29°C, and it's going to last for at least a few days, temps will go down a bit at the weekend, then up again to 30. And no rain forecast for at least two weeks. I went to a "cool" place, some shade under the big trees. "Arboretum des Grandes Bruyères". They have an "asian garden" section with some maples, a big Zelkova, Pinus pentaphylla, Ulmus parvifolia, etc. Here are some photos of a few of the maples. These were just labelled "Acer palmatum" : This one too was labelled "palmatum", but I think it is not. Japonicum ? Shirasawanum : A detail of one of the cappadocicum : There were others like Acer triflorum, several Acer buergerianum, a small Acer ukurunduense in a poor condition, Acer negundo, a big variegated species of Acer campestre, Acer triflorum, etc. I'll have to go back to take more pictures. ;0)
Silly temperatures for May, I see that parts of France are now having water shortages. What is July and August going to bring!! Looks a lovely cool place to visit Alain.
You're welcome any time : the bugs won't bite, there are so many spiders in the house that I can't remember their names. The "red" "département" in the center is like the bull's eye. That's where I live :
76 was the year when I went to Dundee to spend a school year as a "French assistant". I thought the photos of the hills (the "laws") were "painted", today, we would say photoshoped, but they weren't. The hills were really purple. I remember I smiled at the advice on the radio "prefer a shower to a bath", to save water. In the flat we shared with other students, there was only a bath tub, so we bought an adaptator, one rubber pipe on the cold water tap, another one on the hot tap. It was at that time a "cultural" difference, very few flats were equipped with showers. I'm talking about the mid-seventies, where French homes had toilets in the back of the garden, as "the Americans" believed <LOL> In the heat of this '76 summer, there was still a place in Scotland where there was still some snow, and a road sign that had been used as a "slide". Wonder who was fool enough to slip down the snow ? Admire the long hair in the wind, and the slender silhouette of the laddie, huh huh huh... Sorry, no photos of the crash at the bottom of the slope.
Yesterday, I visited the "Arboretum des Prés de Culans", 20 km from where I live. It's also a National Conservatory of Ilex, they have about 500 varieties, but they're not as easy to spot as other trees, and most of the time less spectacular. The first time I went there was years ago, at the end of summer, and I noticed they had some nice maples, but not at their best. This time, I was really impressed. This time, all the trees were at their best. The fact that is is located in a kind of marsh-like area, with channels of small rivers called "Les Mauves" probably helps. The tallest trees (Taxodium, various conifers, etc.) help keep them in the shade, and "les Mauves" keep a humid atmosphere that most maples love. Don't panic ! I won't post the 50+ pics I took, but if ever you happen to take a trip along the river Loire, make sure Meung-su-Loire is a place to make a stop (It's also a place with a medieval castle where François Villon, an iconic French poet of the 15th century is said to have spend some time in the vaults). There is one of the tallest, most beautiful Acer palmatum I've seen in my region , it must be at least 12 metres tall. From different sides :
(continued) There were smaller ones, a couple of 'Buttrefly' in a so-si condition, one that was labelled 'Lutescens', a Shirasawanum vitifolium, another shirasawanum, and quite a few "dissecum atropurpureum" that were not labelled. There was also a 'Seiryu' about 3 metres tall, but I couldn't take a good picture of the whole tree.
Today, I visited the "Arboretum des Prés de Culans"... again. Resonably hot (26°, and cloudy) Many flowers (Astilbe in particular) added to the scenery. Lots of dragonflies, ladybirds, butterflies and various bumblebees, but they were hard to photograph. Next time I go will be in Autumn, for the colours. A few maples that had a tag. There were others in poor condition, like some 'Butterfly', some of them with many reverted branches - I wish I had taken my pruners with me!
A couple of other pics : My friend panicked when she saw that on the path : ... but it was just a "slow worm", in French "un orvet". The other common name is "serpent de verre" (glass snake), for if you take it by the end of the tail, it breaks free, litterally.
PS : I concentrated on the maples, but they are supposed to have 500 species of Ilex (boxwood) and a wide collection of hostas, hemerocalles, etc. They also have conifers, among them several cultivars of Cryptomeria, etc. So if you ever happen to travel around, it's really worth spending an hour or more there. PPS : and if you are around, do pop in: I always need hands to try and tend my garden, huh huh...
It does seem like a very nice place. Just hotting up a bit here, 24C! Seems warm to us, but actually only 77F, heh. We should be in the low 30s in a few days, it's really dry, but good for bringing in hay. I think the maple in the last post is probably closer to A. pensylvanicum, tegmentosum usually is distinctly 5-lobed. Acer palmatun [sic], forsooth! That's a typo someone will probably pick up on, and repeat, haha.
Hi Emery, I'm almost 100% sure there were no trees labelled "pensylvanicum", and I remembered I told my friend I had a couple of seedlings of the same species. But perhaps it was mislabelled (?)
