Last year in the fall, we were "borrowing" cuttings from all over the place. Well, OK, we were really stealing, but I don't think anyone really minded. This one, as I recall, was growing alongside a chain link fence at the Home Depot parking lot in Kamloops. It was dying back at the time. We dipped the cutting in rooting hormone and stuck it in a pot. Somewhat to our surprise it appears to have survived. It was kept in our unheated greenhouse over the winter. Any idea what it is? Thank you.
Thank you! Smoketree eh. I think my sister had such a tree in her garden down in Nanaimo. If I recall correctly, it was quite tall - perhaps around 15-20' or so. The one I'm thinking of had parts that actually resembled smoke. I think the leaves on it were an inch or more in size. This all goes back 10 years or more, so the old memory banks could be failing me. Where we got this from it was a very straggly looking plant, around 4 feet or so tall. Mind you, I don't think that Home Depot gave it the least care. They didn't have it for sale, it was just in the narrow cultivated area around the parking lot. Next time we are in Kamloops I will see if I can get another photo with the plant in its' spring growth mode.
I see by your username that you are likely a maple fan. When I lived on one of the gulf islands down at the coast I tried to grow a number of Japanese maples, with a mix of success. Unfortunately, my laptop, which had thousands of photos on it succumbed to some sort of corrosion inside, and the Apple techs were not able to retrieve anything. So that was a nasty blow. However, I may have some of the photos on my old desktop and if so I will try and show you a few to brighten your day! What we suffered from down there was a terrible lack of water, as rain was our only source. No convenient municipal source as it was an unserviced island.
Lol, just a bit Keith. That is sad that you lost so many of your photos, but if you do find some, then others would enjoy seeing them, as well as me. So do put them on this thread. Cheering ourselves up with Maples It has over 114,000 hits, so a lot will get pleasure from your trees. Many thanks in anticipation D
Wow! I started looking at that thread, and then I see that it has 188 pages! Obviously loads of interest. This evening I will see if I can get my old desktop working again and maybe I can find some half decent pics on it. I will do my best. As far as maples here, I only know of one garden in Anglemont that has a Japanese maple. But I think I will keep my eyes open in case there are more. Now that I think about it, I believe there is one more garden over towards Celista that has one of the very low growing varieties in their front garden.
Do have a look at this one also Keith, your bear photos would go down very well here. Critters in my garden
That's the flowerheads that look like smoke; the plant in your pics is too young to have them yet (probably by several years). The small leaves on this one are due to its being confined in a pot, a bonsai effect - plant it out in the ground and it'll develop larger leaves (and flowers, eventually!).
OK, I wouldn't have any idea how old it is of course, because of where we got it. I do remember that the tree my sister had was likely at least 20 years old and possibly more. It really did look gorgeous We just took a cutting last fall, hence the reason it is still in a pot. Do they have any preference for where they like to be?
I just did a little lookup about smoke trees, so I now have a basic idea of what they like. We will leave the plants in their pots a little while longer, just to be sure that the root system is doing OK. It does seem that they are both alive and producing leaves, so I'm going to assume they are fine. I have no idea what the ph of our soil is here, so it wouldn't be a bad idea if we checked it. Thank you Michael for provoking me into checking a little more. I see that they can be grown from seed as well, but are likely to take two years before you see any growth. That must be for really patient folks, sorry but I don't qualify.
I read in a post here, I think by Madame Cutler, that it helps to take a photo of the underside of the leaves sometimes. We have been under cloud cover here all day, so this isn't the best. I don't think it will make any difference to the I.D., it's purely for interest.
Acerholic, I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but my laptop has bitten the dust after it got some corrosion inside. The Apple tech was unable to retrieve anything from the hard drive. However, when I was on Ruxton Island, I was a very active member of a DIY site and I have a few thousand photos on there, not all gardening of course, mostly building my dream house at the time. The old desktop, from whence those photos came, lists several albums, but none of them appear to have any photos contained therein. Fortunately, I had a quick chat with one of the mods on the site yesterday, and it seems that I can retrieve those photos with a simple drag and drop back into my iPhotos. I did try a couple and it seems to work just fine. The only catch is that there's over 8,000 posts there, and it's obviously going to take awhile to retrieve the horticultural type photos. When I do, I should have quite a few of the Japanese maples I had there, so I will put them on that forum. Incidentally, when I started looking more carefully in this area between Scotch Creek and Anglemont yesterday, I spotted 7 or 8 Japanese maples, so things are looking up!
That sounds fantastic Keith. I am certain not only myself but many others will be waiting with baited breath to see your photos. The maples forum loves things like this.
Don't put yourself out too much Keith, you are a busy man atm. Even later this year when you are sat by the warm fireside with a wet and cold day outdoors will be fine.
Not to worry there Acerholic! If I leave it until the fall or winter, I will have forgotten all about it by then. The first minor snag that has come up is that we were only permitted a maximum file size of 100Kb for the first few years I was posting on that site. So I suppose this means that many of the photos will be pitifully small. Hopefully they will be OK, and what I will have to do is to retrieve a photo, and re-post it here right away, otherwise I won't remember which kind of maple it is.
Understood Keith, I seem to have more memory problems these days as well. I have to do things right away, otherwise it's gone !!!
We went over to Salmon Arm this afternoon and saw several small smoke tree plants at the nursery. All appeared to be healthy (better than ours) with leaves just slightly bigger than what we have here. However, Val planted ours in the ground a few days ago and the difference is quite remarkable since then. I will try to remember to get a new photo later today as it is still only 1:30 a.m. here.
Here's today's photo of the smoke tree. Couldn't have picked a much worse background behind those leaves, could I? Difficult to see properly, but it's definitely healthier than just a couple of weeks ago.
