Bur Oak Trees!

Bald Cypress Etching

Bur Oak, Bald Cypress & European Mountain Ash saplings

Long Leaf Pine Tags & Bur Oak Caps

You may remember from earlier posts that my imagination has been captured by the Bur Oak acorn.  Thanks to Garden Guy’s expertise with the post hole digger, we now have growing in our yard 5 Bur Oak saplings!!  So in 15 to 30 years, if all goes well, I’ll have my own crop of 1 1/2″ to 2′ acorns!  Yeah!  One of the saplings is even from the Virginia Big Tree Bur Oak in Elkton, Virginia.

But there’s more – we also now have two Bald Cypress trees, one of only two types of deciduous conifers.  I’ve been fascinated by these trees every since I was delighted to discover one Spring during my college days that the lovely conifer near my dorm had not died.  It merely shed its needles for the winter!  My sister did a lovely etching of that same tree, as it has a fascinating trunk. 

The man who was kind enough to call me about the Elkton Bur Oak, and provide me with saplings, also had a stash of cypress that he was planting that afternoon on his Hanover property.

He also encouraged me to take several European Mountain Ash saplings.  I was not familiar with this tree, but he had glowing descriptions of its spring bloom and summer berries.  For more info, see http://www.oplin.org/tree/fact%20pages/mountainash_european/mountainash_european.html

Tree Man stashes the Bur Oak acorns in his freezer over the winter and then plants them in the Spring.  The caps just take up space, so he removes them first and hasn’t much use for them.  So he gave me a bag full – American Girl Doll hats here we come!  I mentioned in passing that I’d also been looking for Long Leaf Pines, as their 18″ pine needles are excellent for decorating the tops of gourd bowls.

Well wouldn’t you know, he had one growning in the back yard along with all his other nursery stock!  I’d been so busy looking at his Bur Oaks of various ages, and other plantings, that I’d completely missed the Long Leaf. 

So we inspected it as well, and he graciously shared some of his pine tags.  He said his tree is almost 40 years old, but it’s rather spindly.  That’s because it really perfers a warmer climate than we have here in Richmond.  The Long Leaf growns abundantly in South Carolina, Georgia, and points south.  It has a very long tap root, and an extended grass stage without branching where it grows very slowly above ground for several years while the roots establish themselves. Then the tree will begin to gain height and branches.  For more info see: http://plants.usda.gov/factsheet/pdf/fs_pipa2.pdf

Bur Oak in Virginia!

You may remember in my November 4th entry I posted a photo of a Bur Oak acorn that I saw at the Houston Quilt show.  It was huge!  I want one! The most I’d been able to learn was that their range doesn’t start until west of the great state of Virginia.  Until this week…

Thru a good friend that works at Virginia’s Department of Conservation and Recreation I got connected with the Big Trees site for our state: http://www.cnr.vt.edu/4h/bigtree  Searching the Virginia database on ‘bur oak’ resulted in three recorded as Big Trees, contact info provided.

I followed up on the two trees that appear to be on public property, and now have more information on both: one in Elkton just east of Harrisonburg, conveniently near several quilt attractions; and one in Danville on my favored route to the NC mountains. Then last night I had a call from a man right here in river city that has Bur Oak acorns and seedlings! 

I thoroughly enjoyed talking with him, and learned that the tree in Elkton is 105 feet tall, 6 feet in diameter, and around 300 to 400 years old.  It sheltered both Confederate and Union convalescent soilders in 1865 and was probably planted by an Indian, since as I mentioned earlier the Bur Oak is not native to this area.

The trees typically take 30 years to mature, tho he’s seen some that bore as earlier as 12 years.  They have multiple tap roots giving them strong resistance to wind. 

Stay tuned!

Houston Favorites

Acorn of the Bur Oak

“Nature Vivante”

“Nature Vivante” detail

You see here my favorite quilt from the International Quilt Festival, and the item that captured my imagination. 

The quilt, by Leslie Gabrielse, is titled “Nature Vivante.”  Leslie’s comments on the quilt: “techniques: hand sewn and painted; Design Source: a vist to Rome’s Campo Di Flori; A handcart filled with huge pumpkins inspired me to make this piece. A woman was loading up the pumpkins. A window suggests and indoor situation. I used the color gray as backdrop but the color slipped into the pumpkins and her face.  The color gray became part of the image.”  What appealed to me about this quilt, in addition to the subject matter, was the vintage nature of the fabrics.  They’re very different from what I see currently in our quilt stores.  I also felt the face was very well done, and the view thru the window had a very European feel to me.

The item that caught my attention in one of the vendor booths was a huge acorn!  When I stopped to stare, the vendor was kind enough to take it out of the jewlery case where it was adding a bit of ambience so that I might more closely examine it.  And then she pulled two more from another case!  I was entranced.  After doing a bit of research yesterday, I learned they come from a Bur Oak, alternately spelled Burr, a type of White Oak seen most typically from the Appalachians thru the mid West.  If you happen to have a couple in your back yard, would you swap for fabric?!