Photo Glen Spurrell.
A very old hemlock on Lower Medd’s Mountain. Is it “old growth”? It could be because lumberjacks often left hemlocks because they were undesirable. Their knots were hard enough to dull saws and deflect nails.
First off, a big thank-you and well done! to Lisa Stefaniak for her splendid column last month on Monarch butterflies, “What’s in a Weed?” I hope you all enjoyed it and I hope you noticed that it was a guest author!
Most of our native trees are pretty well leafless now. And therefore they show a different beauty with their rugged trunks and branches exposed to view. Also much more light comes through and vistas open out now that we can see through the branches. Aside from the oaks, which hold their leaves much longer than other native trees, those that you still see green and apparently unaware of the approaching winter are non-native. Norway Maple, Black Locust, lilacs, apples and that invasive curse of our countryside, the Common Buckthorn, are all still green.
But let’s think about the other trees that are always green, summer and winter. The conifers (that is those trees that bear cones) or “evergreens” are an attractive group that do much to beautify our northern landscape. How can they possibly hold their “needles” year in and year out? Well the simple answer is, they don’t.
Before I write any further, we do have one native conifer however which is not evergreen. The Tamarack or American Larch bears cones and has needles but is deciduous. This graceful tree turns a stunning yellow before it drops its needles. It is also one of the few trees that grows in every province and territory of Canada.
But back to the “evergreens” that soldier on through our cold winters. The various firs, spruces and pines along with single species hemlock and cedar populate our woods and forests. They are all evergreens and hold their needles for several seasons, dropping the oldest ones while retaining the newer ones so they seem never to change. Firs can hold their needles up to 20 years; spruces from 7-10 years; hemlock 3-10; and pines 1-4 years.
Cedar growth
Our native Eastern White-cedar doesn’t actually have needles, rather scale-like leaflets. But don’t ask me how many years it holds them because I couldn’t find that information anywhere! Historically it is extremely interesting for two reasons. In North America they are some of our oldest trees, such as stunted specimens on the Niagara Escarpment that are estimated to be over 700 years old. The oldest known tree would seem to be over 1,000! This is also the first native tree to have been taken back to Europe to grow there. The explorer, Jacques Cartier, and his crew were saved from death by scurvy by the local Indigenous people showing them how to use the cedar as medicine. Linguistically too cedar is interesting. The first Europeans had never seen such a plant because nothing like it grew in Europe. The closest they could come was “cedar” even though it is not related nor in any way similar to true cedars, such as the Cedar of Lebanon.
On another note, just the other day I set out some of my bird feeders for the winter. Within 4 hours I had 7 species of birds at them! Pine Siskins are one of our small finches, and they are nomadic not truly migratory; some winters we have them, others we don’t. They’re here now and maybe we’ll have them all winter, who knows? The juncos have come south for the winter, arriving about a week ago. We can be sure they’ll stay all winter, showing off their charcoal plumage against the snow.
Where do ideas come from? I don’t know where many of my ideas for columns come from. I do know however that much of the information on trees this month came from my old “bible” of native trees, “Trees in Canada” by John Laird Farrar. The title of this month’s column is from an old folksong.
So while you’re adjusting to the cooler temperatures and as you crunch through the fallen leaves enjoying the sound and smell, spare a thought for our beautiful and useful evergreens. What would our forests be without them? Get out! And enjoy!
Get Out! by Glen Spurrell
