The Three Viburnums

The erratic temperatures over the winter has caused an unusual event.  All three of the different viburnums are blooming at the same time.  The two in the picture on the left often bloom around the same time in the spring.  Of the two, the one in the front, which is a Viburnum x burkwoodi Conoy, opens it flowers slightly earlier than the one in the background. 

That is consistent this year. When you look at this close-up view of the flowers, you will see almost all of the individual flowers are fully open, with only a few still in bud.  The bush of the Conoy, as visible above, is actually carefully shaped into a rounded, dense form.  It can be maintained in this shape because the twigs and the leaves are smaller and respond to pruning by branching into multiple growing points.  This creates a soft surface that is covered with the clusters.

The Viburnum x pragense, or Prague Viburnum, blooms a week to ten days later.  This can be seen in the close-up of its flower cluster which is still mostly at the bud stage.  The soft pink color on the outside of the petals is delightful, and the clusters are much denser and compact,the size of a softball.  The texture of the shrub is much more linear and open.  Maybe it is the way I have been training it because I want a thin and tall form, but it seems vertical in all aspects, with strong trunks.  That slim profile provides a detail to the foreground to the big view, without blocking that view.

The third viburnum, a Viburnum rhytidophylloides 'Allegheny,' usually blooms in the autumn.  Or just a frequently, it tries to bloom during warms spell in the winter, and the flowers get frozen back when the temperature drops.  This is the biggest, and most coarse of the three.  It is currently about eight feet tall, and just as wide, the leaves the longest and widest of all the three.  I don't have a good photo of the entire bush for comparison.  Currently it is in an awkward stage having had bad winter kill two year ago when it broke dormancy in the middle of the winter.  There are new branches suckering up from the ground, which are beginning to cover up its open nakedness.  I am trying to respect its privacy, waiting for it to be decently covered up.

Earning my college nickname

Back in 2001, we hired a local nursery to design and plant the steep slope that drops down the ravine beside our house.  I wanted a local nursery since I thought they would choose appropriate plants and know how to work with the county since we are in the "critical zone" within 1,000 feet of the Chesapeake Bay.  Unfortunately I was wrong on both counts.  So, while I won't name the nursery, I also discourage people from working with them.

Another problem was that instead of planting Southern Bayberry shrubs, they planted Russian Olives, which are considered invasive.  They removed all labels, so I did not realize until a couple years later.

In the picture above, two the Russian Olives are  large gray-green mass across the middle/left.  That wispy bit of brown are a annual weedy vine that grew up to the top of a twenty foot holly tree, which is hidden under them.  

Saturday, I decided to cut out the two massive ones on this main section of the slope. On the right you can see the remaining stumps.  Above the bare area, on the right you can see some orange/red twiggy growth.  Those are a stand of red twig dogwood, Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire.'  I planted three small plants in 2002, and after the major side I thought I had lost them.  Then a few years later, I found them gamely spreading out, as I had originally planned, across the harsh, dry hillside.  They have been struggling under the edge of the Russian Olive, and if you look closely at the first picture, you can see some of these stems pushing through the olive branches.  I hope they continue to sucker out widely, and will give them some fertilizer to encourage their journey.


Oh, I didn't explain the title for this post.  I attended the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  We were a small state school on the campus of Syracuse University, and didn't dress or act like the other students.  Flannel shirts and working boots didn't quite fit in with the Long Island and New York City crowd.   Well, forestry means cutting down trees, and leaving stumps, right?  So we are all "Stumpys."  What do you think of my stumps?

Finally, here are the flowers on the Parrotia persica tree in the front.  Not large or flamboyant, but they first started about a week ago, and are now actively contributing to the pollen count.