The Rare Trees of Pease


Samaras on the Bigtooth Maple at Pease Park

In spring 2023 I led a Tree Identification walk at Pease Park, and I am delighted to repeat that activity coming up on September 9, 2023. As an ISA Certified Arborist at ATXgardens.com, I am a tree enthusiast, to say the least. When Luis from Pease Park Conservancy gave me a tour of the park I was surprised to find some rare tree specimens planted as part of the recent restoration.



The area near the “TreeHouse” is home to a Bigtooth Maple, Acer grandidentatum, one of only two native maple species in Austin (the other is Box Elder, Acer negundo, a sorely underrated tree). Maples have samaras, the most fun fruits of all trees. The seed is held in a capsule with a wing, and when they fall from the tree they spin like a helicopter. The kernel inside the capsule is edible. Typically they grow near streams and rivers and they are most at home with high canyon walls surrounding them. But I have found a few very beautiful Bigtooth Maples growing in home landscapes around Austin, and they seem to do particularly well in narrow spaces with afternoon shade. They are slow growing to become medium-sized trees at maturity but worth the wait. Bigtooth Maples are easily identified by their opposite leaf arrangement, samaras, and leaves that resemble the leaf on the flag of Canada. 🇨🇦 Made famous by Lost Maples State Natural Area, these maples can be tapped to make syrup and they have unrivaled fall color.



Bigtooth Maple Leaves at Pease Park

If Austinites planted a greater diversity of native trees we would have a better color show each fall. Due to livestock overgrazing, severe deer pressure and lack of availability at nurseries, many climate resilient, native tree species with landscape value (including fall color) are rare.




Bigtooth Maple next to the “TreeHouse” at Pease Park

That’s why TreeFolks and Central Texas Seed Savers have partnered to create the Seed To Tree Pipeline. TreeFolks is the leading local tree planting organization and they cannot find enough trees in the marketplace to meet the needs of their planting programs. They asked my organization, Central Texas Seed Savers, to recruit and train volunteers to collect seeds to send to TreeFolks. TreeFolks will grow their own trees in their nursery and also plant seeds directly into the ground at their planting sites. If you attend our Tree ID classes you will be equipped to collect seeds. You will be empowered to prevent extinction of our special Texas tree species.





I hope you will join me for the Tree ID Walk at Pease.

Other unusual trees found at Pease Park that also offer fall color:

Rusty Blackhaw Vibirnum

Roughleaf Dogwood

Flameleaf Sumac

Peach

Written By Colleen Dieter

Tree ID for Seed Savers Walk

Colleen Dieter (that’s me) will be leading a FREE Tree Identification walk at Pease Park in Austin on Sep 9 2023 from 10:30-12:30. You’ll learn how to identify trees and collect seeds from them to contribute to Central Texas Seed Savers’ Seed to Tree Pipeline Program. Register here.

Flyer for Tree ID class

"Let's Care for Texas Plants" Got a Rave Review!

Hi Gardening Friends, 

I was delighted and surprised when well-known author and garden blogger, Pam Penick, reviewed "Let's Care for Texas Plants"! Pam wrote "Colleen’s plant care 'zine is the how-to that every new gardener in Central Texas needs — or new homeowner, if you’ve inherited a bunch of plants you have no idea how to care for...It’s a must-have for any gardener in Central Texas, especially newbies. But even experienced gardeners will learn something new". 

Here's a good deal! Now you can get a bundled version of both the digital version and the hard copy version of "Let's Care for Texas Plants", my 3 volume set of booklets about how to trim, feed and water your landscape for only $50 plus $10 shipping. The digital copy typically sells for $28 so this is a big discount.

“Let’s Care For Texas Plants” is a ‘zine that I designed to help gardeners know when and how to trim, feed and water their landscapes. It includes how-to tips for trees, soil, lawns, perennials, grasses and succulents.

Got Milkweed? You might already have it!

