An Early Spring Salmagundi

Sorry, but you’ll have to bypass the primary definition of salmagundi—no fancy salad platters here—but today’s photos surely do represent a heterogeneous mixture of the good, bad and ugly. A couple of visits to Campgaw Reservation and the Celery Farm in the first weeks of spring yielded a bit of each.

Somewhere along the line, the American Beech lost the instructions for making very good abscission layers—those thin layers of cells that get dissolved by enzymes come fall, causing the petioles to separate from the twigs and the leaves to utter that familiar phrase, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” That’s fine with me, as the sprinkle of café au lait softens the blacks, grays and darker browns of the winter and early spring woodland. And the fact that the dead leaves tend to droop and curl probably reduces their surface area and prevents the buildup of snow, one of the several reasons that most deciduous trees like to get rid of their old leaves. It’s just one more reason that the American Beech is one of my favorite trees. Pin oaks like to hang on to their leaves, too. So I guess I had better add them to my favorites list as well.

As long as I am breaking my promise to lay off the fungi for a while, I might as well do it with something particularly disgusting. You will agree, I’m sure, that there is nothing even mildly attractive about Black Knot. Several reference books I looked at described it in scatological terms. I won’t go that far, but it does look like something on a stick. It’s a nasty parasite that can wreak havoc in a cherry orchard as well as with Wild Black Cherry trees. This ugly fungus kills young branches and whole trees if given the opportunity. Don’t cherry trees have enough to endure with tent caterpillars?

Euonymus alata (Cork Bush, Winged Euonymus or Burning Bush) is an absolute pest when it invades our woodlands, since it often displaces our native plants. But don’t blame it on the plant—blame it on the people who import it for ornamental use. This shrub has ways of escaping from yards into the woods, especially since birds have a yen for its bright orange seeds. Nevertheless, it’s a classy bush in its own right, if only for its unique twig design. Just try to imagine the amount of genetic information and precise engineering that goes into growing those pure cork, razor-edged wings out of a green twig. Nothing random about it! I wouldn’t have a negative thought about this Burning Bush if it didn’t often displace our native Burning Bush, an eponymous Euonymus (E. atropurpureus), also called Eastern Wahoo.

I refuse to get into a discussion here about bulbs, corms, rhizomes and tubers and their distinctions. Such conversations can get quite contentious and ugly. What we need right now is a true harbinger of spring. And the appearance of crocuses is certainly that. There are about eighty species of Crocus, thirty or more of which are cultivated. The most commercially valuable species is Crocus sativus, the stigmas of which yield the spice saffron, a very expensive way to make food yellow. There are fall crocuses too, but they aren’t harbingers. Fall doesn’t have harbingers. Only spring has harbingers. By the way, crocuses grow from corms, but I’ll leave it to you to look up the definition.

These brief springtime treks have once again reminded me of the importance of the biblical worldview in appreciating and understanding the significance of our environment. The good, the bad and the ugly aspects seen in our salmagundi have reminded me again of the framed motto on my desk: “If you don’t understand Genesis 3, you really don’t understand anything.” The very good world of the original Creation was wounded terribly by the entrance of sin. It is still God’s good Creation, but it and we personally desperately need to be bought back from the ravages of sin. It is our hope (assurance) that it will happen soon. Genesis 3:17-19 and Romans 8:18-24 are the passages to reflect on today. To read them in context ("Text without context is pretext") pop open the old-fashioned paper version--always more satisfying!

Soli Deo Gloria