Last Nights Talk

As I mentioned some postings ago, there are many ways to enjoy gardening throughout the year and last nights talk by Sean Fox of the University of Guelph Arboretum was one of them. Sean's talk focussed on Rare Trees and Shrubs of Ontario. Sean is an excellent speaker with an incredible knowledge of the topic. He is young too - well I guess young is relative given how old you may be. Sean shared his knowledge with confidence and humour.

He introduced us to about 20 trees that while Native to Ontario, are rare. In talking about these trees, he frequently showed slides from the Ontario Tree Atlas Survey that was conducted over a 4 year period. While many of the trees that he talked about were not a surprise, there were a few that we might not have felt were rare. Three in the surprise category were the Eastern Redbud, the Tulip Tree, and the Eastern White Cedar.

Sean did take a fair amount of time talking about each of these 20 or so trees. He spoke of their characteristics, showed slides of the leaves and fruit, indicated where they were most plentiful in the Province, and why they might be rare. For example, when speaking of the Common Hoptree (a shrub or small tree), he indicated that in Ontario, it is a host for the larvae of the Giant Swallowtail butterfly and is a member of the citrus family. He also mentioned that the Tulip Tree is a wild Magnolia found in Ontario.

Sean mentioned too that the Carolinean Forest found in Southern Ontario is the most biological diverse forest area found in Canada with more tree species than anywhere else in Canada. He gave me something to follow up on.