Category Archives: trees

Oregon – Granite Man, Pennyroyal, and Deer Brush

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An hour before the race began

On the first of June Mr. Glad competed with other members of the family in the Granite Man Triathlon in southern Oregon. It was one of several events and meetings that formed the outline of a little trip around our neighboring state.

My husband was doing the swimming leg, as was the other grandpa of our Oregon grandchildren, and the two of them were the team captains. Our son and three grandsons made up the remainder of the teams, with the younger athletes compensating somewhat for the slowness of their elders. We womenfolk and some out-of-town kin were the support crew and also played with the baby (cute boy even if he isn’t one of my grandchildren).

My favorite swimmer left of center with his hands on his hips

Perfect weather, and a lovely setting, with trees leafing out, flowers beginning to bloom. As we stood around on the grassy slope of Applegate Lake waiting for the race to start with the swimmers’ portion, I had my first botanical experience of the trip. It started with a smell that only gradually broke into my consciousness enough to make me look down and search out what source my feet were tramping on.

pennyroyal – or not?

Pennyroyal was my first thought, as I picked off some of what was growing in the wild lawn, and in case you aren’t familiar with it, I outlined one cluster faintly in red, in the photo above, in the lower right corner. Even so, you may have to click on the photo to see it.

But it doesn’t exactly look like pictures of Mentha pulegium, though that pennyroyal is considered mildly invasive in California and Oregon. It doesn’t even look like pictures of the Oregon “field mint” Mentha arvensis, which I looked at in case my sniffer is not able to distinguish between members of the mentha family.

Pennyroyal has what I’d call a sharper aroma than most mints, and this one under my feet had that distinctive smell that I have met many times in my life, often in the mountains. Was I mistaken? Its leaves do look in some ways more like Monardella odoratissima, whose common names include “Mountain Pennyroyal” – but not exactly.

This Applegate Lake variety looks like a cross between it and another mint, as I study it further. And that impression might not be too far from reality, because it turns out that pennyroyal has an ability to hybridize with other mint species, adding to its troublesome weediness. It may crowd out native plants and even threaten Oregon’s commercial peppermint and spearmint crops, as I read in this article.

I learned a new word while reading it: allelopathy: a biological phenomenon by which an organism produces one or more biochemicals that influence the growth, survival, and reproduction of other organisms. I am familiar with this kind of influence from my experiences in gardening, but I didn’t know the name for it. The latest instance is the way nothing much grows under my manzanita bush because of its negative allelopathic qualities. The authors of the article experimented by treating seeds of a rare Oregon plant with a weak extract of pennyroyal root, and found that the germination rate dropped.

Deer Brush near Applegate Lake, Oregon

I didn’t know all of this bad stuff when I was lolling about in such a bucolic place; I was only pleased to have found a plant to check on as soon as I got home.

When we went out to the parking lot after all our guys were done (and some were done-in) I found another, a bush covered with honey-scented flowers. I thought it might be a type of Ceanothus, and I was right. But about the common name, I was wrong. I guessed Mountain Lilac, and it is in fact called that by some people, but maybe by mistake…? It’s officially known as Deer Brush.

The flowers come in shades of light blue and white, mostly, and it’s native to the western states. All of its uses are positive: animals eat it, the Indians made baskets from it, and it fixes nitrogen in the soil. Everybody likes this one!

Ceanothus integerrimus

Tulip or magnolia or both.

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Pippin with Liriodendron

Yesterday I talked with the dental hygienist Joan about hikes and trees and flowers. She asked, “Are you a plant person? Did you see the saucer magnolia trees across the street?” Oh, yes, I had seen those lovelies, smallish ones with their flowers opening so brightly pink.

“I have my camera and want to take their picture when I leave,” I said. But later with all my strolling about and photo-shooting I never got a good one of those Chinese Magnolias that people often mistakenly call Tulip Trees.

Chinese Magnolia

I told my friend when she took the pointy tools out of my mouth, “I had a real Tulip Tree in my yard once so I know that those are not really that.” She misunderstood, and said, “Oh, but tulip trees are magnolias.”

I explained that what I was talking about was nothing like what she was talking about, and promised to send her information when I got home. I also sent her this photo of Pippin as a young girl enjoying the blossoms and leaves of our tree, which we had planted a few years previous.

It was a fast grower and a joy to have around, shading the play fort and adding grace to the landscape. Here it is in the 80’s on the right behind the children.

Yard with Tulip Tree

But in researching the botanical name of our Tulip Tree, I discovered that is IS a member of the magnolia family (but it is not what Joan thought). Oh, my — crazy how confusing things get when humans try to classify the world formally and informally all at the same time.