Could be. Or it could well be a hybrid, so many of the section are, in arboreta and elsewhere; you have do be really careful about the seed source to have any hope of getting the real thing. A. tegmentosum gets its epithet "the hidden maple" because the new shoots are covered with a glaucous waxy bloom, (hidden twigs, as it were), which is generally persistent although you can rub it off too. But I can't count the number of other snakebarks, so called pensylvanicum, rufinerve, morifolium, etc., that all show the same bloom, indicating hybrid origin. In my experience, as I said, tegmentosum is very distinctly 5-lobed, with leaves about as wide as long. But as we all know, leaf shape can be variable plant to plant.
Imagine how I can identify my own trees, most of the time the tags are gone, and they're all from seeds (except the "J. maples" I bought).
Too late for the "Arboretum des Prés de Culans", they close at the end of September. :-( But I went to "Arboretum des Grandes Bruyères", one of the most beautiful places I know. We went back tired and happy. It's in the middle of "Forêt d'Orléans", so you can't hear any cars, even in the distance, but you can smell the flowers. Dozens of bees on the many asters, but the music they made were not disturbing, they were soothing. First, the smell of boxwood (I was happy to see that all in all, they looked "OK"), then the smell of flowers, and further on, the smell of conifers, pines, junipers, fir-trees, larch, etc. The colours of maples in the distance was an invitation to get closer, but I took the time to stop and have a look at the rest, the sky, the scenery. One labelled 'Japonicum' (is it really?), and one which is not labelled : This one is like a beacon in the landscape, the true colours are really fantastic. It's labelled "ACER YEZOENSIS"... ??? Ever heard of "Acer yezohensis ? A dissectum, and what might be 'O-sakazuki', or a close-related amoenum I thought. But the label writes "ACER SIBOLDIANUM". Euh... (In English, Er... ???) Another one with no label :
Two Acer triflorum, one mostly green, the other in his automn suit : Acer cappadocicum, and futher on, one that I took for a cappadocicum but is labelled 'Acer fulvescens' : --- That red caught my eyes. I went closer. Rubrum, or saccharum ? Both can only be seen in parks here, while Acer saccharinum is very common as street trees now. So it's very difficult for me to tell a rub. from a sac. I think it's a saccharinum though...
I think Acer saccharinum, though I would not completely rule out Acer × freemanii (its hybrid with A. rubrum). Some info on Acer fulvescens here.
Narrowish habit, slender shoots and uniform strong red fall color of the last one indicate a horticultural selection of A. x freemanii. Or an unnamed seedling with attributes similar to those of certain existing cultivars involving genetic combinations of red maple and silver maple. Acer × freemanii | Landscape Plants | Oregon State University In Europe the best-known clone is ‘Jeffersred’ (sold as Autumn Blaze), capable of fabulous autumn colour Acer × freemanii - Trees and Shrubs Online
What a fantastic looking place. Clearly there are faeries that clip topiary during the very early morning, but they seem to avoid heavy use of the débroussailleuse, which is nice. Most of the old French labeling uses "japonicum" for "shirasawanum". This looks very like what we would now call A. shirasawanum 'Palmatifolium'. It looks very much like what I've seen. And Mallet Court would have been able to supply the true plant, though I don't believe they have it any longer. There will now be hundreds who swear this is the correct name, and will never learn otherwise. Too bad, heh. As you saw, not sieboldianum. Will the French ever learn that it is offensive to use the 3 letter abbreviation? Makes me cringe every time... Silver maples don't usually go red in fall here, more like yellow and orange. So the color alone makes it a good candidate for freemanii. There are plenty of unnamed examples floating around. FWIW, Europe is not monolithic, the cultivars seen commercially in the west and UK are often quite different from those seen in the east. (Although Autumn Blaze is omnipresent).
Thanks everyone for your comments and links. Right. As I said, it's a very quiet place. There were two people working, they use hand shears and the branches were put away on an electric car. Right again. But the French didn't fight the ways the Americans did in the Pacific, so the abbreviation is not felt as offensive here. Plus we don't have large Japanese communities like in LA or other places in the US.
Wikipedia has a page on the latter subject, assumed implications of usage do still seem to be based on specific geographical location. However the UBC forum software masks it so that establishes that this location - the forum - does not find it acceptable.
And I totally agree, I even pointed that on other forums. What I wanted to say was that the person that wrote this label was not aware at all it was offensive. But yes, it's definitely unacceptable on English-speaking forums. It's not an issue here, no one ever writes "J*p" maple or Erable "J*p", it's always "Erable du Japon". We too have lots of insulting words for people from a different culture, a different country, and even a different region of France, but no offensive word for "Japanese" - if only the "j*p word", but nobody really uses it. Or they would be asked "Wow, and you spent 77 years on a remote island off the coast of Brittany, really ?..." It's a bit like calling someone from Germany "un boche", totally irrelevant ...
