Seed Harvest!

As if the stunning fall colors weren't enough, plants make this a dazzling season with seeds! Seeds come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors. Not only are seeds lovely to look at, they also have fascinating adaptations for dispersal. Some seeds create a fleshy fruit that's edible. Animals will consume the fruit and the seed and later poop the seed out. Other seeds are super light weight and are designed to float effortlessly through the wind. Hamamelis virginiana (witch hazel) has a particularly dramatic adaptation for seed dispersal. When the seed is mature, it explodes out of its shell. Each of these strategies work to spread seeds away from their parent. When you explore our grounds, take a moment to look for seeds, but always remember to leave them be. The collection of any plant, fungi, or animal is prohibited in The Arboretum. Our staff collect seeds to aid in the conservation of rare and endangered plant species. 

Our summer was super dry! While mature trees can handle the stress of a dry season, the drought made it difficult for some trees to produce a lot of seed. Despite the challenging conditions Fraxinus quadrangulata (blue ashes) put out a stellar seed crop!  Magnolia acuminata (cucumber trees) also managed to produce a decent number of seeds. 

This year's seed harvest was supported by a boom lift loan and technical working-at-heights training for staff, thanks to Skyjack and Cooper Equipment Rental. The boom lift has been an awesome tool for reaching seeds that are well above our normal reach. We are continuing to pick more Fraxinus quadrangulata (blue ash) seed this week for the National Seed Bank. The Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip tree) is just ripening, as well as Gymnocladus dioicus (kentucky coffee-tree). The Skyjack boom lift will stay onsite until mid-November.

Top Left: Fraxinus quadrangulata (blue ash) seeds. Photo by Sadie Campbell. Top Right: Magnolia acuminata (cucumber tree) orange seeds popping out of their black seedpod. Photo by Michelle Beltran. Bottom Left: Maggie, Michelle, Sadie, Nathan, Sarah, Kellen, and Caroline in front of a boom lift. Photo by Skyjack. 

Memorial Forest Plantings!

Maggie, Cael, Kellen, and Sadie standing behind a newly planted bur oak (Quercus marocarpa). 

This month our horticulture team planted over 400 more native trees and shrubs in our Memorial Forest! Redbuds (Cercis canadensis), oaks (Quercus), maples (Acer) and other species were planted along reforestation edges and throughout trails. The Memorial Forest grows year-round through donations to a 35-year partnership with Wall-Custance Funeral Home and Chapel. Community members give to honour a loved one, and one symbolic tree is dedicated each year with a plaque. In memory of each person, additional trees and shrubs are planted throughout our grounds, forest trails and collections. This year’s tree was a bur oak and our video ceremony honouring the dedication memories can be found here.

Jaguar Safari
Chris Earley, Interpretive Biologist and Education Coordinator

Upcoming Workshops

Wednesday Walks!

See Ya Later, Herptiles!

What To See

Not only is bird bathing incredibly cute, it’s also important! Bathing helps keep a bird’s skin clean and their feathers in good condition. 









 

In the fall, the leaves on trees change colour due to changes in the length of daylight and temperature which causes the leaves to stop their food-making processes. The chlorophyll (which gives leaves their green colour) breaks down causing the green to disappear and the beautiful yellow, orange and reds to appear. The variation in colours we see in the autumn foliage is due to the varying amounts of chlorophyll residue and other pigments in the leaves.

By producing brightly coloured berries in the fall, jack-in-the-pulpit plants are employing migrating birds to disperse their seeds. The timing works because there are more birds around right now and some of them have done something miraculous: they have changed their digestive systems to be more efficient at digesting fall fruits after spending a spring and summer eating insects. Fruits provide the energy and fat that migrating songbirds need and plants have “known” this for a while!

From the Archive: Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua)

This article was written by Sean Fox for The Green Web newsletter in Spring 2007. The Green Web newsletter (and other back issues of our newsletter in its various iterations) can be found on the Newsletter page of our website. 
 

The Arboretum displays unique plants from many parts of the world in its various plant collections. According to the Canadian Plant Hardiness Zones Map, Guelph sits in zone 5A, and theoretically we should only be able to cultivate plants with an estimated hardiness rating of 5A or less. A large array of trees from the temperate areas of the globe will endure this climate, but there are still some limitations with what we can successfully cultivate here.

Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) showing its stunning fall colour. Photo by Sean Fox. 

The Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, is a wonderful ‘Tree To See’, but if I were to tell you to go take a look at one, I’d normally suggest you head south, as it is too cold for these trees to survive in Guelph. This seems like a reasonable assumption to make as the Sweetgum is generally classified as being hardy to zone 7A. That’s two full zones warmer than Guelph. However, this fact didn’t deter Henry Kock from giving this species a try during his early days at The Arboretum as Plant Propagator.

Sweetgum is a very interesting tree with star-shaped leaves, corky-ridged bark and some very distinct spiny ball-shaped fruit. Needless to say, this eastern U.S. native and member of the Hamamelidaceae (Witchhazel) family would be a very unique addition to our collections, and Henry decided he would try to make it happen.

He began his project by collecting seeds from some wild Sweetgum in Ohio, as well as another batch from some cultivated trees growing at the cemetery in Port Dover, Ontario. Port Dover sits along the north shore of Lake Erie and while much warmer in the winter than Guelph, it was still considered to be at the northern limit of the cold-hardiness range for Sweetgum. Henry estimated that about 1000 seedlings germinated from these two lots of seeds back in the early 1980s. The seedlings were put to the test in the protected environment of the nursery for several years until only 10 young sweetgums remained. The cold was too much for the large majority of the seedlings, but these standouts were able to tough it out. This occurrence shows strong evidence to support the idea of genetic variation within a tree species. It was once thought that all individual trees within a species were genetically identical, but now we understand that there is genetic variation for things such as cold-tolerance and disease susceptibility within not only the natural range of the plant, but also the offspring of an individual tree. Just like you and me, trees are all born a little different!

After a couple more growing seasons in this climate only three trees proved hardy and they were moved into the World of Trees collection where they still stand to this day. That’s about 0.3% of the seedlings from the original two seed lots that had the genetic traits to tolerate our climate. How’s that for being unique? The trees were initially offered protection in the winter in the form of a burlap wrap until four years ago when it was decided that they had reached the size that they needed to tough it out on their own. While two of the trees, from the Port Dover seed lot, have suffered some die-back in the past three years, the third seedling, and only survivor from the Ohio seed-lot, is still gaining size every year.

While this is an amazing survival story, I’m not sure I’ve convinced you to come see these trees yet. What if I were to tell you that Sweetgum provides one of the most spectacular displays of fall colour at The Arboretum - would that help sway you?

The Sweetgum has been known to have colour ranging from yellow to dark purple in the autumn, sometimes even with several colours on the same tree. In October I liken our trees to the appearance of a gumball machine. Imagine the star-shaped leaves in various shades pink, purple, red, orange, yellow, and green simultaneously scattered throughout the tree, and you’ll have a reasonable vision of how these sweetgums shine in the fall. Quite incredible!

Winter and Holiday Arboretum Bookings!

In the Ecosystem

Donation and Dedications

A donation has been made to support the efforts of The Arboretum because it connects people with nature through research, outreach, & conservation - because it is a place for people to come to enjoy nature, for special events, to learn & understand.

The summer of 2022 was the 15^th anniversary of Beechwood Produce Stand. The Beechwood Park neighbourhood, near the University of Waterloo, was designed to shape the subdivision to the landscape as opposed to shaping the landscape to the subdivision.  This landscape sensitive design resulted in the protection of much of the topography and existing vegetation, a maple-beech forest.

Beechwood Produce Stand volunteers lined up behind the produce stand.

The produce stand exists because of volunteers of all ages & a community of very supportive customers. It reflects a commitment to conveniently provide fresh produce, flowers & baking from local farms & bakeries. It creates the opportunity to build community amongst neighbours and friends. It helps give back to the broader community by making weekly donations of any unsold produce to the Food Bank of Waterloo Region, & by raising funds to donate to the neighbourhood association, schools, and charities. In September, the community chose The Arboretum.

The Beechwood Produce Stand operates every Wednesday afternoon from June to the beginning of September. It is a beehive of activity as volunteers arrive in the morning to set up for afternoon sales. Each week, reflects the seasonal changes in what is locally available from asparagus & strawberries in June to squash, peaches, apples, carrots & sweet corn in September. To learn more about the Beechwood Produce Stand, check out their website.

Gifts to the Arboretum are tax deductible. Join our community of supporters today with a gift through our online donation portal. 

We can accept donations of shares and in-kind contributions of appreciated securities. Donors receive full tax credit for the fair-market value.

Contact our director, Justine Richardson justine.richardson@uoguelph.ca, to discuss how you can contribute.

Merchandise

Ways you can connect with The Arboretum