In 2011 I planted tulip bulbs in the front yard (here where we have no trees with that name), and had a glorious display last spring. It looked as though they weren’t going to come up a second time; often tulips don’t last, in our climate, because it’s too warm and wet. This winter was cold and drier, and what do you know, there are little tulip leaves bravely poking through now. Perhaps in a month or so I’ll have another kind of tulip flower to write about.

Maui Diary 8 – Durian, Soursop, and Rambutan

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ice-cream bananas

The Ono Organic Fruit Farm was a laid-back place after all. We were a half-hour late for our tour of this farm south of Hana, and it didn’t really matter; others were even later than that. So the staff gave the second part first, to those On Time, and we tardy folk just had to stay around longer if we wanted to walk around to see and learn about the trees and bushes.

The main event was the fruit-tasting, for which we sat on an open-air porch before a table spread with a collection of tropical fruits. The young married farm interns chose one after another of the fruits and cut them into pieces to pass around to our group of twenty or so, giving us commentary all the while about the business operation, the agricultural practices, and what they knew of the individual species.

Being the daughter of a fruit farmer myself, I was full of questions about the cultivation or the fruits, many of which the fairly green farmers weren’t able to answer.

That was o.k. There were plenty of other specific things and facts on which I could focus my mind and my camera, and in this case, with those particulars being so strange and new, it’s was terribly stimulating.

This farm makes most of its income from bananas, including the more commonly found Williams variety, of which the kind we eat here is a type, and also the Red Cuban Bananas and Ice Cream Bananas. But oh, what a lot of other goodies they grow.

Soursop

I was intrigued by the soursop, which is a plant related to the chirimoya and the pawpaw. It was tasty but not overly sweet, and had a sherbet-like texture. In fact, it is used in tropical climates to make sherbet or refreshing drinks.

We were told not to eat the seeds, so I picked several out of my chunk of fruit, very smooth and black seeds that begged to go home with me, so I put them in a scrap of paper towel in my purse.

Later on I’m pretty sure I transferred them to my suitcase, but by the time I unpacked back home in my bedroom, they were nowhere to be found. I’ve been sad ever since, but Mr. Glad is actually glad that I’m not planting a tree for nothing. It wouldn’t be for nothing to me, but it certainly would be without fruit.

Scooping Passionfruit

We ate some of the passionfruit shown above, and later bought jars of lilikoi jam that had been put up just that morning from a variety of passionfruit grown there on the farm. The red fruits in the foreground are Surinam “cherries,” a pretty sour, but juicy, experience, not anything like a true cherry.

Those mangoes they grow on Maui might have been our favorite fruit of the trip — they seemed exquisite compared to the Mexican ones we are used to here. I always love coconut, and the pineapples we ate on the farm and elsewhere on the island were the Maui Gold hybrid, low-acid and amazingly sweet.

rambutan or dragon-eye fruit

One time years ago I had read a long article about durian fruit, and always took it as a given that no one would ever even gently suggest that I eat some — but there it was right in front of me, an opportunity to overcome my stodginess and pretend to be a daredevil. Trying strange foods is not my idea of fun, and durian may be the strangest of all.

ornamental pineapple

You may know about durian, that in several countries of the world it is illegal to carry it on public transportation, because of its aroma — or stink, as it seems to those who get physically ill over it. Other people get downright addicted to the fruit, and travel the globe following the durian harvest.

cacao fruit

I ate it and survived. In case my readers have the chance to taste durian sometime, I won’t say too much about it, except that it did not seem like a fruit. It was not juicy; it was soft; it had sulfuric components….The interns said that the piece we sampled was fairly mild tasting. It didn’t make me sick, but neither do I have any interest in eating another bite.

I thought the fresh cacao seeds would be bitter, like the roasted beans, but it was more pleasant than that, a vaguely chocolatey and unsweet, soft crunch.

Maybe because our tasting had begun late, the walking tour afterward seemed to pass way too quickly. I was constantly lagging as I tried to get pictures of macadamia or cashew or breadfruit trees.

One common tactic of organic farmers is to interplant different crops, so that pests and diseases don’t spread too easily. Here at Ono Farms coffee bushes often grow in the shade of banana trees.

Our visit was all close to the ground, but on the wall above the heads of our hosts was this aerial photograph, showing how bananas were planted years ago to spell out the name of this place where our senses were flooded with tropical flavors. The growers were right when they named their farm: in Hawaiian Ono means delicious.