Spotlight On...Redtwig Dogwood

Redtwig Dogwood

Cornus sericea

Cornaceae (Dogwood Family)
Quick ID:

Redtwig dogwood is full of character throughout the year.  In its leafless winter state, the conspicuous red branches set off a blaze of color against the snow.

Early spring brings dense, flat-topped clusters of creamy white flowers, which give way to pea-sized white berries in summer.

Cooler temperatures bring out purple and red anthocyanins in the leaves--the mass fall display of a dogwood thicket can really take your breath away.  Look for this loosely spreading deciduous shrub, typically 6-12' high, growing in dense thickets in riparian areas and open forests.

The red twigs are tipped by a uniquely pointed terminal bud, and can be covered in lenticels on the old growth.  Leaves are opposite (arranged in pairs along the stem), simple (not lobed), with entire (not serrated) margins that tend to be wavy and occasionally rimmed in purple.

Notice the way the veins sweep up toward the tip of the leaf.  This is a great identifying feature that can be used to distinguish dogwood from the many other simple-leaved species out there (chokecherry, twinberry, huckleberry...I'm looking at you).

Range:
Very common throughout Canada and the northern US, south to Virginia on the east side and northern Mexico in the west.  Look for it growing in the rich, moist soil of riparian areas and in forest openings, in conjunction with alder (Alnus spp.), willow (Salix spp.), cottonwood and aspen (Populus spp.), Wood's rose (Rosa woodsii), currants (Ribes spp.), Rocky Mountain maple (Acer glabrum) and horsetails (Equisetum spp.).

What's in a Name?
Cornus is the Latin word for horn (like a unicorn).  The Romans called the dogwood "cornel", in reference to its wood, which is hard as the horn of a goat and useful for making a great many things.  This is also a convenient way to remember the distinct leaf buds of redtwig dogwood, which are narrow and pointed like horns.
The species name sericea means silky, in reference to the fine hairs covering the leaves.  The origin of the word "dogwood" itself is not totally settled.  It may be a corruption of "dagwood", from the use of its hard wood in making dags (or daggers).  Alternatively, there is some evidence that a concoction of English Cornus leaves was used to treat dog mange in 17th century herbology.
C. sericea is also commonly known as redosier dogwood.  This may be confusing, since "osier" comes from the medieval term for willow (Salix sp.)  In fact, the flexible young branches of C. sericea have long been used for basket weaving, much like the willows that grow in similar streamside thickets. 

Tidbits:
Like most of our native plant species, dogwood has been, and continues to be, valued for its many benefits to humans.  An extract made from the leaves, stems and inner bark can be used as an emetic for treating fevers and coughs (and a great many other ailments), and the inner bark scrapings have long been added to tobacco smoking mixtures.  The red stems not only produce colorful weaving patterns, but can be used to make red, brown and black dyes.

The white berries, although tart and bitter, are not poisonous, and have been eaten by many people throughout history.  The fruits are low in natural sugars, making them less attractive to wildlife and less likely to rot than other berries.  Thus, dogwood fruit persists long into the winter, making it available when other food is not.  These unlikely berries are a key food source of grizzly and black bears, and are also eaten by songbirds, waterfowl, cutthroat trout, mice and other animals.  Beavers use the hard wood to build dams and lodges.

Thickets of dogwood are especially good habitat for little birds like the dusky flycatcher, orange-crowned warbler, Lincoln sparrow and the house finch pictured here.  These thickets, often located along the river's edge, provide good places to rear young, with year-round security and food sources.  Because of its thick root system, redtwig dogwood is also important for stabilizing these streambanks, particularly in places where stream channels are scoured by seasonal flooding.

