LIME TREE MARIA IS THE WINNER! Thanks for playing. As I noted, I will be compiling many of these wonderful comments/tree stories into a tree post.
Longtime Rant readers know the name of Amy Stewart as one of this blog’s original founders. But I have to assume many reading this know Stewart even better for her books on gardening and beyond. They include From the Ground Up, The Earth Moved, Flower Confidential, Wicked Plants, Wicked Bugs, The Drunken Botanist and – maybe most of all – 7 detective novels based on a true story, the Kopp Sisters series, which began with Girl Waits with Gun.
The final two Kopp sisters books came out during the pandemic, with #7, Miss Kopp Investigates, appearing in 2021. And now Stewart’s returned to writing about gardening – in a way. I talked to her recently about her new book from Random House, The Tree Collectors. Its official release date is July 16, but you can order it now
“I took a break after finishing the Kopp Sisters books and spent a lot of time making art. Just trying to get through the day,” Stewart says, describing her life during the pandemic. She was also trying to figure out what her next project would be, but in the meantime, she got a lot better at doing the type of drawings that would work as book illustrations.
Anyone who’s been following Stewart on social media has noticed her drawings and paintings in watercolor, ink, gouache and oils – she’s been at this for a couple decades now and has a realistic, but free-spirited style. It makes total sense that she is finally doing her own book illustrations. Illustration is clearly her preference – just look at Wicked Bugs and Wicked Plants, which could have used photography, but instead have wonderful drawings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs.
The Tree Collectors is not really a plant book. It’s about plant obsessions, fascinations and avocations – how they emerge and how they’re expressed. The people in this book – which is arranged by types of collectors rather than by types of trees – tell the stories of how they began to notice trees, what type of trees attracted them most and – most interestingly – how – and, really, HOW – you get a tree collection going. Of course, not all of them keep all their trees together on their own property, though many do. For example, Sam Van Aken plants heirloom fruit trees on university campuses, public parks and public gardens – all over the U.S.
Jimmy Shen photographs and catalogs gingkos. Dennis Wilson collects wood samples and belongs to the International Wood Collectors Society. Ynes Enriquetta Julietta Mexia is a botanist/explorer.
But many of those profiled in The Tree Collectors do collect trees. They have property, whether it be a private arboretum or a family estate. Some, on a smaller scale, get as many as they can onto a typical suburban lot. One, Dave Adams, is maintaining a palm collection in Boise, Idaho. Needless to say, there’s a lot of overwintering going on.
There are many, many examples of collection strategies, including some that are all about sharing the love of trees and improving the earth by adding more. There are also – Stewart is always helpful in this regard – annotated lists of tree collections that can be visited, interesting tree facts and famous tree people.
It is an enthralling and beautiful book. The illustrations are bright and engaging – even poignant at times.
“At first I thought it was going to be tree nerds–a maple person, a gingko person, a conifer person,” Stewart says. “But I started interviewing people and these interviews got to be extremely personal. People were telling me their life stories.”
That being said, according to Stewart, tree collectors can be roughly categorized. “Tropical trees, conifers, oak, fruit or maples. Almost all tree collectors are one of those five.”
If she had to choose, Stewart would do conifers. For me, I would have to do maples – Acer Palmatum, that is.
Are you a tree collector? You don’t have to be to read and love this book.
Leave your thoughts on trees in comments and Random House will send a free copy of The Tree Collectors to a randomly (see what I did there) chosen commenter. The contest closes on Sunday, 7/07, 9 a.m. EST, BUT I may gather some comments to use in a follow-up post.
I don’t collect actual trees, but I do have a “collection” of favorite trees. For example, my favorite beech tree is in front of my childhood elementary school, my favorite ginkgo tree is on my college campus, etc.
Trees have always had a big impact on my life. Like Heather posted, favorite trees. There is a huge sycamore at the grade school I attended. Affectionately called stinkpot castle because the hole in the bole collected rainwater and it stank! School board was going to remove it and generations of students raised a howl. It’s still there.
