Tulips in a Vase or on the Tulip Tree

Tulips in a Vase or on the Tulip Tree

I was the happy recipient of a gift of a bouquet of tulips this Mother’s Day. They held a place of honor in a vase on my dining room table for two weeks. But even though I had to say goodbye to my cut flowers, I can still enjoy a form of tulips outside in my backyard. The Liriodendron tulipifera, better known as the Tulip Tree, has been offering us its own bounty of flowers.

The Tulip Tree is related to magnolias and is indigenous to eastern North America.  It can grow to 90 feet of more! Ours started as a small trunk and proceeded to expand. We used to be able to reach the flowers on the lower branches but as the tree reached upward, so did the flowers. The flowers are called tulips because of their shape and color though they aren’t actually tulips. They are beautiful all the same.

 

Yet everything has its blossoming time. The petals are now beginning to fall, coating the back lawn with color. And now the rest of the garden is starting to expand. I am looking forward to the tomatoes we already planted and to the hibiscus that are just starting to peek out of the dirt. But meanwhile, I appreciate what I can see. When the flowers are all gone, the Tulip Tree will provide us with welcome shade. Ah, sitting outside with nature and being in the moment - another delightful gift.

Here’s more about the beautiful Tulip Tree:

https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-grow-tulip-trees-2132098

Our Tulip Tree as Harbinger?

Our Tulip Tree as Harbinger?

Our Tulip tree is finally shedding its leaves. I say finally because it usually starts the process in August, turning its leaves golden well before the other neighborhood trees begin changing and by the end of the month, its limbs are bare – a hint of Autumn before the season officially changes. So here it is, early October, and the tree is only beginning to lose its foliage. What is going on?

Tulip leaves are sensitive to water. When the weather is dry, the typical condition in August, the tree feels water stress and the leaves tend to lose their viability. But this year, according to the Office of the New Jersey State Climatologist at Rutgers University, while we had a rather warm July, we also had the wettest June on record and the second wettest summer so the tree had less stress and stayed leafy.

It was nice to have the tree so green for so long but this was not usual summer weather. Will this be what summer is like from now on? Anything that alters weather shifts what we can expect from the vegetation. With so much information coming out about how the climate is changing worldwide, it may seem like a little thing to be concerned about individual plants. Yet weather conditions affect all things, be it the soil, plants, insects, animals, humans. I know that weather goes in cycles. I also know that we have changed the atmosphere through our activities on earth. Perhaps the Tulip tree is one of the harbingers of change, of what will be the new normal. As my father used to say when I asked a question he couldn’t answer, “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

From The Washington Post Health and Science section:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/urban-jungle/pages/120828.html

Office of the New Jersey State Climatologist at Rutgers University rain statistics:

http://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim/images/nj_12month_pcp_dep.JPG

Tulips Way Above the Ground

We have a Tulip Tree in our backyard. I remember being excited when we got it as a young seedling because we were told it would grow fast. At that time our backyard was just starting to fill out with trees, shrubs, and flowers so we were delighted with the rapid growth idea. Well, several years later and forty feet higher, the Tulip Tree is a mainstay of the yard. And it keeps growing. We learned that it can actually grow to be 150 feet! That’s a little more than we expected.

This past weekend we had a visual of the potential of the Tulip Tree. We went to the opening of Duke Farms in Hillsborough, NJ, http://www.dukefarms.org/en/About-Us/  and in our walk through part of the 2,740-acre property of the Duke family we came upon some Tulip Trees that were three times the thickness of ours and way higher. The Duke Farms is now open to the public. Its mission “is to be a model of environmental stewardship in the 21st century and to inspire visitors to become informed stewards of the land.”

Despite its size potential, I am glad we planted our Tulip Tree. It is a treat to see the tulip-like flowers each spring. It’s like having an outdoor bouquet.  Most of the flowers bloom toward the top of the tree – more sun, I guess – but they eventually drop down to be admired. I learned not to press my face too close, however, as they are a source of pollen, which makes bees happy but can trigger allergic reactions. Our tree is also a harbinger of Fall. Its leaves flutter to the ground earlier than most in a bittersweet reminder of the cycle of seasons.

American Tulip Tree:

http://www.psu.edu/dept/nkbiology/naturetrail/speciespages/poplar.htm

http://www.untamedscience.com/biodiversity/plants/flowering-plants/dicotyledons/magnoliales/magnoliaceae/liriodendron/american-tulip-tree