I love that campestre! Glad to see the davidii is still extant, I had to pull out a couple that died in the wet. Was just looking at Bi-hō (both the old spelling from Nakajima, and the new, compliant name: 美峰 means "Beautiful Summit" -- hoo and hou are just meaningless rōmaji variations) a couple of days ago. I should really plant it, in a 35l it wants nothing so much as ground. But I noticed that the bark was discolored with a blackish tinge, as we see here on many smooth barks, apples, etc. It scrubs off easily, though I haven't spent a lot of time polishing trees, it has made me peel some Betula utilis. I wonder what it is, an airborn fungus, or some sort of dirt? There's virtually no industry downwind, either south or west, where the stuff builds up. And we have tons of lichens, so the air seems clean enough. As it happens, I assembled some Snakebark pictures for TMSBI's instagram last week, here are a few. (Celebrating the installation of fiber, my bandwidth has increased by 3000X!) As Alain's post shows, though, there's tons of great interest in maple bark beyond the usual Snakebarks. -E