Lately I, very happily, have been having the same conversation over and over again with lots of friends and Red Wheelbarrow customers. There’s a peculiar plant lurking in many yards that is being mistaken for a pest. I most recently saw it growing on a railing at the Becker Green Classroom where I did a consultation last week about tree planting. Even though we were talking about trees I took a minute to point out their big crop of Talayote. I still can’t pronounce “Talayote” but I will get there.

Talayote, the common name for Cynanchum unifarium, is the most underrated plant found around Austin and most of Texas. Often mistaken for bindweed and other members of the Morning Glory family, this native vine is in the Milkweed family aka the Asclepiadaceae. Yes, there are milkweed vines. In my experience, they are the most common milkweeds around town. If you are a butterfly or wildlife gardener, you definitely need to know this plant!

You may have heard that the famous Monarch Butterfly, Danaus plexippus, is listed as an endangered species by the by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It hasn’t been listed as an endangered species on the US Federal Endangered Species list yet, but I understand that is in the works.

Adult monarch butterflies drink nectar from many different garden plants including mistflowers and asters. But the caterpillars, the baby Monarch larvae that will grow up to become monarch butterflies, can only eat plants that are in the  Asclepiadaceae family.

Each year, Monarchs complete a bewildering multi-generational migration across North America between Canada and Mexico. The original butterflies leave their overwintering homes in Mexico and start their journey north, laying eggs on milkweed plants and then dying along the way. Their grandchildren are born in Canada and the Northern U.S. In the late summer the grandbabies, now transformed into adult butterflies, find their way back to the same overwintering site in Mexico. Some of them even fly across the Great Lakes, landing on boats to rest along the way. HOW DO THEY KNOW WHERE TO GO?!?!? They do not have brains! Butterfly epistemology, anyone?

I learned about this migration when I watched this 2011 episode of Nova, and it ignited a passion for butterfly gardening in my heart, especially since I made a similar migration in my life, growing up in Cleveland, OH and landing in Austin, TX. I remember seeing the big orange butterflies in my mom’s garden when I was growing up, but I had no idea they migrated. I remember eating lunch outside of the Perry Casteneda Library when I worked there in autumn 2001 on the University of Texas campus. I saw big groups of Monarchs soaring high above the building and felt perplexed. Where were they going? How could a fumbly bumbly flutter-by butterfly suddenly start soaring?

Their migratory path and the geography of our continent concentrates their numbers into dense populations traveling through Texas, so it is crucial for Texas gardeners to preserve milkweed plants for their little baby caterpillars to munch on.

Many passionate butterfly gardeners have braved the local plant sales and thrown elbows in a smash-mouth rush to grab milkweed plants, only to be disappointed when the plants die in their new homes. Milkweed plants are notoriously hard to propagate and grow in nursery culture and they often do not survive transplanting. It is also really hard to get the seeds to sprout in the garden.

Most gardeners have forgotten the most important step when setting up a garden: identify the plants you already have before you start tearing them out. Plants that have “volunteered”, a term I use for plants that grew without humans planting them, can be some of the most valuable plants in the landscape. Talayote is at the top of the list of wonderful volunteer plants, and it seems to be having a banner year, because I am seeing it everywhere.

I found it in my backyard in 2021, tangled up with perennial morning glory growing all over a firebush. Fortunately, due my 20 years of plant ID experience, I noticed it was different from the morning glory. I still couldn’t ID it on my own so I added it to INaturalist. I was delighted to find a native volunteer milkweed thriving in my yard where so many milkweeds came to die previously. I built a trellis for it and it has been thriving ever since.

I added some photos here for you to study. Talayote is different from bindweed and other morning glory vines several ways. 1. When you tear a stem or leaf Tayalote has milky sap, like most members of the milkweed family. That is where they get their name. 2. Tayalote has small clusters of yellow flowers, not big showy flowers like morning glory. 3. The heart-shaped leaves of Talayote are more open at the top, with space between two lobes. 4. Talayote has a big seed pod that will split in two when ripe and dried. The seeds inside will be attached to fluff to carry them away on the wind.

Talayote leaf. Some of the plants I have seen around town, including the ones in my yard, have yellow spots on the leaves. I don’t know why.

Talayote seed pod. This one is still green and young, not ready yet.

