Most magnificent trees

For fun, here is a picture of a local tree I admire. It takes up an entire lot. The house next to it is included for scale.

Some blogger has put up a nice list of the ten most magnificent trees in the world, with photos. The subjectivity of such an exercise does not detract from its worthiness.

My favorite is the baobab; what about yours?

The Flower

Here is a little Easter Herbert for my reader(s). This poem is a longtime favorite of mine. I sort of wish it didn’t turn into a sermon at the end, but it is still a delicious piece of work.

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! Ev’n as the flowers in Spring,
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring;
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivell’d heart
Could have recover’d greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quick’ning, bringing down to Hell
And up to Heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing bell.
We say amiss
This or that is;
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise where no flower can wither!
Many a Spring I shoot up fair,
Off’ring at Heaven, growing and groaning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a Spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow to a straight line;
Still upwards bent, as if heav’n were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone,
Where all things burn,
When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my onely light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can finde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

The Pines of Rome

How often do people write music in honor of trees?

There is Handel’s famous, heart-swelling “Ombra mai fu”:

Ombra mai fu
di vegetabile,
cara ed amabile,
soave più.

Never was a plant’s shade more dear, pleasant, and sweet.

The emperor Xerxes is said to have written an ode to an Oriental plane tree (Platanus orientalis), and this aria is Handel’s dramatization of the act. Most of my life I had heard it in instrumental arrangements as the blandly-named “Largo,” and I was mightily pleased to learn a few years ago that this sublime music was a love song to a tree.

I have long dreamed of doing a series on this blog memorializing the most admirable trees of Dallas. One of the trees I would feature is pictured above, a venerable cedar held up by numerous braces, forming a dark, romantic vault above the walkway to the front door of its house.

Trees are marvelous. They tower over our measly dwellings and they outlive us, witnessing centuries of history. I have personally met the largest recorded Sitka spruce and Ponderosa pine. I think there are several other famed arboreal personages in my past, but my memory is bad and I have not been faithful to keep a list.

So you can imagine why, when I got a free ticket to I pini di Roma last week, my heart leapt. I think I must have heard it on the radio at one time, liked it, told myself to remember it, and forgotten it. I had some mysterious attachment to the piece that could not be completely explained by its woodsy subject matter.

In any case, it is possible that I exaggerated my anticipation of the event beyond reasonable hope. On websites I saw conjectures about which particular trees had inspired Ottorino Respighi, and pictures of the trees. My research convinced me that I would love it.

Respighi’s work is in four parts:

The Pines of the Villa Borghese
Pines near a Catacomb
The Pines of the Janiculum
The Pines of the Appian Way

They were accompanying the music with a light show in the symphony hall. The music at the beginning was circuslike, and the lights were gaudy and ridiculous. A man in the row behind us had an especially endearing chuckle that set us laughing even more. Eventually, though, you settle into the mood, even though no pine tree you’ve ever known has elicited such emotion. I was reminded of the promise of “18 minutes d’emotion totale” at the World War II memorial in Caen—another example of making a potentially serious subject into a spectacle.

The entire catacombs part was lit with red lights and flamelike shapes. There was no subtlety about it. I wondered what would have happened if they had lit it in a cool color from time to time. The plainsong melodies could easily have been peaceful and not hellish. At one point you hear a soft, beautiful melody, played perhaps by an English horn or an oboe? But it would have to be a marvelously sweet horn or oboe, and no one on stage is playing. You can’t find the soloist anywhere. Then you see him return to the stage—oh, a marvelously soft trumpet. I suppose hiding him underneath the stage is one way to muffle the sound. It was lovely.

The Pines of the Janiculum (a noted Roman hill, but not one of the official seven) was my favorite part, with lovely moments for the clarinet and the lesser woodwinds. The music and light show were more natural here, soft and peaceful and healing. There was even a recording of a nightingale singing. At this point I had some revelations about literary nightingales that hadn’t occurred to me before.

Finally came the Appian Way, with trumpets and trombones playing from the balconies above the orchestra, with wild splats of light and sparkling fireworks. I could detect nothing coniferous about this section. It made me smile, though, like an overeager little boy makes you smile. You just can’t help it. It was fun.

The wild spectacle went beyond what I was expecting. But I am still determined to like The Pines of Rome.

Magnolia zone

Reverence for magnolia trees is legendary in my family. One popular story tells how my great-grandmother wrecked her car because she was admiring a magnolia tree instead of looking where she was driving.

Magnolias were one of the few aesthetic compensations of moving here. Their citrus-smelling blossoms bewitch your nostrils when you’re out walking at night. The trees are grand, glossy, and primitively beautiful. They are considered “primitive” among plants, with ancient characteristics like separate flower parts that are the same size and grow in spirals below the ovaries.

Pierre Magnol (1683-1715) was the lucky guy who got his name applied not just to the genus of magnolia trees (Magnolia) but to the entire class of dicotyledons (Magnoliopsida), one of the two traditional categories of flowering plants. Most of the things you think of as trees and flowers (except for mosses, ferns, weird plants, conifers, and long-bladed flowering plants like lilies) are in this category. I enjoy following the branches underneath it to the subclass Magnoliidae, the order Magnoliales, the family Magnoliaceae, the subfamily Magnolioideae, all the way down to the genus Magnolia. That’s something for Pierre to be proud of.