Named my favorite climbing trees. Grandma had a tulip poplar. I have one
There was a crimson Japanese maple on my walk to school. It’s still there and I have one of those.
It hurts my heart when I hear the chain saw and see people removing healthy trees because they don’t want to take leaves.
We had a deracho effect our area four years back so I needed to plant a lot of new trees. I now have two serviceberry trees, a rising sun redbud, two flowering crabapple trees, a cherry blossom, two Japanese maple trees and several new evergreens. I unfortunately lost my huge sugar maple tree in front.
Without trees I would be totally lost. Every new year brings new growth to all here.
When I bought my home 18 years ago, there were two different (still unidentified) Japanese maples already there. I have grown and nurtured a good number of seedlings over the years. They stay with me, in pots, til age two or three. Then they move to their forever homes in friends’ gardens. Makes me happy!!
Staring at trees has always been how I relax
I first heard Amy speak when she was a speaker for the Herb Society of America at a New Orleans function. Herb of the Year was Elderberry and she featured the book The Drunken Botanist. Now I live in the country about 1 -1/2 hours outside New Orleans. Lucky for me, the previous owner of the property respected and collected trees and other plants. I’ve carved out a spot to be the Forest Garden. I’ll invite my friends for Forest Therapy (because some have freaked out over me calling it Forest Bathing. The antlers are fun to wear though.)
I would need to add dogwoods to that list. Small enough for a suburban yard, big enough to walk under and garden under. Definitely dry shade gardening.
We have a miniature forest of dogwoods, native Florida dogwoods, Kousa Dogwoods and Rutgers hybrids.
We have a few smaller Japanese Maples in containers. But they are a beautiful afterthought.
We live under several large beautiful shade trees including an old maple and a gumball.
The dogwoods and small Japanese maples thrive in the part sun environment.
Appreciate the collector’s who catalog mature trees of note in the state of Virginia.
The house came with a mature ash tree that gave us wonderful shade in the summer and a place for the kids to climb, swing and play. It was late to leaf and early to drop its beautiful leaves, giving the house plenty of sunshine. It was the center of many family activities during its almost 100-year history in our backyard. With much sadness we had it taken down due to the borer.
Fig Trees! Although I dabble in citrus, pears, and apples, FIGS are a passion. I have had 5 different figs for decades. During the pandemic, I started admiring the differences in the leaves, not just the fruit. Oh my, the smell of some leaves is magical! I began ordering cuttings online and propagating mine for trade. Now, I am up to 65 different fig trees, some still very small.
I grew up in Lakewood, CA, a Los Angeles suburb, which had (and perhaps still has) an odd relationship with trees. The city would plant a whole street of one type of tree sapling– my street had pepper trees– and then let them grow for a decade or so, just long enough for them to actually provide much-needed shade, only to rip them all out once roots started to push up the sidewalk. Then they’d start all over again with block after block of saplings. I was horrified by this treatment of these lovely trees. I began to dream of living somewhere with trees, old shade-giving ones. Now, I live in Northern California, where trees are abundant and allowed to grow into full maturity. I walk outside at dusk and can watch turkey vultures coming in to roost in a row of nearby redwoods. Every day I feel so blessed to be here amongst the trees.
I lived in Torrance for many years, where they do let the street trees grow. The magnolia in front of my house pushed up the sidewalk so much that someone coming to visit tripped and broke her leg. After that, the city finally fixed that piece of sidewalk although they left the tree growing in its tiny strip of dirt
The first owner of our house was definitely a tree collector and bought and planted a huge variety, of course, too close to one another. Fifty years later, it has been painful to have to make choices, deciding on which to remove for health and safety. The remainder is balm to our spirits and joy to our eyes. Recently, I am experimenting with raising trees in containers. Got a 6 ft japanese maple (found as a 1 ft sapling 5 years ago). Managed to sprout 7 oak acorns found in a friend’s neighbourhood.
Our 112 year old urban bungalow came with two magnificent black walnuts that, for all of their cumulative problems, I would never consider harming in any way. When the city wanted me to remove a large limb overhanging the sidewalk lower than the required 7 foot clearance, I instead used a heavy duty cargo strap to winch it up the few inches necessary. I grow all of my nightshade vegetables and juglone sensitive ornamentals in containers.
