Update on the Sycamore and  Its Neighbors

April 30, 2023

Spring has come way early to our region in southeastern Pennsyvania.  Warmer temperatures and more sunshine than usual brought out the magnolia  before the first week of April.  As I write now, April 20,  the ornamental cherries, pears and dogwoods are busting out all over a good 2-3 weeks earlier than usual.

The sycamore is a late starter, so when I went for a walk to check out plant activity in mid-March it hadn’t changed much from the dead of winter. Since the weather was balmy and I was in no hurry, I decided to see what else was going on in its neighborhood.  One such neighbor is another sycamore, older, with about three times its girth.  It stands on the grounds of a 40-year old townhouse development and has no doubt been subject to regular trimming, cutbacks and thinning out which would account for its many knobs, rolls and irregular angles.  Standing stark as January, it also showed no sign of new life.  But the magnolia!  The magnolia was already loaded with swollen buds about to pop at any moment it seemed.  I was sure it was much too early and therefore doomed to premature death by the inevitable hit of freezing temps and lashing winds to come.  It never happened.  I don’t have a picture of that magnolia in all its glory.   The picture above shows it still beautiful but already beginning to fade.  I’m sorry I missed it but  I have been rather distracted by the oddly creeping tree-thing that I stumbled on next.

The home of this serpentine fellow is a residential lot that has stood vacant for ten years or more. I don’t know why no one wants to buy it but all surrounding neighbors are, frankly, grateful for that.  I had never noticed this low-life specimen before and I could only imagine that it must be an old wisteria that was never given anything to climb on so, neglected, it just grew snake-like as best it could, over the ground.  Like the sycamores it had no identifying foliage as yet.  I resolved to return to it later on to find out whatever I could learn about what it was, and how it may have come to fasten itself there on the scrubby east side of a once manicured lawn.

It was a few days after Easter when I went back and found the Anaconda–as I was now calling it–sending out feathery green leaves sufficiently mature for Google Lens to identify it as a weeping Japanese maple.  Properly cared for It can grow into the magnificence seen below.

And The Sycamore?  It was surrounded by the greenery of other trees with only a few tiny leaves of its own.  And these were unfurled from baby tree sprouting up from a knob on its trunk.