Guest Contributor: Georgia Silvera Seamans, Founder, Local Nature Lab; Director, Washington Square Park Eco Projects
All photos courtesy Georgia Silvera Seamans
The word sprummer is making the rounds on social media. Sprummer describes the time between spring and summer; spring weather is still here and there while summer is making itself known with high humidity levels. In the urban forest, some trees flower in this window of time. Hawthorn. Kousa dogwood. Northern catalpa. Osage Orange. Tulip tree. Long gone are the cherry and magnolia blossoms, and the more discrete maple flowers. (Aside: Yoshino cherries’ fruits are ripening and American robins are feasting on them.) Flowering dogwood, serviceberry and sweetgum flowers have passed too.
I’ll start with Osage orange (Maclura pomifera). I don’t have access to a female Osage orange and can’t rightly say I have seen a female flower, though I have seen the brainy fruits. The Osage orange in my local park is a male tree in bloom as I am writing this story. The canopy consists of part leaves, part flowers. The path beneath the tree is covered with flowers in a large circle around the trunk. The male flowers aren’t classically beautiful — they are small and a pale yellow-green. In their inflorescences they resemble mini pom-poms!
Like the Osage orange, the flowers of the Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa) are small and inconspicuous. (By the way, C. kousa is now Benthamida japonica.) The bright white bracts of this introduced dogwood, like its native counterpart flowering dogwood (C. florida), steal the show. The bracts are modified leaves which function as the botanical equivalents of billboards.
The petals of the hawthorn’s flower are true petals. They number five as a member of the Rose family. The pistils and stamens are prominent; they rise above the shallow dish of petals. The leaf is used to distinguish among the species in the genus, though identification can be challenging because they are prone to hybridize. Two other factors: they (1) “are prone to polyploid” and (2) “can clone themselves through seed,” according to Robert Langellier in The Atlantic. A hawthorn plant is usually referred to as Crataegus sp. (a similar case to Malus sp.) Learn more about the genus in the Grappling with Hawthorns episode of the In Defense of Plants podcast.
Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) is another white flower blooming at this time. The catalpa flower reminds me of an iris. The petals are white with purple and yellow nectar guides — the colors of the asters and goldenrods of the meadow celebrated by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass.
“As it turns out, though, goldenrod and asters appear very similarly to bee eyes and human eyes. We both think they’re beautiful. Their striking contrast when they grow together makes them the most attractive target in the whole meadow, a beacon for bees. Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone.”
Another flower that people and bees agree is beautiful is that of the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) flower. A cup of six mint-julep green petals is banded with tangerine orange at their base. The petals turn goldfinch yellow as they age. Below the petals are three sepals filled with nectar for thirsty insects (and anyone with a sweet tooth). Each flower holds numerous stamens surrounding a conical structure of multiple pistils attached to a central receptacle. If you are lucky, the tulip tree near you will have flowers on low branches. The species is the only one in the genus in North America. The other Liriodendron, L. chinense, is native to China.
If you miss the blooming of hawthorn, Kousa dogwood, Northern catalpa, Osage orange and tulip tree—and I hope you don’t—you can look forward to the strands of Japanese pagoda flowers.