Green leaves and flowers

Time for the bird cherry (prunus padus) to flower. The flowers only last for a short time, a few days or so. It's a pity the scent can not be included in the photo!

And the sallow - no spectacular flowers, but a wonderful rounded shape.

Large pine

A large pine of unknown age, I love it. The people that live here say it has always been there!

Alnus incana

  The ice is gone on the river and the alder is flowering.

More vacation

 I have not been only to the wild nature of Swedish Lapland this summer, but also a trip to Stockholm.

There I could enjoy trees of sorts that don't grow in my home area, like all the large oaks. This looks like a dead tree, but it has still a few live branches. It's called "The oak of Karl XII" - king of Sweden 1697-1718, born in 1682. The sign by the tree tells me he played under this oak when he was a child!

The tree stands by the Karlberg Palace.

This year's vacation tree pictures...

 I have to follow my habit to look at trees as soon as I'm away from home! This time I have been to an area close to the Swedish high mountains.  (Hornavan-Sädvajaure.)   (My friends were mostly interested in fishing, while I was looking at trees and plants...)

There were some really old  pines, and they were all covered with these brown hanging lichens.

This pine is not only old - it's dead... But you can see how powerful it has been once.

The spruces in this area are tall straight with extremely short branches in the top. This way they protect themselves from being harmed by heavy snow in the winter.

Then there were the birch forests, the willows...

- and the mosquitos...

 Compare the look of these dwarfed birches with the proud ones along the birch avenue in my home area!

Bogbean

Menyanthes trifoliata

Vattenklöver

A thousand and one birch

This is the best time for birch. What I mean is the best time to look at it: the leaves are still fresh, and they have a nice light green colour.

Not far from my home is a birch avenue, known as the longest in Europe, the road of a thousand birches. It is also beautiful this time of year!

Europas längsta björkallé kan man hitta här i närheten: den finns mellan Bygdeträsk och Avaborg i Skellefteå kommun. Jag kör här mellan björkarna regelbundet och hela sommaren är det jättevackert!

...

Green and brown needles

The snow is gone and I can see my outdoor trees again after the winter! The majority looks good.

But two of the pines are all brown, or should I say "rusty". I think they are dead and I will have to throw them away. I can not be sure of the cause, but I believe it is a pine-desease - I should probably worry for the rest of the pines (?)...

The large aspen behind our house is full of flowers! 

I have learned this about aspen: each tree is either male or female, both male and female trees produce catkins - and they look a little different. According to my flora-book the female catkins are 10-18 cm and male catkins 8-10 cm.

But it's impossible to see the size of the catkins when they are so high up in the air! 

Then there is still one thing I don't know. Must the tree reach a certain age before it starts flowering? For I can't remember having seen this tree flowering before. Or I have forgotten. (Does it happen one year now and then? - and not the years between?) The other aspen tree behind our house does not have any catkins - maybe because it's younger???

One other thing I have read about aspens is that they form "clones" - many trees growing from the same root system - genetically identical. Here is one,  for a bonsai enthusiast very interesting, aspen clone I walked by yesterday: heavily grazed by moose to shape these dwarfed trees!

I must go back to this place for yamadori...

My semi-hardy trees can come out in the sun now and then. The nights are still very cold (this night was -6 degrees C).

Here is seen zelkovas and japanese maples.

Tree

A salix from this morning's walk.

For the love of trees

 

That's why we do it, isn't it? For the love of trees.

Picture from last Sunday's bonsai meeting
and "wild trees" from my neighbourhood.

December

Pictures from today, taken around our house when the sun rised above the horizon for a short while.