Japanese White Birch Trunks

Japanese White Birch Trunks

Betula platyphylla 'Japonica'

(BET-yoo-luh) (plat-TY-fil-uh)

Planting Fields Arboretum

Planting Fields Arboretum
Oyster Bay, New York


Yesterday I drove out to Long Island and visited Planting Fields Arboretum. My main goal was to see the Camellia Collection but I was, however, a little early as most of the plants were just in bud. There were a few blooming but the real show looked like it would be coming in a couple of weeks. Hardly a disappointment I decided to go to the Main Greenhouse and have a look around. They still had the Poinsettia display up and that was colorful with some interesting types and colors. My camera fogged up and I wasn’t able to get a clear picture in that part of the greenhouse. The other parts of the greenhouse have Orchids, Succulents and Cactus and Begonias in separate rooms with some other tropical plants displayed along the way.

Morning Glory seed pods

Normally when I have gone to this Arboretum I have just stopped in along the way from buying plants out on the North Fork, which kind of makes for a rushed visit. Yesterday I decided to make it my primary destination. I could have stayed all day, oops, that’s what I ended up doing only leaving because of the dusk. I wasn’t really prepared for the riot of bark, berries, flowers and other botanical delights. The large collection of Witch Hazels was amazing and I kept coming across them here and there in the garden. I am not sure they were all marked correctly but they made for a fragrant and colorful distraction for a winters afternoon. Seeing the arboretum ‘bones’ was good, as I found several new (new to me) plants that I want to go back and photograph during the spring and summer.

Main Greenhouse, I got both pictures of the Greenhouse before the 8400 died

Since I only used the 60mm/2.8 Micro-Nikkor and the 50mm/1.8 I didn’t really take any landscape shots. I wish I had but maybe next time. I had my Coolpix 8400 and that has a 24mm equivalent lens but the battery died shortly after I got there. I really need a spare battery for that camera as it only lasts about 25% of the D70s battery. It is going to take awhile to sort through all the pictures I took. I was doing some depth of field and exposure experiments to get ready for the upcoming season. I also tried a few menu adjustments and wanted to see the results of that. With my newly stocked up Ipod on and the pretty nice weather (not super, windy and cloudy but fairly warm) I was really ‘out there’.

Bark from a large specimen of Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera)

Their website gives some of the rich history and explains the collections better than I could:
Planting Fields.org

Japanese Maple and White Birch

Japanese Maple and White Birch

Since I was a little bored, and I got some new Photoshop plugins, I decided to play around a bit. Normally I try and keep any adjustments in PS to a minimum and really try to take the photo ‘in the camera’ with the correct composition and exposure. It is fun to use the massive editing power of Photoshop sometimes. I really don’t have any set work-flow, I just keep trying things until it looks right.

This picture was taken with the 50mm/1.8 lens in my backyard on Thanksgiving Day. The Maple is in my neighbor’s yard and it turned the most stunning color. He just cleared some trees from around it and in the six years I had been living here I hadn’t noticed it. It was hard to miss this year. November 22nd is a little later than most Japanese Maples usual fall color timing. It sure was a strange and extended autumn. The White Birch is in my yard and is quite a distance from the Maple. I thought the contrast between the two was nice. A day or two later when I looked out the fading sun on the two was even more beautiful.


This second photo didn’t turn out the way I wanted and also underwent heavy editing in Photoshop. The process is called selective color and it sometimes works out. On this one there was heavy glare from the glass in front of the bird, which caused some noise and faded color. This Toco Toucan (Ramphastos toco) was at the Bronx Zoo’s World of Birds and seemed quite curious of both my camera and I. It’s native to parts of South America and is not a threatened species. It is one of my favorite tropical birds.

Dwarf River Birch

Dwarf River Birch
Betula nigra 'Fox Valley'
(BET-yoo-luh) (NY-gruh)
Betulaceae
Synonyms: Little King

This is one of my favorite trees in the garden. It is almost an exact replica of its larger cousin Betula nigra ‘Heritage’ without the big size. I planted my grove of 6 ‘Little King’ in 1995, four years after the tree was released by King Nursery of Oswego, Illinois. The final height is 10 -12 feet and the spread looks to be 8 to 10 feet. I like the densely packed twigs and of course the exfoliating bark is nice all year but really brightens up the winter garden. The bark on ‘Little King’ starts to peel at an early age compared to the larger River Birch. The foliage is double serrate and attractive, and I haven’t had any problems with insects. I have noticed the fall color is nothing really to speak of, often times the leaves just turn brown, although some autumns it has a nice yellow fall color.

