Most months, I “only” get to write about BGH’s exciting progress on capital projects or special events. For this month, I’ve decided to write a separate, second column talking about some cool trees that we’ve recently planted at Bellingrath. Alabama celebrates “Arbor Week” in late February, an ideal time of the year to plant trees, and Bellingrath has been following suit. Since the beginning of the year, we have been working to plant out several dozen cool trees, and some shrubs, adding to our palette of woody plants that grace the grounds of our beloved garden. Here are some horticultural highlights.
1. Mirror Lake, prior to Hurricane Frederic’s fury, was surrounded by a rich canopy of trees. Per the Centennial Master Plan, we aim to restore this tree-clad landscape to one that mirrors what our founders experienced. One tree that we recently planted not far from the water’s edge is a relatively new cottonwood that bears purple-colored new foliage, Populus deltoides ‘Purple Tower’. This of our eastern U.S. arose in the U.K. but will mature as a fine, straight-trunked and tall tree back in its native lands at BGH.
2. On the southwest side of Mirror Lake underneath several mature river birches, we have planted a trio of a tree rarely seen in the U.S., Exbucklandia tonkinensis. So rare is this tree in cultivation that it doesn’t yet have a common name. If you think of it as an evergreen sweet gum, minus the prickly gumballs, this will give you an idea of what we have. Hopefully, it will prosper at Bellingrath!
3. Also along the shoreline of Mirror Lake, we planted a young tree of a relatively new cultivar of baldcypress selected for its strongly columnar growth habit – Taxodium distichum ‘Skyward’. I first came to know and grow this tree when I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, only a two hours’ drive from where it was discovered in a suburban lot in the town of Mustang. As with any other baldcypress, we think that it will thrive at BGH.
4. A close relative of baldcypress (Taxodium) is a tree known only from China and Thailand, Glyptostrobus pensilis, the so-called Chinese water pine or Chinese swamp cypress. We planted two of these, which we procured from Woodlanders Nursery of Aiken, South Carolina, near Mirror Lake. Relatives of this tree were native to North America during the age of the dinosaurs but died out just prior to the Ice Ages.
5. Another conifer that you can frequently see throughout southern U.S. cities is China fir. It is not really a fir, but rather an evergreen cousin to baldcypress. We have planted two young specimens of the “blue”-needled form, Cunninghamia lanceolata ‘Glauca’, at Bellingrath. The term “glauca” refers to the presence of a whitish-colored wax on the leaves, which renders the plant “horticulturally blue.” Just as with Chinese water pine, Cunninghamia was once native to North America during the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth!
6. Rounding out our set of unusual gymnosperms is Nageia nagi (formerly called Podocarpus nagi), sometimes known as the Nagi tree. This Japanese native tree, related to the “Japanese yews” seen around Mobile (Podocarpus macrophyllus), is an old, heirloom tree that once was planted around the Gulf Coast but which died out during the extreme winters of the 1980s. We have sited our young specimen in a protected area between the Rose Garden and the Café/Gift Shop building, where it will hopefully mature into a 20-30’ tall evergreen in due time.
7. Bellingrath Gardens will always be known for its magnificent live oaks (and sand live oaks), but we thought it would be cool to see if we could grow the oak that bears that largest acorns of any oak species, Quercus insignis. In 2009, I had the pleasure of seeing this tree in the wilds of central Mexico, … an acorn in my hand – yes, just one acorn because it was all I could fit in the palm of my hand! This species is probably too tender to form a proper tree at Bellingrath, and so we’ve tucked it away in a protected area where, should it die back in a cold winter, it won’t detract from the beauty of the gardens. However, should it ever produce an acorn, we’ll alert all to come and marvel at it!
8. Speaking of Mexican trees, we also recently planted a duo of a columnar form of a Mexican evergreen willow – yes, evergreen! Salix bonplandiana ranges from southern Mexico southward to Guatemala, but this columnar form is best known from the iconic specimens that grow in the famed Floating Gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City. Our plants came from the Bartlett Arboretum’s (Charlotte, North Carolina) Adam Black. We’ll see how they prosper here at Bellingrath, so stay tuned for future cold hardiness reports!
9. Recently, we’ve also added a quintet of flowering trees to Bellingrath, ones we feel would delight Miss Bessie, as we all know that she loved to see flowers throughout the year.
a. Emmenopterys henryi is a deciduous flowering tree that is related both to gardenias and to a rare southeastern U.S. native tree called Pinckneya. Although we hope to add the latter to BGH in the future, for now we are excited to have its Chinese cousin. When it matures, which may take ten or more years, it will become a summer-flowering tree that perfumes the air around it. I was there when the tree at the JC Raulston Arboretum (Raleigh, North Carolina) first flowered in the late 1990s. Not everyone was sure if it would be worth the wait, but when we saw the tree covered in snowy white flowers and smelled its sweet scent, we knew that this famed tree from Ernest “Chinese” Wilson’s plant exploration tales was the real deal. We’ll know what it will do for us in future years!
b. The following duo of flowering trees comes from the breeding work of Dr. Tom Ranney, one of my Ph.D. advisors from my NC State University days. Tom has taken different members of the tea (or camellia) family, and created novel hybrids that form evergreen to semi-evergreen, small-sized flowering trees. The first is one that the Southern Living Plants brand has represented, ×Gordlinia grandiflora ‘Sweet Tea’, a cross between loblolly bay (a rare Alabama native) and the Franklin tree. Given that the tree has already met the Southern Living seal of approval, we feel that it will grow well for us at Bellingrath. The second plant, humorously named by North Carolina nurseryman Tony Avent, is ×Schimlinia ‘Shima Lina Ding Dong’, which should also do well for us. Its parents include the extinct North American native Franklin tree (named after Benjamin Franklin) and one of its Asian cousins (Schima argentea).
c. We are also experimenting with dogwoods, especially given that our native Cornus florida have been wiped out from Gulf Coast forests by a fungal disease called “dogwood powdery mildew.” Although we hope one day to be able to plant disease-resistant native trees, for now we are testing several evergreen Asian species that seem immune to the disease. Perhaps the most promising of these evergreen dogwoods for us is Hong Kong dogwood, Cornus hongkongensis. Introduced to the U.S. only as recently as the early 2000s, this plants has prospered in Semmes and several other Gulf Coast locations, while other evergreen dogwoods seem to be finicky. Our specimen of Hong Kong dogwood was planted just behind the Admissions Building, where we hope it will perform well.
d. The last group of flowering trees that we are dipping our toes into includes several new hybrid evergreen magnolias developed by Dr. Kevin Parris of Spartanburg Community College in South Carolina. Kevin’s work is nothing short of amazing! He has done breeding work that heretofore was thought impossible, crossing deciduous Japanese magnolias with banana magnolia, for instance, and on the other hand crossing some of the U.S. bigleaf magnolias with evergreen cousin species from China. We have planted out two of these promising hybrids recently, and we look forward to seeing how they grow, and flower, for us.
In closing out this long article, I want to remind you of the collector’s spirit that Miss Bessie had throughout her life. From azaleas and camellias to all of the antiques and decorative objects that adorn the Bellingrath Home, Miss Bessie exemplifies the best qualities that all collectors bear – that spirit of seeking the new, the beautiful, and the unknown. We feel that were Miss Bessie to somehow walk the gardens she created today that she would marvel at the horticultural treasures that the modern world now afford us – treasures that include this short list of interesting and beautiful trees.
Thank you.
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