Hornbeam is one if the hardest woods in Europe - often used to make windmills and pianos!
The weeping is created by the different growth of cells on the top of the branch vs the bottom - the top side grows more cells, the bottom grows less, causing the branches to curve down and ‘weep’.
Seed pods are called ‘catkins’ and each contains 10 seeds! The seeds are spread on the wind.
Hornbeam leaves have deep and straight veins - great for making leaf rubbings!
It is the fastest growing of all the spruces.
It is an evergreen - meaning it keeps its green needles all year round.
It’s one of our favorite choices for a Christmas Tree. Each year, Norway grows and gifts 3 giant Norway spruces to the cities of London, Washington D.C, and Edinburgh to display for Christmas!
It provides winter habitat for deer and migratory birds.
It can live up to 300 years!
It produces the largest cones! of any spruce! The cones are filled with Norway spruce seeds.
All Camperdown elms are created from one original tree. Cuttings are taken and then grafted onto the trunk of a Wych Elm.
The original Camperdown elm was discovered in Scotland in the 1800s
Very popular in the Victorian times - they were planted alone as exotic ‘rarities’.
There are so few Camperdown elms in the world that there is a list of ‘notable trees’ at estates, universities, cemeteries, and town centers.
Our tree was planted in the early 1900s by the Manor House owner, Alice Cheney-Baltzell.
Grafted means to ‘cut and paste’ two plants together to form one new living organism - you can see the line where our elm was ‘sewn’ together.
Beech trees are the most abundant tree in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, but copper beeches are a cultivar of their native sibling - a cultivar is a plant variety created by humans. This cultivar was created to have purple leaves throughout the season.
Some beech trees have been found to be over 120 years old with a trunk diameter (the length around the tree - like a hug!) of over 3.5m (10ft!)
Beech trees are known for their distinctive bark - grey and smooth with plenty of curves and lumps - just like an elephant’s skin!
A single adult copper beech tree produces 9,000 liters (or 2,378 gallons) of oxygen per day - enough to support about 10 people!
The colorful leaves give this tree its name - the leaves are deep purple in spring and slowly turn to a copper color in the fall.
We have many of these trees in the Garden. Rows of them make up the hedges that enclose the Italianate Garden.
This tree also goes by the name ‘tamarack’.
Tamaracks can survive temperatures as low as -80F! (-62C)
The wood is tough but flexible - native Algonquian tribes used the wood for constructing snowshoes
Porcupines love to eat the inner bark of the tamarack, and snowshoe hares feed on the seedlings in the sold spring
The tamarack has the smallest cones of any larch - they look like rosebuds when young!
A tamarack is a deciduous conifer, meaning it is a tree with cones whose needles change color and fall off in the autumn.
