We got our yearly appeal from the Arbor Day Foundation to join and we would get 10 trees to plant in our yard. We have done this in the past, but before this year, I hadn't really paid attention to what kind of trees they sent us. (And to tell the truth, we never got around to planting them..oops)
Well, this year, the list of flowering trees they offered were these:
Washington Hawthorn
Flowering Crabapple
White Dogwood
American Redbuds
Golden Raintree
Now, look at the title of my blog. Can you guess what I checked on when I looked up these trees?
That's right...are they native to Ohio?
All of them checked out except for one...the golden raintree. Let me say first that it's a beautiful tree. Now: It's not only NOT native, it's a very aggressive, invasive species. They have seed pods that scatter every fall and saplings will pop up everywhere around the mother tree. So the Arbor Day foundation is giving away a bad, bad tree. If you get this notice in the mail, by all means join and accept the native trees, but it wouldn't hurt to do what I am going to do: call them to the carpet on sending out trees from Asia that could shade out and overpower our native flora.
And Susan's command for today. Go outside your house today and smell the air. Can you feel spring coming? Hooray!!!!!!!
1 comment:
In addition to *native* I'd like to see them offer trees that have some value to wildlife and that aren't prone to some awful disease.
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