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A look back on 2021 in Plant Records at Holden

Plants

January 11, 2022

Leaves

January

Inventory in the Conifer Collection in January. Go until your fingers can’t hold the pencil! 1.21.21

February

We use the colder months to do work in the herbarium, mounting specimens that are useful in verifying our collection. 2.5.21
February is for dwarf conifers! With help from the Education Department, we made a guide to dwarf conifers for the northeast Ohio homeowner. Here, a gaggle of weeping Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens ‘The Blues’) watch over the Display Garden. I like to call them the three sisters. 2.12.21

March

The best time to map our woody plants is in the months when deciduous trees are dormant. Seen here, Ethan J en route to do some mapping. 3.4.21

April

A staff engagement opportunity had us out in the natural areas helping the Conservation Department. Here’s Ethan J and the first garlic mustard pick of the season in Stebbins Gulch. 4.7.21
Anyone who came to Holden in early April surely remembers these showstoppers. Good news about these pink-flowered Loebner magnolia (Magnolia x loebneri ‘Leonard Messell’) is their flowers hold up fairly well when faced with a spring frost. 4.7.21

May

May is for rhododendron! The enchanting blooms of the Piedmont rhododendron (Rhododendron minus) seen here in the Layer Rhododendron Garden. 5.19.21
The color is almost too good to be true on this evergreen azalea (Rhododendron ‘Hino-Red’) in the Layer Rhododendron Garden. 5.19.21

June

June is for roses! Our Rose Fragrance Evaluation took place throughout the month at the CBG Rose Garden and the Lantern Court Rose Garden. Pictured here is Rosa [James Galway]. 6.3.21
We continued with our collection of wild serviceberries (Amelanchier spp.) with the help of our friends at Cleveland Metroparks. 6.15.21
The recently planted, eye-catching Canada lilies (Lilium canadense) made its debut in the June Room. 6.16.21

July

July saw the beginning of inventorying the Myrtle S. Holden Wildflower Garden. In the wildflower prairie, queen of the prairie (Filipendula rubra) reigned supreme. 7.16.21
And what a magnificent time to be in the Wildflower Garden! Pictured here is Ethan J in Pennington Bed South surrounded by a smorgasbord of wildflowers. 7.30.21

August

A monarch on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) in the Pollinator Plots. Guess they are working! 8.4.21
This year was an exceptional year for cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) pictured here in the Rhododendron Discovery Garden. We inventoried RDG in the spring but made sure to revisit as the season progressed. 8.17.21

September

September is for acorns! As a Quercus Multisite, we spend time each fall vouchering our collection of oaks. Here are the beautiful acorns of a white oak (Quercus alba) on Spruce Knoll. 9.14.21
Fall is aster time as proven by this white wood aster (Eurybia divaricata) in the Wildflower Garden 9.3.21

October

The first week of October, we went on a plant collecting trip in western North Carolina and southern Ohio. Here we are atop Little Green Mountain in North Carolina collecting table-mountain pine (Pinus pungens). 10.4.21
Fall foliage was a bit wacky this year but some reliable doers, like this highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) near Blueberry Pond, did not disappoint. 10.12.21
One of the latest bloomers for us, the Tatarian aster (Aster tataricus ‘Jindai’) pictured here just getting going in mid-October. 10.19.21

November

With the weather still pleasant we continued inventory in the Helen S. Layer Rhododendron Garden. 11.08.21

December

We took advantage of some unseasonably warm weather this December and continued with inventory in the Nut Tree Collection, pictured here. 12.10.21

Here’s more to explore

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