. We'll see.)

4 comments:

Nick said...

Honey Locusts are the spawn of satan. My mother has them in her front yard... and I rake for her. Those little tiny leaves are impossible to rake up. Evil I tell you! Pure evil!

Be said...

We've got a big pincherry in the backyard that is the bane of our existence every summer. The cherries (about the size of a pinky fingernail) drop and stain everything. Then the birds come, eat till they near burst, and poop all over everything. That said - I'd much rather have the tree than not.

Anonymous said...

When I was taking classes in the Radcliffe Seminars Landscape program years ago, I was Gleditsia triacanthos (Ditsy), and my friend was Liriodendron tulipifera (Piffy). It's all a matter of letting them know who's boss: A shopping bag, a pair of clippers and a sharp eye

Sissy
sisu

Be said...

Sissy: that's so cute! Much sweeter than what my friends used to call me, anyway.

Pablo (my tree guru) and I used to like to wander around Harvard Yard and let our hands (you know - like Senor Wences's 'Johnny' character?) identify trees. My little character always liked Space Magnolia because it was always so fun to say with a fake Spanish accent:

LEE-REE-oh-DEN-dron Too-lee-PEEE-ferra.

Pablo had two favorites:

CAH-TAHL-PAH (because it's the only word we can think of that rhymes with Atahualpa)

and Hop Hornbeam, because that just sounds silly.

Yes, we're nerds and we're socially unacceptable, but we have fun.