When a large silver maple street tree was removed in front of the house, I requested that the city forestry crew replace it with a bur oak, there being no overhead wires to warrant the typical lollipops being used in recent years. They agreed. When I returned home from work one day, I discovered an ironwood in its place. While a fine native understory tree, it would top out one day at 20 feet or so. A followup call convinced them to return, remove the ironwood, and install a bur oak that, in a hundred years will top out at 80 feet with a similar spread. After reading Doug Tallamy’s “Nature of Oaks” and his exhaustive catalog of the hundreds of interactive species of plants, animals, and insects associated with bur oaks, I created a pocket prairie on the street terrace surrounding the oak, including a dozen or more appropriate grasses and forbs. Given its rapid rate of growth, I suspect I really have a swamp white oak/bur oak cross (definitely a thing – oaks are notoriously promiscuous within their groups), and have already been rewarded with a volunteer swamp white oak seedling thanks to the squirrels.
The rest of the property consists of a large grove of hackberries among the black walnuts, creating a densely shady retreat in summer, and I have begun allowing new hackberries to remain whenever they appear in desirable places. I also have a curious volunteer chokecherry, beloved by birds and squirrels alike, which leafs out green in spring and changes to a beautiful purple by June. One other volunteer I’m nurturing, a linden on an otherwise treeless stretch of property line, is thriving. Three intentional additions to the mix in the past few years are a red oak which will add some strategic shade for the house in coming years, a Kentucky coffee tree already quadrupled in size, and a spruce seedling, all obtained free for the planting. I foresee the need for more and more shade in the future and, as is often said, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago – the next best time is now.
I keep remembering Julia Butterfly who (in the late 1990’s) lived in the 1500 year old redwood tree.. she named LUNA..
Her story always touched me deeply!
A memorable tree encounter witnessed: A teacher leading a group of 1st Graders outdoors on glorious late Spring afternoon. The procession veers off the sidewalk to dance and squeal in a blizzard of winged Maple samaras helicoptering down on them. Sheer joy of experiencing natures.
We have a big lime tree near a path people like to go for walks close to where I live. There are some benches and a beautiful view there. Whenever I need somewhere to think, be, draw, breathe, decompress or just be blown through by the wind I go there, sometimes even if it rains. I also got a beautiful graphite drawing of this particular tree up on my wall, made by my dad’s master teacher. It’s really well loved. Trees have something calm yet powerful, something slow but still alive and I think they can teach you so much. You see the seasons come and go, you can learn to trust the process and time, they share, transform, heal, host and if you are a sensitive person you can even feel their energy. They vaporise terpenes which are known to be very beneficial for our health. All in all I think, they’re amazing beings and I’m glad, they exist.
Congratulations to Amy, I love the scope & description of this new book. And thank you, Elizabeth, for this excellent post, which gave me time to pause, remember & think: about trees.
It’s so easy to love trees, they are everything plus amazing! The love began for me in my free-to-run through the woods childhood, then onto Advanced Biology in my rural Upstate NY high school, where we firmly focused on almost every aspect of the lives of trees. When I moved my young self across country to Northern California & Redwood/Sequoia country, wow! After that to AZ, with its vast tree landscapes (not just cacti there). Fast forward to my city property in Buffalo, NY where we must fight to have trees planted, watered, preserved, etc. I personally lost a 100+ year old giant Double Ash tree to the Emerald Ash borer a few years ago. (I’d had it “treated” by professionals but it didn’t work.)
If I had to name a favorite tree, I’d choose the Hemlock, Tsuga, of the genus conifer, due to their stately beauty & the name of our Upstate town, where we indeed have a very old & tall specimen.