Wild Gardening

Being a water-loving species, Cornus sericea is tolerant of moist soils and varying water tables.  Once established, it also holds up well against drought.  Research has shown that water-stressed plants actually have a higher tolerance to freezing cold temperatures.  When dogwood senses the shortened days of oncoming winter, tissue changes occur that prevents the plant from taking up water and increases water lost through transpiration, so the tissue becomes dehydrated even when water is abundant.  This interesting adaptation, along with C. sericea's somewhat complex ability to avoid freezing injury by having water freeze outside of its cells, should make it an incredibly cold-hardy choice for northern gardeners.  BUT, remember the notorious cold snap of early October, 2009, when temperatures across Montana took a sudden dive into the single digits?  Our 11-year-old redtwig dogwood--10' tall and strong as an ox, we thought--was the only significant plant we lost at the Nature Adventure Teaching Garden here in Missoula.  Granted, all the plants at the NATG are dynamite no-fear natives that can take most anything the weather throws at them, so the garden's overwhelming hardiness came as no surprise.  The loss of Big Red was a sad one, though.
Luckily, dogwood is easy to propagate by seed, layering or stem cuttings, and easy to establish in a range of soils.  This is one shrub that will do fine in partial shade as well.  And while the tender stems are preferred browse for deer, elk and moose, they're less enticing that many of the delectable non-native shrubs commonly planted as ornamentals.  Aside from all the wildlife you'll be providing backyard habitat for, you'll also be enticing pollinators and butterflies with the fragrant white blossoms in spring (C. sericea is an important larval host for the Spring Azure (Celastrina ladon) butterfly.  Overall, this is one of the best all-purpose native shrubs to plant for ease of care and year-round enjoyment.

Thanks to Dave DeHetre, Bryant Olsen and Paul Alaback for some of the images used here.

Spotlight On... features Montana native plants that are currently on display in our natural areas.  Have a plant that you'd like to see featured?  Let us know!

Spotlight On...Ponderosa Pine

Ponderosa Pine

Pinus ponderosa

Pinaceae (Pine Family)

Here's my promise:  Becoming familiar with this tree, the granddaddy of all pines, will most certainly lead to a richer, more fulfilling life.

Quick ID:  

Luckily, ponderosas are pretty easy trees to pin down.  They're giant, regal evergreens with thick, straight trunks.  Branches of older trees are clustered toward the top, developing a distinctively massive bole (the part of the trunk below where the branches start).  A ponderosa's branches are relatively short for its stature, and turn up at the ends.  Needles are 5-10" long, in fascicles, or bundles, of 3 (sometimes 2 or 5 depending on the variety).
From a distance, it's easy to distinguish long-needled ponderosas from other, shorter-needled evergreens.  Up close, you can recognize them by their orange puzzle-piece bark with its deep black furrows.  Be sure to stick your nose into these crevices in spring and sniff the rich vanilla-scented sap running under the bark.
Like all Pinus members, the female cones are hard-scaled, as opposed to the soft paper-scaled cones of conifers like spruce (Picea).  They're armed with a poky prickle and open in fall to release tiny winged seeds.

According to the Utah Forest News, the oldest ponderosa in the world is in the Wah Wah Mountains, and is at somewhere around 940 years.  The National Register of Big Trees says the tallest (of the interior variety) is right here in Lolo National Forest and was 194' as of 1997. 

Range:  This is the most common pine in North America, and is widespread throughout the west, from BC to Mexico and east through the Black Hills.  It covers 38 million acres across 14 states.  Interior ponderosa is most common around 6000-8500', found randomly spaced in open grasslands at lower elevations, with stands becoming denser as elevation increases.  Check out the USDA range maps and some details on regional varieties here.

What's in a Name?  Ponderosa is also known as Western Yellow, Bull, Blackjack, Western Red, Sierra Brownbark, Heavy, and Western Pitch Pine.  According to Flora of North America, "Its wood is more similar in character to the white pines, and it is often referred to as white pine. The taxonomy of this complex is far from resolved."  What we do know is this...  
1.  It was named for its heavy, "ponderous" wood in 1826 by the fascinating botanist David Douglas, from a specimen found near present-day Spokane.  
2.  The common name "pine" (and genus Pinus) ultimately derive from the Sanskrit pituh, "juice, sap, or resin", the Greek pitys, "pine tree", and Latin pinguis, "fat".  
3.  There are basically three varieties:  P. ponderosa var. ponderosa, found along the Pacific Coast, P. p. var. arizonica in the southwest, and the widespread interior variety, P. p. var. scopulorum (that's the one we have here in Montana, and the one I'm referring to in this post).  They differ in size and fascicle number, but also overlap in morphology and distribution, and vary by latitude.  As you can imagine...the taxonomy of this complex is far from resolved.

