Last night after dinner it felt just right outside, so Leann and I went for a walk. On other walks we've been on in our new neighborhood [1], I've spotted some interesting things. So this time I took along the camera and snapped a few pictures. This time I ended up mostly taking pictures of trees. But there was one interesting thing…
When I pointed this house out to Leann, I said it looked like it once had a tower that was now slowly sinking into the ground. She said it made her think of a melting chocolate chip. Either way, it's kind of funny-looking.
We're not entirely sure what this tree was, but the flowers looked similar to the flowers of a chestnut (also known as a buckeye or a conker tree [2]), except they were bright red. The leaves were also similar, but to a lesser degree. My best guess is the Red Horse Chestnut (Aesculus × carnea), a hybrid between the Red Buckeye (A. pavia) and the Common Horse Chestnut (A. hippocastanum).[3]
This is a hawthorn (or thornapple [4]) that I thought had an interesting trunk. My best guess is that it's a red-flowered cultivar of the Midland hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata, also known as the mayflower).
I really liked the way that this honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos [5]) cut up the sky. The photo didn't turn out as well as the real-life picture looked.
And our parting shot is of two Siberian elms (Ulmus pumila) catching the light from the about-to-set sun.
Notes:
[1] See my post Out of the Old and Into the New.
[2] There is a game, called conkers, played with the chestnuts. To learn more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers.
[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesculus × carnea.
[4] In México we at the haws from the Mexican hawthorn. But we knew the tree as a manzanita or a tejocote. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crataegus mexicana.
[5] This is one of the few legumes that isn't nodulated nitrogen-fixing bacteria. For more about nodulation and nitrogen fixation, see my post What Is It That Matt Does, Anyway? See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey locust.
When I pointed this house out to Leann, I said it looked like it once had a tower that was now slowly sinking into the ground. She said it made her think of a melting chocolate chip. Either way, it's kind of funny-looking.
We're not entirely sure what this tree was, but the flowers looked similar to the flowers of a chestnut (also known as a buckeye or a conker tree [2]), except they were bright red. The leaves were also similar, but to a lesser degree. My best guess is the Red Horse Chestnut (Aesculus × carnea), a hybrid between the Red Buckeye (A. pavia) and the Common Horse Chestnut (A. hippocastanum).[3]
This is a hawthorn (or thornapple [4]) that I thought had an interesting trunk. My best guess is that it's a red-flowered cultivar of the Midland hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata, also known as the mayflower).
I really liked the way that this honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos [5]) cut up the sky. The photo didn't turn out as well as the real-life picture looked.
And our parting shot is of two Siberian elms (Ulmus pumila) catching the light from the about-to-set sun.
Notes:
[1] See my post Out of the Old and Into the New.
[2] There is a game, called conkers, played with the chestnuts. To learn more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers.
[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesculus × carnea.
[4] In México we at the haws from the Mexican hawthorn. But we knew the tree as a manzanita or a tejocote. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crataegus mexicana.
[5] This is one of the few legumes that isn't nodulated nitrogen-fixing bacteria. For more about nodulation and nitrogen fixation, see my post What Is It That Matt Does, Anyway? See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey locust.
No comments:
Post a Comment