We have a beautiful old Ash tree that came with our old Victorian farm house built in the 1890’s. I love this tree. I love all trees. Our old Maple trees needed to be cut down. They were dying and losing limbs. It was very sad. I have a Face I bought at Christmas Tree shops on one of our old maples. We call him the man in the tree. I also love Ginkgo trees, Birch trees, Curly Willow trees, of which I have one. I love the Maple trees we have here in New England! They are so beautiful in the Fall. Trees are so very important!! They give us shade and oxygen!!! They are beautiful and homes for birds and other animals. We all should love and protect our trees!
I grew up visiting special trees with my mother in San Diego. We always knew where the best cassias would be, the best erythrinas. Now she has some really nice ones on her property, flowering trees like bauhinia and a Lagunaria patersonii.
It never dawned on me that I am a tree collector. A gardener and gardening enthusiast – yes. A tree lover, a fruit lover – absolutely. My quarter-acre suburban yard “only” sports 21 fruit trees and a 60-year-old silver maple. Our previous home was half this size and we had 24 fruit trees, plus a fruitless mulberry and a young oak. I guess I am a tree collector, focusing on fruit that my family and neighbors will eat. Interesting. I learned something new about myself today.
I’ve enjoyed all of Amy’s writing as well as her art. Can’t wait to read her new book.
I think that my observation and appreciation of trees really started when I lived near and visited the ancient Bristlecone Pines in California. The Majesty and longevity of these trees in such a spartan desert environment is inspiring. Trees and arboretum elicit very different way plants and gardens. Love them all. thanks for this article that steers Us back to these spiritual giants, no matter their size.
Just returned from a wonderful balsam fir forest at 6684 feet of elevation. Heaven on earth!
Love trees and all they add to landscapes, the wildlife they support, and the coolness they bring. It’s too hot and humid in Mississippi to garden right now….need a new book to read and this looks like a good one!
I have a lifelong love affair and obsession with crape myrtles, my most favorite being the gorgeous variety named, ‘Natchez.’ I have a dozen of these fantastically showy ornamental trees evenly spaced around our quarter-acre walled garden. We took great pains with the spacing and placement when planting them, and now that they have achieved their semi-mature height of 20+ feet, they have grown to form a continuous undulating river of white flower blossoms around the perimeter in the Summertime. Even when not in bloom, they bring delight to the eye with their naturally perfectly shaped and dense foliage canopy. Come Fall, they put on another spectacular show by turning a fiery orange-red before dropping their leaves. Even the Winter is not without its own unique pleasure, as this time of year exposes their magnificent bark and branching structure in all its glory. They are drought tolerant, disease and deer resistant, provide lots of lovely shade. To me, they are the perfect tree!
We bought our house almost totally on the presence of mature maple on the property. It was an anomaly in a section of Ohio that was being reclaimed from treeless farm land for quick housing development. Never regretted it
The 50 year old Blue Spruce that the previous owners should never have planted in my suburban Michigan yard finally died. But it opened up a large area where I have started planting small crabapples. If these 3 survive and thrive, I may just become a crabapple collector.
My father’s paternal grandfather was a tree and lumber ‘hunter,’ traveling the countryside in southeast China to find rare, old-growth trees for specialty lumber. He would negotiate with the landowners and organize the milling process. This was probably around the turn of the 19th century, before power tools existed. I imagine he saw trees very differently than those profiled in this book, he probably saw trees as gifts from the earth, meant to be harvested at the right time and used respectfully, honoring the life of the organism.
