Bulletin of Remarkable Trees Vol. 2 No. 2
Exploring Winter Beauty
Welcome to a new year of Bulletin of Remarkable Trees! This week, I’m taking a deep dive into an article my grandfather wrote for the Morton Arboretum’s Bulletin of Popular Information in 1936 entitled Winter Beauty.
Kammerer, E. L. (1936, February). Winter Beauty. Morton Arboretum Bulletin of Popular Information V. 11 No. 02. ACORN.
Looking out the window these past few weeks (at least here in Illinois) will reveal a landscape transformed by a blanketing of snow so artfully distributed it’s hard to believe it’s the result of weather rather than a painter’s brush.
There’s no doubt displays of wintertime wonder like these inspired my grandfather, E. Lowell Kammerer, to write Winter Beauty, a beautiful disquisition on the winter landscape in Illinois.
In this piece's opening, my grandfather focuses on the forms of trees, made more visible in winter by the absence of leaves. I haven’t given much thought to the variety of shapes exhibited by trees, however the descriptive metaphors he uses to explain the differences will certainly cause me to take notice more often:
“the graceful vase-shaped American Elm”
“the rugged sturdiness of the Oaks”
“the flat-topped Thorns”
“the pyramidal spires of Poplars”
“the Sugar Maple’s symmetrically rounded domes”
He goes on to detail the minute aspects of trees that become more visible in the winter months. The intricacies of various tree barks provide ample interest:
“That of the Hickory, Carya ovata, with its loose shaggy plates, the Sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, with its curious mottling of olive green and white and the thin, papery layers of the Canoe and European Birches, Betula papyrifera, B. pendula.”
He describes many additional trees that provide winter interest - including our friend the American Beech, Fagus grandifolia, which I wrote about back in early December. Many of these are noted as a result of their striking winter color, so I took the liberty of arranging some particularly impressive examples below according to the various blush of their bark, buds, and stems:
White - Oriental Raspberry, Rubus biflorus
Gray - Quaking and Large Toothed Aspens, Populus tremuloides and P. grandidentata; Old Field Birch, Betula populifolia
Red (which according to my grandfather “outclass all others in both number and brilliance”) - Dogwood, Cornus alba; Dogwood, Cornus stolonifera, Willow, Salix alba chermesina
Orange - River Birch, Betula nigra; Paperbark Maple, Acer griseum
Red/Yellow - Dogwood, Cornus sanguinea
Yellow - Dogwood, Cornus stolonifera flaviramea; Willow, Salix alba vitellina
Green - Silver Poplar, Populus alba; Moosewood, Acer pennsylvanicum; Japanese Kerria, Kerria japonica
Blue/Grey - Bluestem Willow, Salix irrorata
Purple - Willow, Salix commutata; Climbing Prairie Rose, Rosa setigera; Rosemary Willow, Salix incana (or Salix elaeagnos)
Purple/Red - Cherry Birch, Betula lenta
Brown - Weeping Willow, Salix blanda pendula, many common street trees
Black - European Ash, Fraxinus excelsior (buds)
Judging by the impressive variety of colorful tree features my grandfather describes, one can find a veritable rainbow of trees even in wintertime. What are some of your favorite awe-inspiring winter trees? Let me know in the comments!
My grandfather’s celebration of artistic wintertime woody plants ends with a paragraph noting the various berries, persistent foliage, and evergreens that provide further texture, color, and wonder to the winter landscape. He mentions that an additional issue will be necessary to cover these groups. Taking a cue from him, I’ll be covering these other marvelous winter specimens at a later date and exploring the related issue of the Bulletin of Popular Information from 1945: Planting Interest Need Not Wane in Winter.
What’s Next
Next week, I’ll share the first of two issues about May Theilgaard Watts, noted naturalist, illustrator, and colleague of my grandfather’s at The Morton Arboretum. The first issue will include a brief biography and describe her work at the Arboretum and projects she conducted with my grandfather from 1942 onwards. For the second issue, I’ll peruse her drawings, illustrations, and the beautiful map she created for the Arboretum in 1943 (and show you some of the original copies of that map, which I’ve found amongst my grandfather’s belongings.) If you have specific questions related to her or her work at the Arboretum that you’d like me to research, let me know in the comments!
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Sarah, Tom and I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains in SC for now, 12 years. And being retired and at home a good bit of 2020, we truly ARE more fully enjoying the “winter subtlety's” ! Loving your blog and I have a few other x Chicagoans here reading them as well. Stay warm and keep up the great work.
It's easy to forget how much beauty is around us when we end inside so much of the time! It's very charming how elegantly describes all the varieties of trees.