Talayote flower- it’s not showy. Note

Learn more about butterflies by listening to this episode of the Horticulturati podcast:

And if you haven’t seen this movie yet, you gotta.

http://www.flightofthebutterflies.com/

Maintain and Chill

Summer Trimming Time!

Hi Y'all! Summer is a really important time for maintaining your plants. Salvia greggii benefit from being trimmed at this time by removing the bottom branches and dead flower stems. Mexican Bush Sage, Mealy Blue Sage and their relatives all need to be cut in half around July 1 to keep them from falling apart in the fall. For more tips like these, get a copy of my 'zine! I created a 3 volume booklet set, full of helpful information and unique art. Available in hard copy or as a digital version, it makes a great gift. Also just in time for Father's Day I am offering digital gift cards too!

The Phosphorus Paradox

The new episode of The Horticulturati podcast is out! This episode Leah and I tackle a topic that has been haunting me for years: Phosphorus. This macronutrient element has caused problems for me as a gardener and caused horrific problems for humanity on the whole. We give some tips for local Austin gardeners who might not realize how common high phosphorus levels are around here and give a glimpse into the environmental and political issues caused by our need for phosphorus.

Big News: I’m on the radio! Introducing The Horticulture hangover Show

Hey, y’all, Colleen Dieter here. My friend Leah Churner and I recently started hosting The Horticulture Hangover on KLBJ every Saturday morning from 8-9 AM. It is a call-in show where listeners text or call us with gardening questions. You can listen live on the radio by tuning your dial to KLBJ 590 AM or 99.7 FM in Central Texas. You can also stream the live show here. Leah and I share our expertise and experiences to help listeners with common yard problems. You may already be familiar with our podcast, The Horticulturati, which Leah and I have been recording since 2020. We'll still bring you deep dives into topics on the Horticulturati podcast . If you subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform then the new Horticulture Hangover show will automatically appear in your feed. If you’re a longtime Horticulturati listener, please become a Patron to get early access to episodes and bonus material!

What’s a Horticulture Hangover? It’s when you buy too many plants at the nursery, and then you don’t have enough time or space or energy to plant them all!

Colleen Dieter Red Wheelbarrow austin texas gardens lawns yards landscape studio radio show
Leah Churner radio gardening lawns studio yard landscape design horticulture

100 Days of Hell, for the 20th Time

Spring is here in Austin! This will be my 20th spring season, last month (Feb 2023) I celebrated 20 years owning my business! I celebrated by asking customers and loved ones to sign a virtual card for me. Their kind messages warmed my heart, and they will sustain me this spring. Some of my industry colleagues refer to this time of year as "100 Days of Hell", when gardeners all over Texas scramble to get plants in the ground during our short spring season. I've done it enough times now to know I always start out bushy-tailed and energized by  wildflowers, redbud trees and peach blossoms...AND I know by May 15 I will be needing a massage and a margarita as I mop the sweat from my face. My secret to surviving the spring season each year is to put kindness first, especially kindness to myself. My natural pace is tortoise-like. I have gotten plenty of grief over the years from strangers and loved-ones alike for my chronic mosey. But my wise self insists that hurrying is overrated and I can be kind to myself by embracing my slowness. Spring often forces us to hurry, but I'm stopping to smell the roses, literally, and also the Texas Mountain Laurels.

So I won't try to hard-sell you or tell you that you should hurry to make an appointment with me. But I am always here when you need me!

Peach Blooms make promises of fruit! I hope they keep their promises. Did you know I am a fruit tree expert too? If you are interested in orcharding, book an appointment to learn about our fruity friends.