My love for trees started when I was very scrawny and small, and practically lived in a giant, cozy water oak that sprawled over a lime sink. It was a Brontosaurus to me, and I read many books laying on its back. I married a tree collector that could be in this book! He started hundreds of maple seedlings, then started a nursery, and 20 years later we have collections of so many trees. I also collect memories with trees we seem special. I cherish all of Amy’s work! Thanks for sharing
We live on 3/4ths of an acre, and have around 30 mature trees, not to mention all the saplings and seedlings! I can only take credit for a few of them – a couple struggling Burr Oaks I was gifted by a true collector. Here’s the note I sent Amy Stewart when I learned of her new book and my story of the Burr Oak: What a great idea for a book! I’ve loved your Kopp sisters books, which is how I discovered from your website some time ago that you’re also an artist. (My love is watercolor.) I liked the oil paintings you’d included on your site, so I started following you on Instagram. Your relaxed, constantly inventive style has been an inspiration to me. Which is all to say, thank you for introducing me to ‘tree collecting.’ I now realize I’ve known a couple myself. My father, at heart, was a carpenter and always aware of, and planting, trees. Many stories there, but moving on. In 2008 I saw a burr oak acorn in Houston, Texas – I was smitten, and had to have one. In my search for burr oaks, I learned they’re native to the midwest and seldom found in my area, Virginia. I also learned there are several in a memorial park in Danville, and one in Elkton, Virginia where a man came for many years and collected the acorns! I got his name, his address (in my town!), called him and visited. Hoping to come home with an burr oak acorn. Turns out the caps of those acorns (and probably most types of acorns) fall off fairly quickly, and anyway he was more interested in planting them. Which he had done. All over the back yard of his standard size suburban residence. I came home without an acorn, but with 12 assorted small saplings he insisted I take with me, no charge. We planted them, with minimal results. However, the two survivors are both burr oaks – so maybe one day!!
I love that trees communicate with each other and sometimes I wish I could be in on the wonderous conversation!
My husband and I had been through a lot with health issues and walking amongst trees was so healing. I became a member of two botanical gardens, one is a Japanese garden. At the Japanese Garden, I could actually feel my heart beat a little slower and anxiety became less overwhelming. We found out that the paths at the garden curved to help you walk slowly and meander rather than race. Recently, I read about chemicals from Cyprus, Evergreen, and other plants helping to prevent cancer. The last day my husband was alive we walked through the Japanese garden. I am grateful to have that peaceful memory of a beautiful day with him. My dream is to retire near a forest so I can spend my time surrounded by trees.
I have a wonderful memory of the Elm tree in the side yard of my childhood home.
My 6 year old July birthday party ws held in the shade of the tree.
If I had to choose from the 5 categories Stewart mentions, my trees would be oaks. I don’t live where tropical would survive; as a retired orchardist, I’ve had my run with fruit trees; I live in the Cascades, and am surrounded by conifers and maples. Yes, we have a fair amount of oaks in our area, but they seem to be the most impacted by encroaching development. So I’ve planted a few oaks, but mostly allowed and encouraged the volunteers I find on my property to grow, even when they are in inconvenient spots (including in my vineyard; it’s going to be a few years before they really get in the way). think oak trees really come into their own at 200+ years old, and who knows what my property will be like then?
Trees have played an important part in my life since the age of two, when my dad started taking me for walks in the woods. I learned to identify some trees (cedar, oak) and later learned to love them. At twelve, I had a treehouse (actually a platform) high up in a sycamore where I climbed up early mornings to read. Now I plant them whenever and wherever I can. Since October 2021, I’ve planted a red maple, a hazelnut, a weeping cherry, a fig tree, a crape myrtle, and two Japanese cedars. All in a 5,000 sq ft city yard.
Heather’s (my sister, I recognized her favorite trees!) comment sparked me to reminisce about some of my favorite trees: the cottonwood I adopted in college and wrote a paper about, the ponderosa pine in my backyard that holds one side of my hammock, the tree we played “store” in at my grandma’s house, my grandma’s maple that was perfect to climb, the tree in my backyard that my kids love to swing and zip line from, the blue spruce “life ever tree” we always took pictures by at my house I grew up in … so many trees to love!
I do fruit trees in containers, primarily, but my favorite tree in my yard is what I call my “log tree.” About 10 years ago a maple tree needed to be cut down from the side of the house we had purchased. Sad, but necessary. I had them create logs that I used to decorate the backyard as a border. Flash forward, and I was amused to see a little leaf sprout from it. Today, it’s a nine foot tree that gives lovely shade and makes me so happy!
The trees in my yard are part of the history of my home. There are 2 very large trees planted by the previous owner when he was a child, an oak and a pine he collected from Cape Cod. We have a beautiful Japanese maple given to me for Father’s Day 15 years ago by my children. The trees provide shade, homes for many critters, and make our landscape beautiful.