Formerly only familiar with the plain old freely growing tree, I have been surprised and charmed by the creative cultivations of this plant visible on my daily commute. One cannot fail to admire the gigantic specimens growing in the park along the creek:


Not too long ago they finished remodeling one of the châteaux, and I was impressed with the staggered rows of exquisitely trimmed small magnolias that they planted next to it. Alas, their gardener has not been vigilant in retaining the trees’ lovely vase shape, but please try to imagine how it could be:


Finally, just the other day I noticed espaliered magnolias. I have never seen this phenomenon elsewhere, but I approve. See how those with neither gardens nor châteaux can still dwell with the great tree and gaze upon it when they park:


I intend to include one more picture of a plain old tree, but I haven’t taken a picture of it yet. Perhaps I will also switch these dull photos with photos taken in a more enchanting atmosphere if I get the chance.

Bald cypress

It was a lovely day for a bike ride, 60 and sunny. This picture’s a little blurry, but I like it because it captures the interesting colors of the day.

Sometimes, usually at the darker times of the day, the lake is a fascinating iridescent color than I can only describe as the color of magnetic tape or shiny black garbage bags. It is so lovely that I feel bad not having a different way to describe it. It’s mostly a dark, dark blue, but it shows off different brilliant hues with light and movement.

Today the wind was strong, displaying a muddy brown in the shadows of the waves and a slate blue elsewhere. Also you can see that the bald cypresses, White Rock Lake’s signature trees (you can see their attractive cone shape across the lake, where they’re planted at regular intervals from each other, give or take a tree here and there) are turning color. They don’t really lose their leaves, but they start looking like they’ve been scorched in a forest fire. I am very fond of them.

It was a beautiful day, but I think I like the weird times better, the times just around dawn, or on a foggy morning, or in the evening at sunset.

Trees

I like what’s happening in Addison. I’m not sure how long the town has existed or if it has a historic downtown, but they’ve built an urban center called Addison Circle, with shops, cafes, and markets along the street and apartments and condos above. There are plenty of trees and numerous lovely park squares like you might see in London or Portland or another civilized, people-friendly city. You come out at noon and eat your lunch on a bench, in juniper-shady Bosque Park or along the central mall under rows of redbuds, while people walk around and fountains splash.

Even though it was 95-100 degrees during my lunches these past two days, I didn't sweat. I had my hat and the shade of trees. You only start to sweat when you get into your mobile gas-powered greenhouse and sit still in the sun surrounded by blazing concrete.

In a roundabout at the end of Addison Circle there is a vast blue sculpture. It’s shaped like the end of an elephant’s trunk or a snorkel, from a distance. It’s like a giant blue duct flaring out of the ground. You can see it from all around and it draws you towards this urban center. I can’t say I fully appreciate it, but I figure the fact that it’s blue is reason enough for it to be there. How nice that someone allowed someone to build it.

It looks sort of messy, but you work with what you have, I guess, when you are building gigantic tubular artwork. It seems to do quite well at what it does. It is a circle of big thick blue tubes flung upwards and outwards in exuberant curves, and the ends of them support tubular meshes with signs and figures attached to them. One way I thought about it was that they’re pieces of paper held up to the sky, kindergarten artwork held high in pride, the work of our hands presented for the approval of someone really tall.

I dreamed a few nights ago that I was in an old town of rickety buildings and creaky floors and secret entrances. There were giant owls inhabiting the land. When I finally glimpsed a few of their lower legs through a window, I was thrilled. In the dream, the fact that they were clearly giant people dressed up in ill-fitting brown flannel costumes did not compromise their grandeur. My heart leapt at the sight of these baggy stockings and quixotic hanging flaps of felt.

I saw them gathering outside on the sidewalk and waiting with the more ordinary citizens of the town for the king to come outside. He came out of the modest next-door apartment, and I stood in my musty room with its wooden floorboards, looking at the small crowd through the window, pondering the idea of these people’s allegiance to a king. People in my society would not feel comfortable showing reverence and obedience to such a man. But Giant Owls & Co. were clearly delighted to speak face-to-face with this humble-looking gentleman outside his front door.

Then I was in a big musty room with an old schoolmate waiting for the king to come in. We had written out an important declaration to present to him. He came in, and I knew how the neighborhood folks had felt. What a splendid feeling to be in his presence and to have his ear. I was just about to present my paper when I woke up, to my great disappointment.

Valuing trees

A fellow member of a native plant society mailing list estimated how much the trees on his campus in north Texas were worth. He decided about $10 million.

"Since it is very difficult to move a 40' Oak, especially a long distance, I simply figured $30K minimum for a specimen tree.... and I still feel this value is way low," he writes.

By root and twig

I see the funny term "urban forestry" and am tempted to imagine forests marching into the streets, crumbling asphalt and concrete, ripping parking lots out with their roots. The entwives return after the dust settles to create peaceful parks between the skyscrapers. Humans come out at noon and eat their lunches in these shady, fountainous picnic groves.

According to this study around San Antonio, "residential shade trees were shown to save each home an average of $76 a year" in air conditioning costs. It also gives much more impressively-scaled statistics, but this one is nice in its significance to Billy Bob's wallet.

Another fantasy I have is that the city planning people will be practical enough to start considering the vegetable world in their budgets before I'm dead.