Another Winter Storm Disaster

I’m feeling climate crisis grief today. I made a collage of photos that friends, customers and I took since the ice storm that hit last week. One of the sadder collages I have ever made, I circled broken and bent branches along with wounds where tree branches broke off. The storm started a week ago today on Tuesday with cold rain. Wednesday more and more rain came and coated all of the trees and streets with ice. As hours went by the forecast got worse and worse, much worse than predicted. Very similar, in that aspect, to the Feb 2021 storm. Thousands of households in central Texas lost power including us. We also lost phone and internet for a couple days. Fortunately our power was restored after about 12 hours. Though the temps in our house we uncomfortable they were never dangerous. Many people still don’t have power today, the following Tuesday. By Friday all the ice had melted but the damage was so severe, things were not back to normal. I tried to shop for trees for a customer on Friday, as that was what I had planned for the day and I was eager to get back to normal. Many businesses including nurseries were closed due to power outages and severe damage. Many traffic signals were still out and lanes were blocked by downed trees and power lines. We had to cancel our Horticulturati recording because Leah’s power was out and my internet was still out last Friday. Nonetheless I was able to shop for and deliver all the trees I promised to my customers. Seeing the progress they are making in their yard really cheered me up.

I have heard a few people mention that tree pruning is key to preventing this kind of damage. I guess that is not an untrue statement. But it’s only one factor.

One of the most common trees in Central Texas is the Live Oak. They are semi evergreen so they have leaves during the winter (they fall off in March and then grow back right away). The extra surface area on these trees with the leaves collects more ice. Plus the weight of the leaves contributes to tension in the branches. Much of the tree destruction in the storm was on Live Oak trees. As much as I love live oak trees, they are over planted we need more tree diversity in our urban forest. I have a Bur Oak and Chinqupin oak in my yard and neither sustained any damage, because they have good branching structure and no leaves.

I’ve also seen a lot of damage on elm trees. Elm trees are wonderful natives and a crucial part of our local forests. They are prone to certain structural defects. Pruning can help prevent these trees from falling apart but eventually they’re all going to fall apart. We got half an inch of ice! No amount of pruning can stop trees from collapsing under that weight.

On Monday on my way to my first appointment I was drivin’ and cryin’. I was thinking about how much I love trees, and how much we need their help in the climate crisis. But at the same time the climate crisis is damaging and killing the trees. The trees are some of the best carbon sequesterers (is that a word?) in the plant kingdom, and having them in our cities cushions the impacts of most storms. But when a storm caused by climate change rips apart the trees…it’s depressing. Today we are expecting thunderstorms which will knock down most of the hanging branches left from the ice storm…may make things even worse. We’ll see!

On a happier note the ice storm did not damage any of my smaller plants. The warmer temps and being encased in ice prevented more cold damage. Some of the stuff that was damaged in December is fine after this one.

Got tree damage and questions? If you lost a big tree and need to re-do the landscaping underneath, that is one of my specialties. Make an appointment today before I get booked up in Spring.

Fruit Tree Scion Swap

I am very much looking forward to this! I helped plan one for Central Texas Seed Savers back in Feb 2020 right before covid and it was fantastic. At the end of the event I took home all of the leftover scions. I stuck all of them in my backyard randomly. A few months later I found a peach tree growing in the backyard. I completely forgot that I planted it. My husband had to remind me about the scions I stuck all over the place. That peach grew really fast on its own roots. It hasn’t made any fruit yet, but since this is its third year in the ground I hope maybe this is the year for fruit.

Deep Freeze On the way

Extreme cold can kill tropical and Mediterranean plants like citrus and loquats. Succulents that are not native to Texas will also freeze. Here’s a text exchange with a customer of mine explaining which species to protect and how to best protect them. I have a key lime tree I keep in a pot that I brought into my house to keep it warm. The most important thing is to make sure they are well hydrated and the rain we had earlier this week will help.

How many plants?

Here’s an email exchange with a customer of mine that addresses some common questions. I hope it is helpful or at least reassuring to you, dear reader.

