Ink Tea Stone Leaf

Disclaimer: I am not going to look anything up or fact-check any claims I may make about plant biology in this post. My intention is to draw a boundary between what I think that I know and what I know that I don’t know. Please do not rely upon my plant lore as evidence to win an argument.

When I was little I was very passionate about animal science, but I could not muster the same level of excitement about plant life. That isn’t to say that I never learned the basics about plants, such as photosynthesis, their life cycles, the adaptations they made to life in different climates; I would have to have been downright incurious not to pick up any of that. It’s just that I spent far less time thinking about them, so my knowledge of things like plant taxonomy never became as systematic of my knowledge of the different varieties of animals. I was taught how to recognize certain plants by sight, but I never developed an eye for the sheer vatiety of flora all around me. I have always known a lot of words for different species, but my sense of applying those names remains underdeveloped.

If I’m curious, I can look just about anything, but I thought it might be a nice exercise to step into my backyard and put my knowledge to the test. Trying to name, or even describe, every single species of plant growing out here would probably be overwhelming, so I’ll limit myself to the trees. More than that, I’ll ignore the ones growing in my neighbors’ yards, and stick to the ones I can see from right here on the deck. We’ll see what I can come up with—right or wrong, here is what I know about the trees in my backyard.

Starting from the north end of my yard, there are a pair of cherry trees. I know that they are cherry trees because I pick copious quantities of cherries from them every year; I can still see the ones I left behind among the leaves, looking rather over-ripe. The season before the fruit comes in they produce plenty of those beautiful pink blossoms that cherry trees are celebrated for, so from spring to early summer it’s pretty hard to mistake them for anything else. Living with them for a few years now, I think I could still spot a cherry tree out of season, thanks to the particular shape of the leaves (long and pointed) and a kind of striped pattern on the bark. There are a lot of kinds of cherries and I don’t know what kind grow on my trees, but I think Ariele said to me once that being comparatively less sweet, they are more suited for pies and other baked goods. I know that’s true, because of all the delicious cherry pastries we’ve been having.

Next in line is our Asian pear tree. It’s not entirely dissimilar to the cherry trees, but the leaves look to be a little broader, and the bark is less stripey than mottled. Naturally, it produces pears instead of cherries, so that’s a dead give-away. It flowers around the same time in the spring, but pear blossoms are white rather than pink. In the spring I tend to keep my distance on account of the odor; they’re not as pungent as some varieties of pear blossoms, but all pear blossoms seem to produce a scent that some observers liken to human semen. I’ll just say, it smells a lot more pleasant out here in June than in March or April.

Right now the pears are ripening on the boughs, though they won’t be ready for a couple of months. I’ve never been a fan of pears, Asian or otherwise, but other people seem to like the jams that Ariele makes with them; I also know they are an excellent ingredient for marinades and barbecue sauces. Last year, we learned the hard way that if you don’t keep your pear trees pruned, they are liable to grow so many fruit that the overladen branches start to actually break off. We had it pruned last fall, but judging by all the new growth I see, it won’t be too long before we need to do it again.

There’s another little tree growing in the middle of the pear and cherry area, just a few years old at this point. Judging by the leaves I believe it’s a cherry, but it’s apparently still too young to flower or fruit. Maybe next year?

Bamboo is not really a tree; my understanding is that it’s actually a variety of grass. Whatever it is, there’s a patch of it growing alongside my neighbor’s fence, and it’s nearly as tall as the pear tree at this point, so I’ll count it with the trees. To be clear, I’m only discussing the trees in my own yard today, but the bamboo is actually growing on both sides of the fence—it spread to our side after first growing on theirs, and it spread quickly, bamboo being incredibly fast-growing. I have a vague notion that I heard somewhere that there are rules about planting bamboo where it can spread like that, namely that you aren’t supposed to do it. I don’t really mind it being there, though, and I don’t begrudge my neighbor a little extra privacy. I have been meaning to go and pull out the stuff growing on my side, but you know that’s going to come back eventually. Maybe we can use the poles for something.

South of the bamboo and at the base of the hill below the street are a pair of evergreens, and here my skill at tree identification begins to fail. Some kind of fir, perhaps? They are both exceptionally tall, and long ago somebody cut off the lower branches, so there are a bunch of stubs sticking out the sides of the trunks; they look sort of like you could climb them, if you were either very light or not very smart. I can see what look like clusters of blue-ish, white-ish berries growing amongst the leaves, which are not exactly needles (so I know it’s not a pine), but more like feathers.

One of these trees has a single thick trunk, while the other has what look like two trunks growing out of one base. I may not know precisely what these trees are, but we call them the Bonnie and Sherbert trees, because our late beloved lovebirds of those names are buried underneath them. Further up on the hill there are a couple of other evergreens of seemingly the same type growing, but they haven’t gotten nearly as tall yet.

The hill itself is covered in ivy, which I am cool with, and a few blackberry brambles, which I’m not. The first summer we lived here I went to war with the blackberries, which had basically grown as big as trees, and probably would have grown over the house if I let them; once a year or so, I go up there and cut out whatever has grown back. Himalayan blackberries are invasive here in Oregon, so it’s best to cut them out where you can and not let them get too comfortable.

Also on the hill are a few spindly-looking things that I simply don’t know the names of. They grow pretty tall (and provide us with some extra privacy from the street) and their leaves look vaguely like those of the pear or cherry trees, but they don’t flower or produce any sort of fruit, so I am at a loss. More research is required. Also living on the hill are a few very young oak trees, which I believe to be the Oregon White Oak. I like to encourage these ones, except that one of them appears to be growing up inside one of my rose bushes in the front yard, and I should probably do something about that.

Finally, at the top of the hill stands another cherry tree, very similar to the ones in the yard itself. Although it flowers every year, I’ve never seen any fruit growing on it, and I confess that I don’t know exactly why that is. Since it flowers slightly out of synch with the other two, I suspect it is a different variety, possibly an ornamental one. A couple of years before we moved in, there was a severe ice storm that damaged this tree and nearly severed one of its long branches, which is still lying on the hillside. The branch isn’t hurting anything so I leave it alone, and in any case it’s still connected and alive enough to leaf out qnd flower every year.

There are a few other trees out in front of the house, but we have reached the end of the backyard survey. I have a few things to research now, so in the spirit of this naïve survey, I guess we will leave it at that.