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  Annie Calovich  

Know your spring-blooming trees

What is that pink flower? What is that SMELL?

Am I losing it?

I was riding my bike on a perfectly beautiful afternoon last Sunday when I found myself actually reveling in the smell of ornamental pear trees as I zipped under their white-flower canopies.

I use the word "smell" purposely. This is not a fragrance. When I try to deconstruct it, I come up with a combination of ammonia, soap and litter box. "Mild rotting fish" is another description I've heard. Whatever it is, the odor is incongruous with the fluffy appearance of these beautiful trees.

I suppose I was just happy to be alive on Sunday, what with the sun shining, the sky blue, the weather warm, the trees, tulips and daffodils blooming, and the Jayhawks on the cusp of winning the NCAA championship. On some level, I suppose, the smell was registering as flowers, and I am sick to death of stick trees.

This is turning out to be a strong spring for blooming trees, because of the lingering coolness, extension agent Bob Neier says. While we tend to dwell more on the weather that is favorable for fall leaf color, we can do the same for spring.

Of course, we were thinking about the influence of weather on spring bloom a year ago this week, when a deep freeze wiped out our blooms, and the fruit that the nonornamental ones would have produced. But that loss is our gain this year on fruiting trees, Bob says, because they were saved the energy of putting out fruit last year.

Wonderfully enough, the tree that produces perhaps the most famous leaf color, the red maple, also produces the first tree flowers, also in red.

"For some reason it seems like they have popped out more prominently this year," says Tim McDonnell, community forestry coordinator with the Kansas Forest Service.

The ornamental pear is next, probably the most common blooming tree we see in spring. It gets a bad rap because the dense centers of the Bradford variety tend to break apart in high winds. But when these trees manage to stay intact, they are a glorious thing to behold. (If you want to avoid the Bradford splitting, go with vaselike varieties such as Aristocrat, Chanticleer or Capital.)

Reader Elaine Aaron, who lives in the Bradford Place section of Lakepoint in east Wichita, called this week to tell me how beautiful the 13th Street entrance to Lakepoint is right now. It isn't named "Bradford" for nothing. Driving on Gatewood between a procession of Bradford pears is like going through a tunnel of light.

Because of the ubiquitousness of the ornamental pear, pink-flowering trees really catch our eyes in the spring. They are more unusual and, because they're pink, they're my favorites.

It can be hard to tell the pinks apart. The flowers don't look that much different from afar. And a slew of trees have pinky-colored flowers, among them peach, apricot and plum.

But there are clues that can help us know our spring-flowering trees. One of them is bloom time.

The stunning ornamental apricot Peggy Clark is the first tree to bloom at Botanica, putting on its show to too few people because we haven't been in the habit of seeking out flowers that early in the season. By the time I saw it this year, half the pink blooms had formed a carpet around it on the ground, a lush sight in its own right.

Blooming on the heels of the apricot are cherry and peach trees. The flowers of cherries come in a variety of shades from white to my favorite pale-gray-blue pink to cotton candy. Some have single rows of petals, and others are full double pompoms. I wanted to stop my bike every time I passed a cherry last Sunday. Their flowers smell like perfume.

The bark of cherry trees is another indicator. It is often heavily lenticeled, Tim says. That pretty word refers to the narrow lines and the raised white bumps on the bark. They are breathing pores.

While I'm a fan of cherry trees, Bob isn't big on them because they're short-lived here.

"I would encourage people to plant crabapples instead. I like things that live longer." For people like me who want to plant cherries, he said, "you enjoy six to 10 years, then you plant something else."

Next to bloom are plums and deciduous magnolias, Bob said. Plums have a pink flower but a purply center that gives it away, followed by purply leaves. The magnolias, usually of the saucer variety, have larger, waxy flowers that are pink with some white or purple. There is also a less-common yellow that is worth seeing now at Botanica. The Southern, evergreen magnolias with their big white flowers bloom later. Magnolia trees are "for the green-thumb people," Bob said.

Redbuds and whitebuds are next, budding out now. The redbud flowers are more lavender (Eastern) or red-purple (Oklahoma). Whitebuds have small white flowers that stand in stark contrast to the dark bark of the trees.

And last but not least, crabapples' buds are starting to break out as well, in shades and combinations of pink, white and red.

Bob estimates that a tree is in full bloom for probably about four to seven days.

"That's one reason to plant a variety (of trees), like several different crabapples, to spread it out," he says.

In a climate like this, we need all the help we can get.

Bob will be taking lunch-hour tours of the arboretum grounds of the Extension Education Center at 21st and Ridge Road this Tuesday and next, starting at 12:15 p.m. at the flag pole.

If you go

BLOOMING TREE TOUR

What: Tour of the trees in bloom at the arboretum on the grounds of the Extension Education Center

Where: 21st and Ridge Road, starting at the flag pole

When: 12:15 p.m. Tuesday and April 22

How much: Free

Reach Annie Calovich at 316-268-6596 or acalovich@wichitaeagle.com.