Tidbits:

Ponderosa is the most commercially important timber tree in the west, and has played a huge role in the region's economic development since the early pioneer days.  The lumber was used intensively for building homes, railroads, telegraphs and mine bracing, and is still considered great for construction.  In 1949, the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs convinced the Legislature that the Ponderosa was the "King of the Forest".  It was adopted as the Montana state tree that same year, and we've all celebrated ever since.
Equally important is P. pine's essential role in the ecology of western North America.  The behemoths create a mosaic of open stands filled with understory browse, interior woodland food and cover, and snags for cavity nesters and hunters.
Next time you're standing by one of these old trees, think about how incredibly well-adapted it is to the surface fires that naturally occur in this area.  The branches prune themselves up and out of reach.  Even then, the needles cluster tight around vulnerable growing branch tips, and open loosely farther up to discourage flames.  The bark is thick and insulative, as are the scales covering the buds.  The roots are deep, the size of lodgepoles themselves.  Regular low-intensity surface fire opens the canopy to light and burns up the thick layer of plant debris that builds up on the ground, encouraging graminoids (grasses) to germinate in the nutrient-rich, ashen soil.  It also thins out young trees, particularly the less fire-resistant ones.  It may go without saying that trees in crowded interior stands where fire has been suppressed are much more susceptible to catastrophic crown fires.  In the competition for space, they develop thinner bark and more compact foliage, and the closed canopy creates a dense understory of combustible "ladder fuels".
Anthropogenic factors like dense stands and stagnated nutrient cycling in the absence of fires, coupled with prolonged drought, have led to supreme stress on interior ponderosa ecosystems.  As a result, P. pine is susceptible to a slew of pests including Dwarf Mistletoe, insects like Pine and Bark Beetles (Dendroctonus and Ips spp.) and wood decaying fungi like red rot and western gall rust.  The Forest Service has this to say:
"Besides unprecedented, large-acreage severe fires, other ecological consequences of fire suppression in interior ponderosa pine ecosystems include:

• decreases in soil moisture and nutrient availability
• decreases in spring and stream flows
• decreases in animal productivity
• increased concentrations of potentially allelopathic terpenes in pine litter
• decreases in productivity and diversity of herbaceous and woody understory species
• decreases in tree vigor, especially the oldest age class of pines, and
• increased mortality in the oldest age classes of trees"
  
  
  The ecological changes in Ponderosa forests that have occurred in the last century as a result of fire exclusion, overstory logging and heavy grazing are a well-documented, fascinating and perhaps scary story that everyone in the west should be familiar with.  

Fire rolls through a Salmon River ponderosa pine stand in the River of No Return Wilderness, Idaho

Wild Gardening:  

Despite the complicated (and controversial) state of ponderosa forest ecology, the fact remains the this pine is extremely well adapted to the soils, temperatures and moisture regimes of the west.  Try planting P. pine to establish windbreaks or as an impressive ornamental, if you have the space (they grow 60-150' in cultivation).  You can collect not-quite-open cones in late summer, and dry them on racks to release the seeds.  Sow your untreated seeds in late fall; you'll have better luck if you start them in containers before you put them out in the ground.  You'll be providing food and cover for all sorts of wildlife, and will be rewarded with the company of the most awe-inspiring of trees.

Volunteers help spruce up the Nature Adventure Teaching Garden next to our ten year old ponderosa pine

 You can read an incredibly detailed and fascinating account of ponderosa ecology here.
   
Spotlight On... features Montana native plants that are currently on display in our natural areas.  Have a plant that you'd like to see featured?  Let us know!

Spotlight On...Skunkbush Sumac

Skunkbush Sumac

Rhus trilobata

Anacardiaceae (Sumac Family)

Quick ID:  

Look for shrubs with wide, dense crowns, generally no more than 4' high but spreading out to 8'.  The alternate leaves are downy, dark green above and pale below, and divided into three coarsely toothed ~1" leaflets.  In spring, beginning before the leaves appear, tiny yellow flowers cluster at the ends of the stems.  These give way to clumps of hairy little red-orange fruits around mid-summer, which hang onto the stems long after the leaves have dropped.  New twigs are covered with an ochre velvet much like new antlers.  It's easy to see the plant's progression of growth when looking at the branches; each previous year's wood is smoother, more inflexible, and colored differently.  Like counting tree rings, examining the length, form and character of branches' annual growth can be an interesting peek into recent history.  Call it another way of reading, or of listening, or call it a chilly botanist's daydream on a grey November morning....
               Here is the drought year.  That piece is the summer the giant Ponderosa Pine fell down, opening the canopy to let the sunshine fall through.  This is last spring, when a mule deer nibbled the soft spring growth, see how it branches out?  And here, this fuzzy tip is what has appeared since things woke up this spring.
And so it goes... 