There are two reasons I favor River Birch over most of the other species of Betula. They seem naturally resistant to leaf miner and the Birch Borer that can be such a nuisance with Birch cultivation. Another reason I like River Birch is that it can grow in tough conditions including bottom land and even periodically flooded areas. It grows in part shade area (although prefers full sun) and almost any soil type as long as there is enough moisture available.

This tree won the prestigious Cary Award in 2007 and I would have to agree that it is an outstanding tree for grove planting, accent or specimen planting or even a deciduous hedge. The Cary Awards are named after Ed Cary of Shewsbury, MA and are awarded to distinctive plants that have proven themselves in the New England landscape. They have three purposes:
1. To inform home gardeners which plants would be good choices in their landscape.
2. To instill confidence in the home gardener's plant selection.
3. To increase the diversity of plant material utilized by gardeners, landscape designers and architects.


I took these pictures at work yesterday, it was beautiful weather although there wasn’t much in the garden to see. The almost inch of rain we had last night probably got rid of much of the snow that was left.

"I heard a bird sing in the dark of December
A magical thing and sweet to remember.
We are nearer to Spring than we were in September,
I heard a bird sing in the dark of December."

Oliver Herford

Fallen Fall Foliage ~ Part 2

Fallen Fall Foliage ~ Part 2

We are off on a drive to try and find the last vestiges of our fall season. I took these pictures at work on Thursday. The first pictures are the fallen leaves of the Weeping Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum var. magnificum 'Pendula'). It is a beautiful tree that has grown into a graceful specimen. It has actually gotten fairly huge, probably about 40 feet tall.


This is a shot of the leaves on the ground with what I call the ‘Twins’ in the background (you can only see one of them the other one is to the right). These aren’t the ones but I actually did plant two Japanese Maples for a pair of twins that a customer had. They plant a tree each time a child is born (three so far). These trees ‘Red Foliage Selections’ (Acer palmatum) from Weston Nurseries. They have gotten a lot bigger over time also. They were planted in 1998 and I have been pruning the tops to keep them shorter. The nice thing about these is they hold their color during the season. They also have nice fall color (just starting) and a really dark twig color.


This final picture is a leaf covered walk by the River Birch Grove. As you can see I have got a lot of clean up work to do. We dodged a weather bullet last night as it got down to 33 degrees F. while it was raining. I saw some snow showers yesterday and thought it was going to snow last night. Nothing is worse than snow when a lot of the leaves are still on the trees. That has happened here before with devastating results. The snow piles up on the leaves and then the branches break. The sun is out now and the trend is for warmer temperatures. The pictures of the last two days have been shot with the 50mm/1.8 lens, I am loving it.

Botanical Shots with 50mm/1.8 Nikon Lens

Botanical Shots with 50mm/1.8 Nikon Lens

I picked this lens up during the weekend, mostly for trying some handheld night photography and trying to learn more about taking portraits. Normally I would have changed over to the 60mm macro lens when I took my camera to work the last two days but decided that I would try out the new lens on some botanical shots. Well I am glad I did. It is really sharp and other than having to take a couple of steps back it did pretty good. For the most part I don’t like cropping and it is going to be an adjustment trying to get full frame pictures with the 50mm but the sharpness and color is right on.

The Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) was the last in the garden, which has about 75 of them. There are probably more than that as I have been encouraging them to seed. The color here is true, it was more purple than usual, maybe because of the frost. It was the first attempt at a flower shot and I think it did okay. Having to zoom with your feet is something I am fairly used to, it is the minimum focusing distance that is going to take getting used to.


This is a picture of a Crabapple that is like most around here this year, a very prolific fruiter . I am not sure what type it is but someone thought it was an ‘Adams’.


This picture is demonstrating one of the best things about this lens, the 1.8 thing. I love experimenting with shallow depth of field. This is a shot of the small River Birch Grove (Betula nigra) at one of the houses I take care of. River Birch is certainly my favorite type of Birch for several reasons. Some of those reasons are the beautiful bark, ability to grow on wet sites, borer and leaf miner resistance (big reason) and they are fairly cheap. I would recommend ‘Hertiage’ but the species is nice too.


The ‘Sheffield Pink’ Chrysanthemum (C. x rubellum) has been featured on this blog before. It is a wonderful plant that will always have a place in any garden I tend to. This was my second attempt at a flower shot with the 50mm. I couldn’t decide which to post so here are both.


We had a couple of trick or treaters last night and there is a huge bowl of candy sitting across the table from me yelling ‘EAT ME’ but I am resisting. I am taking a few minis to work and that’s is it.