The Guy I’d Transplanted

Two days back I spied two small evergreen tree saplings.  One has long needles like a pine the other had shorter fir needles like a Christmas tree.  Tough to say if they were well placed to penetrate the canopy one day given their respective locations.  One of them, the pine, was very close the path and eventually would be stepped on.   The other was set a bit further back and had committed to one long, low branch shooting out from base.  Neither of these saplings were larger than six inches in height. 

I dug them up placed the soil into some large pots and brought them up to the fenced in area my wife has for gardening.  I set them in there with the idea that I’d ideally grow them to a larger size and then move them somewhere in the yard when they were sturdier.  They seem like they’re doing alright, so far.

Yesterday when I set out on my bike, heading north towards Rosendale, I took especially close notice of pines.  Earlier, I’d spied what seemed like a broad variety of pines on Old Huguenot Street.  Watching closely on this ride I noticed dozens of trees that looked like my little, long needled pine.  And similarly, there were an uninterrupted parade of fir like trees that resembled my little transplant.  There were cedars too, but I’m not counting them.  We already have quite a few.  And the further I went the more convinced I became that, there wasn’t much of anything else to see, in the evergreen family.  I don’t know what I’d been looking for.  But it was bit deflating and illuminating certainly to now characterize all the evergreens I saw into two or three simple buckets. 

The six-story pines out in front of Garvan’s are long thing needled pines. That aren’t so different from the big one in my front yard.  The sweeping firs that arch down to the street like graceful hems of a dress near the graveyard set off the road, are basically the same needle shape as the guy I’d transplanted.  Looking online there are obviously many nuances.  A “Balsam Fir” and “Black Spruce” are two I’d have bucketed into my fir bucket.  My dull surprise was that the basic characterizations seemed to simple and finite. 

I found one pine-like tree that was rather distinct from the common one I’d otherwise been seeing.  This one had longer, thicker needles that were further separated from each other than the springs on the common pine.  I looked below it and couldn’t find anything like a pinecone.  Nothing was hanging in the tree either. Later, back in the old railway parking lot I saw the tree once again.  And it can’t be a coincidence that this tree was also bereft of any cones.  I took a small stem and figured I’d plant it to see if I could induce it to sprout up in our garden. 

Today, I’m heading south.  I will be looking very carefully for pines, once again   But I don’t expect to come up with anything particularly new in the conifer world, beyond my three basic Pinaceae buckets.

Thursday, 03/11/20