And to wrap up the woodland walk post spam; the loot.
3 Sugar maple leaves, 7 canadian yew berries, and spore filled Christmas fern fronds (which tragically I THINK I’M TOO LATE TO SOW NOW WITH THE CRUSTY STATUS OF THE FRONDS!!!!).
Did not find hopniss vine in this forest (I’m not the least bit surprised though disappointed) but it was still a fun albeit exhausting forest trek.
The view on the way out; a view of the most impenetrable part of the woods. It is the north side of the forest.
A thicket of saplings, raspberry brambles, and dogwoods block the way in, but, I DID get some see some colouring up of some Sugar Maple foliage at the woodland’s edge.
3 different deciduous tree sapling species; a species of white oak (? burr oak?, you’ll see its momma in a different post), Elm, and Sugar Maple.
They’ll probably stay small till the forest canopy opens up for some tasty sunlight for them to bulk up on.
A large columnar tree cultivar proving the name of the term at the Guelph Arboretum
Acer saccharum ‘Temple’s Upright’
A Sugar Maple if you can believe it!
The Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) that are under lights rn are survivors of the starving birds and mice (during that spring snow out we had a few weeks ago) that were scavenging the tray in the greenhouse. So, we see why these trees are so expensive; it’s not just that they grow slow as balls, it’s the fact that even at seed/seedling stage EVERY FUCKING THING WANTS TO EAT THEM. It’s not just us humans who find Sugar Maple deliciously enticing.
However due to the fact that autumn 2017 I had a lot of sugar maple seeds on hand thanks to our neighbour John, I had a lot of seedtrays of them, and consequently experimented stratifying them in different locations. One of said locations being the new experimental outdoor seedbed. It flooded and had severe freeze/thaw late winter / early spring so I thought pretty much every seed would’ve croaked. However as you can see here not only are they doing splendidly but the birds/mice couldn’t get their grubby mouths into them.
So to the Birds/mice that were total dicks to one of my most valuable future plant crops;
Photographed May 13th 2018
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