Hello Colleen,I figure you are pretty busy right now with spring here. No hurry on these questions. I've had them for a while and am just getting around to asking you. We are enjoying some mild weather and love seeing what comes out day to day around here.
I listened to the Planting In a Post-Wild World podcast and purchased the book and read it cover to cover. (What a beautiful book!). The two things I took away from it were:planting more plants instead of mulching (I have heard you say much the same before.)designing with "drifts" vs creating areas of one type of plant. With regard to "drifts," I like the idea of it and the results, but you really have to be confident about your plant community harmony - and I'm just not there yet. It would be like me picking up a paint brush and trying to paint something on a canvas. I would almost have to copy a specific garden done like this to feel like I was doing it right. That being said, I have LOTS of bed area to populate here, so I could experiment in a small section. I could sow a prairie seed mix. I've put out a lot of seed, and haven't seen much for it, so I am still skeptical that seeds are really things that produce actual plants. Still quite mysterious to me.
With regard to mulch - here is my question. I would like to have less mulch and more plants. But I have a lot of bed area and I plant and plant and plant, and there's still a lot of space between plants. Things are still small. I'm introducing some "groundcover" like horseherb, frogfruit and lyreleaf sage. If I mulch right up to those, I worry that they will be discouraged from expanding (although my observation is that this does not seem to be the case with frogfruit - that stuff is strong). So I've been pushing back the mulch as the ground cover expands. That leaves soil exposed for a while, anyway. Do you think this is a good approach?
How do you manage the need for plants vs mulch?Hope all is well with you. Thank you!



Hi Connie- good to hear from you!

Re: plants v mulch. If you plant more plants closer together at the beginning it will look fuller and there will be fewer weeds, especially if you are able to plant larger size plants from the nursery. But as time goes by, usually about 3-5 years, and plants get larger and also spread via roots or seeds then you have to remove plants because it will look overgrown. So you can decide how much money you can spend on plants, how much weeding you want to do and how much editing/transplanting and removal you want to do later. It’s all maintenance just different types of tasks.

Wood mulch does inhibit the spread of plants as you suspect. But it also helps prevent weeds. Using leaves, especially chopped up leaves, is a better choice for encouraging the spread of good plants but sometimes can cause baby trees to volunteer. Pine straw and pecan shell mulch are also better for not inhibiting growth.

The sheer square footage of your place requires a huge number of plants.

Planting from seeds is always tricky as it is heavily weather dependent and they can’t sprout on top of mulch. They absolutely have to have direct contact with soil. Different seeds sprout at different times of year and often we plant seeds and they will sit for months or years until the conditions are right.

Ok I’d love to come out and do another consultation for you sometime!

Fruit Tree Notes

Winter 2021-2022 was warm-hot in December but then very cold in January and February with many freezes and most days colder than average for many chill hours. We had a two hard freezes in March with the last one on March 11 and 12, later than average. On March 7: Ein shemer and Anna apples were blooming on March 7 at Renee’s farm near COTA. Tex Star peach was blooming at Renee’s farm. La Feliciana peaches blooming at Ted’s house near Camp Mabry and Renee’s farm. Holland and Golden Delicious apples were not blooming yet at Renee’s. Pocahontas necatrine was close to blooming at Renee’s and White Delight peach was also close to blooming at Renee’s.

My Front Yard Experiment

Willy at Barton Springs Nursery mentioned the book “The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden” by Roy Diblik in a recent episode of my podcast, The Horticulturati. I read the book and the concept captured my imagination: create a landscape entirely with perennials that could be mowed. Roy Diblik developed this concept in Chicago and Milwaukee. Could I adapt it to Austin?

My backyard is where all the higher maintenance plants are like roses, herbs and veggies. The front yard had been a lovely, low maintenance butterfly garden for years but in the last few years the plants in front have been subjected to calamity. Some fungus, I think maybe ganoderma but not sure, swept through and killed a few rosemarys, a palo verde tree, two texas sages and amistad salvias. Winter storm Uri in Feb 2021 took half of the canopy of an medium size American Elm, and a wind storm the following May took the other half. My woold butterfly bushes never really recovered after Uri. At some point I had tossed a handful of common sunflower seeds out there and they basically took over, to my simultaneous delight and dismay. Other trees, like my Texas Mt Laurel and my Giant Fuyu Persimmon have grown and shaded areas that were sunny. Texas Redbud was going through a process called “retrenchment” which old trees do when they reach the limit of how tall they can grow. They start to have trouble drawing water up to their tallest branches and they start making themselves shorter. The tallest branches will die and the tree will grow new sprouts from the roots or lower trunk. So I cut the biggest trunk off the redbud and let the new sprouts grow up to replace it. So all that’s to say there’s been some major changes and the front yard is ready for an overhaul.

