Beauty's in the eye...
enlarge this image"How about these trees I saw a couple weeks ago in Palo Alto, CA? The conifers are indeed a break from the usual foundation plantings. And trees with a great deal of character. They remind me of the Ents* in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings...”
Photo ©2011 Lora Mazza
Behold some beautiful creepy weepies
Lora's photo and comments came to us by email (pre-Forum
times!), along with the question, If they aren't Ents, what the heck are these?
We checked with Forum Moderator Dennis Groh (more to the point, he's a past
president of the American Conifer Society) says they're weeping
giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum 'Pendulum'), and
that they are used extensively in landscaping in Oregon, too.
Here's a link to information about those plants, from the
web-catalog of one of the biggest plant producers in the
country (stay calm, home gardeners; it's a wholesale
grower).
Seen one, seen others almost as striking
As long as we're driving around poking fun at others' front yard
treasures... We've had people tell us that weeping Alaska
falsecypresses (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis variety) look
kind of Halloween-y ghostly, and a larch at the door reminds them
of Lurch in an old TV show:
Maybe their oddness comes from being alone among "normals." In a
company, as at a botanical garden conifer collection...
Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland. One of our favorite
gardens. That's an Alaska falsecypress back row center, looking
quite normal among other plants in te conifer collection.
*Speaking of Ents, check
out the Forum's candidate for
Ent-hood.