Sunday, November 06, 2011

Dendrological insight, or aboriculture lesson, or silvics in action

Here's what I learned today:  there are three words for the study of trees:  arboriculture, dendrology, or silvics.  They probably all mean slightly different things, but that's close enough for my purposes.  Because I'm passing on what I learned 20 years ago when we visited here for the first time: not all trees that look like evergreens are actually .... um...... ever green.  We have acres of Western Larch around us, which are "deciduous conifers," which means that every year in the fall they lose their needles.  here are some pictures:


(note skiff of snow in the foreground.  the western larch are the ones that are yellow.)


The needles turn yellow, and then:


they fall off.

But when there's an entire hillside of them mixed in with grand and douglas firs, they're pretty (it's kind of hazy here today, so this isn't the greatest picture, but you get the idea):


And that's all I've got.  See you tomorrow.

1 comment:

  1. ha, I just saw that there's a typo in the title of this one. oops. not worth correcting it and popping it back up to the top of RSS feeds, so it stays.

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