Rime on the Ancient Juniperus

 

Yesterday’s tree ice was spectacular across the neighborhood. As relatively warm, moist air advected over cold snow, advection fog formed for an extended period. The air temperature had been in the low teens to mid twenties for some time and the trees, very cold branches. The aerosol moisture, in essence a cloud, in contact with those cold branches freezes to become rime ice. In this case, the finer distinction of soft rime which occurs more frequently when there is little wind -just that advecting or moving air. 

The iPhone, as good as it is, has trouble capturing the subtleties of color on one of my favorite winter trees: the often disregarded (due to its ability to colonize prairie and other disturbed sites) Eastern Deciduous Forest native Juniperus virginiana, Eastern Red Cedar. Highly drought tolerant, these evergreen (well, ever-bronze) do well in a home landscape, particularly where soils are well draining sand or gravel. In the right setting, they can live quite a long time -up to four hundred years. I love them in winter, when the greens turn to lavender-bronze and glow red-orange under lengthy sun sets. These, like many around Shelterwood and elsewhere, have grown in old farm fields, making for a low growing, homogeneous forest. Not ideal, but what is? 

I have a soft spot for this species -probably because one, just the one, grew alongside our fence line, in the sandiest of sand soils, providing shade for us kids under hot summer sun.  A laundry effluent drywell installed 25 feet away seemed to boost growth, bringing the tree from 25 to 40 feet or so in a matter of a few years. The bigger picture is to survey one’s own attitudes about plants. Often our desire to plant a species is due to our youthful experience with the same or similar species. Sometimes this drive is okay, sometimes it leads to poor decisions. 

When we desire a plant, strongly, it's helpful to think about why and whether or not it is a good choice for one’s yard conditions or the ecology it belongs to. Occasionally I see a seedling Juniper trying to get a foothold in the woods, on a trail, under any opening in the canopy that allows enough sunlight. Under those conditions, a spindly one may make it, but won't be able to rise above the canopy of deciduous trees. Others I find, occasionally, around the woods edges that border the human "yard." I pot those up or move them as needed. I get to see these on the roads around Shelterwood and that is good enough.