Range:

There are at least four varieties of Rhus trilobata found in North America (some sources recognize six), most of which are mainly clustered in the deep southwest.  Rhus trilobata var. trilobata is the only one found in Montana; its range spans from the Pacific coast eastward to the tallgrass prairie states, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, up to about 7000' elevation.  Varieties tend to be more branched and compact in the southwest part of their range, and taller in the north.  Sumac can grow in a wide diversity of habitats, from dry to mesic (moderately wet) areas, on slopes, in thickets, canyons and stream banks.

What's in a Name?

The family name Anacardiaceae is in reference to Anacardium, the cashew, and its vaguely heart-shaped fruits (cardium=heart).  Rhus, in turn, is the Greek name for sumac, which itself is ultimately derived from the Syrian summaq, "red".  The specific epithet trilobata refers to the three-lobed leaves.  Skunkbush sumac is also known as Rhus aromatica, for its supposedly horrible, skunky-smelling leaves.  Me, I've squished and sniffed these leaves a thousand times, and don't think it's disagreeable at all.  They smell green, resinous, a little like acrid pine.  Some folks won't go near it though, so, as LB likes to say, "You don't have to take my word for it."  Best to sniff for yourself.

As usual, there are too many common names of R. trilobata to list here, but depending where you live, you might also hear it called sourberry, three-leaved sumac, fragrant, ill-scented or stinking sumac, squawbush, quailbush, lemonade sumac, basketbush, polecat bush or lemita. 

Tidbits:

This is a plant with a long history of edible, medicinal and functional uses.  Like other sumacs, the berries are super-duper sour, and fun to pop in your mouth on a hot summer day.  They taste like lemony pine needles, and can be used in drinks, bread, soup, etc.  The leaves and inner bark can be used in teas and poultices for such diverse ailments as colds, itches, stomach problems and hair loss.  A black or orange dye can be make from the roots and berries, respectively, and the flexible young branches are good for basket-weaving.

The family Anacardiaceae is full of irritating or otherwise dangerous plants, including poison sumac, poison ivy, and poison oak.  (Thanks to Fabric Guy for the informative picture.)  Poison sumac doesn't grow in the west, and wouldn't be mistaken for skunkbush even if it did.  The ranges of poison ivies and oaks, however, do overlap, and the three-leaved nature of these plants can make them hard to distinguish from skunkbush (especially the shrubby poison oak).  In general, poison oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum) and poison ivy (T. radicans) have a stalked middle leaflet, while R. trilobata's has no stalk.  They also have greenish flowers and white fruits, as opposed to yellow flowers and red fruits.  Even with well-honed ID skills, people who are super-sensitive to poison ivy should stay away from any member of the Anacardiaceae family.  Sadly, this also includes mangoes, which a lot of people are sensitive to.  I once ate so many mangoes my lips swelled up like a grouper, but that's a story for another day.

Wild Gardening:  

With its soft texture in winter, bold spring greenery, glistening red berries and brilliant fall color, Rhus trilobata is an absolute pleasure all year long.  It's fairly easy to find commercially, and naturalizes well to form windbreaks or shelterbelts.  Because of its strong root system, it's a good choice for erosion control.  Plants need full sun to part shade, room to spread, and good drainage, but will tolerate nearly any type of soil, cold, or drought.  
One of the joys of gardening with native plants is the opportunity it provides for observing backyard wildlife.  Keeping a list of birds and their arrival dates each year, discovering a cache of winter food or watching pollinators busy with their summer tasks are a delight in themselves, and knowing that you're helping conserve essential habitat by providing food and shelter is just icing on the nature-cake.  In this spirit, skunkbush sumac thickets provide great hiding and nesting cover for small mammals, and the persistent berries are an important source of food for winter songbirds and upland gamebirds.  Here at the Nature Adventure Teaching Garden, the golden Rhus, tawny chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) and evergreen mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius) make for a fall display that just couldn't be prettier.    

    Spotlight On... features Montana native plants that are currently on display in our natural areas.  Have a plant that you'd like to see featured?  Let us know!