A friend so loves ginkgo trees that she keeps a photo album of every single ginkgo tree is in Bloomington-Normal (central Illinois). At her house she painstakingly counts and removes the fallen fruit so as not to disturb the neighbors with the unmistakable foul order. She was shocked when one of her ginkgos – promised to be male by the nursery – became female after seven ears. Yes, she is obsessed!
If I could have any single tree it would be this one.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/a-tree-grows-40-different-types-of-fruit-180953868/
Every time I walk through the woods here I find something new and surprising about at least one of the trees.
My house has a tree in front that is bigger than the house. I’ve always felt like it protects and watchers over me. I can’t imagine not living under it’s generous branches!
I work part time as a raft guide on the Nantahala. My favorite tree on the river is a sycamore that leans almost all the way across in river in a lovely arc. Another nearby sycamore provides a marker–line up on it and you’ll make it through the deepest channel in a rocky shoal. That proved especially useful today with a very heavy load of people in the raft.
I live in a small city where trees are planted everywhere. Those planted in the Hell strips have the hardest lives. Many times ignored by the city once planted they are at the mercy of the elements. So many get run into by cars and bikes, left to survive or not. Eventually cut down or cut back. A few years back there was a program that city folks could request a tree or two to be planted in your hell strip. Then it was up to the home owner to water and care for. These trees fare much better in the neighborhoods.
I’ve been working in the landscaping industry for 4 seasons now, but never realized how much I loved trees until I started caring for them in a cultivated situation.
Oddly, the trees I’ve always loved best are when they are in fall color or winter bare-ness. The structure of the branches and how starkly they can be contrasted against a sky. How a forest in full leaf compares to a season of the sticks. How the whole landscape changes based on what stage a tree is in.
Trees are homes, and climate indicators, and weather champions. I do love them so.
I almost always feel a sense of peace and calm when I spend time walking in the woods, surrounded by trees.
As a curious sketcher of trees, I find myself drawn to small ones that have an odd “skeleton.” What made this one grow in one direction and then change course at a right angle? Why did that one’s trunk curve around so oddly? What made this one put down a couple of right angle roots a foot from the earth and a foot from the trunk? I do my best to sketch their oddities and add them to my collection of SOSIs — Saplings Of Special Interest– even though I’ll never know exactly why they grew the way they did.
I enjoy all of Amy Stewart’s books, I don’t collect trees per se but I have personal favorites both on an individual and species level. As a child I had a poster on my bedroom wall with the quote “ Trees are the monuments of peace” that thought has stuck with me for 50 plus years!
I would have to add various dogwoods to that list.
We have a miniature forest of dogwoods, native Florida dogwoods, Kousa Dogwoods and Rutgers hybrids.
Fast enough growth to have a presence in just 5 years.
Small enough mature size for a suburban yard. But large enough to walk under and garden under.
Definitely dry shade gardening.
They are accented with a few smaller Japanese Maples in containers. But these are just a beautiful afterthought.
We live under several large beautiful shade trees including an old maple and a gumball.
The dogwoods and small Japanese maples thrive in the part sun environment.
Appreciate the collector’s who have cataloged the mature trees of note in the state of Virginia.
My husband was the director of an arboretum here in Maine. He is a licensed forester and self proclaimed tree lover. Whenever there were extra trees that didn’t fit in the arboretum’s space or mission, those trees found a home here on our land. We now have a Kentucky coffee tree, Gymnocladus dioicus; a Kazakhstan apple; a sand cherry, Prunus x cistena; a redbud, Cercis canadensis and a Japanese weeping yew that I can’t remember the genus. Most of those trees were out of their preferred range when we planted them in the eastern facing edge of the woods. Behind them is a red pine plantation, planted in the 1960’s, that has been selectively cut. Those “new” trees are thriving and will probably do better with climate change than our native oaks and ash. We didn’t know 35 years ago how much change would have taken place in the growing conditions by now. Years from now there might be a tree collector who will be pleasantly amazed to see a mature Gymnocladus rising out of the midst of oaks and poplars.