With all the high maintenance plants in the back I wanted the front to be very easy. My husband and I have successfully mowed some perennials in the past, like four o clocks, turks caps and datura. So Diblik’s concept appealed to me. It would be like a wildflower meadow but more “put together”, more intentional and maybe more interesting in some ways

I started working on the project this past fall. I started transplanting and removing plants that I suspect would not respond well to mowing like my ‘Red Lion’ hippeastrums and salvia greggiis. I also removed some agaves and other succulents.

One twist that the Austin, Texas climate tosses into this mix is our warm winters allow for certain perennials to have the opposite life cycle of typical perennials: the tops die down in the summer, and then grow back in the fall and winter. The plants then bloom in spring and go dormant after that in the summer. White yarrow, cedar sage, oxalis, violets and spiderwort are examples. So I decided to experiment with half of the front yard getting mowed in the summer and half the front yard getting mowed in the winter. The sunny half has the more traditional perennials and will get mowed in winter. The shadier half has the winter and spring blooming plants that will get mowed in summer. Here’s a plant list:

sunny side mowed in winter: Dallas Red Lantana, zexmenia, Henry Duleberg Sage, 4 o’clocks (they were there in the shade before the elm tree fell apart, gonna see how they do in full sun) walkers low catmint, greggs mistflower, Monarda fistulosa, purple heart and little bluestem.

shady side mowed in summer: white yarrow, oxalis, leersia monandra, webberville sedge, snowdrops, lyre leaf sage, dutch iris, texas bluegrass, mondo grass, cardoons. I had the cardoons in the back veggie garden and they take up tons of space and I don’t love eating them, but they look amazing so I am going to try to transplant them.

I bought most of these plants in early January as 4” starts from a wholesale grower. They have been wonderful but hard to keep alive in the pots during cold weather and they dry out fast. I got a great deal price wise but protecting them and watering them has been stressful.

I did not take Roy Diblik’s very wise advice of starting with a 10x14 area and plotting it out on paper as a grid. Instead, I mulled it over while falling asleep at night and then in the morning made bizarre notes to self about my ideas for the plant placement. And of course I took on the entire front yard at once which is like 50xhumongous and sloped. I also didn’t prep the area the way Roy advised, partly because I was not starting with a lawn which is kind of assumed in his boon. To my customers: do as I say not as I do, I guess. Optimally I would have sheet mulched with cardboard first and then planted one gallon plants. That would have made things way easier.

Instead I have been clearing existing plants while going along planting. The existing plants were mostly a wild invasive grass called rescue brome, cleavers and hedge parsley. This method was working pretty good until spring started and now the common sunflowers and other warm season plants are sprouting and starting to get taller than my little 4” transplants. I did take Diblik’s advice and got a Dutch Push Hoe which is wonderful so I will be using that on the unwanted volunteers.

I have been using the rescue brome, hedge parsley and cleavers that I pulled up as mulch around the new plants. That worked well until they started going to seed, so now I am pulling them and putting them in the city compost pickup bin so I won’t be spreading their seeds around. Now I gotta figure out what mulch to use because these tiny 4” plants have bare soil around them and it’s getting hot. I’m leaning towards either wood chips, tree leaves or pecan shell mulch.

Anyway in retrospect I wish I had sheet mulched to start with, and I wish I had waited ‘till spring and bought bigger 1 gallon plants. But I think even if I had done those things I probably would wish I had done something else differently too. The most important thing is I have been enjoying myself and the anticipation of how it will look in May when the warm season plants start blooming is thrilling. Ok more to come soon!

The photo here is from early March 4 2022 and is basically a ‘before’ photo though I had planted a few plants at that point already.

New Episode Out TODAY

Landscape Design as the “highest art”… it’s what happens when two landscape designers get liquored up give their opinions. Click below to listen or enjoy The Horticulturati podcast on any podcast platform.

https://www.horticulturati.com