The greeny-yellow stamens of the alder – perfectly matching our beloved Peter Boyer still life – are spending their pollen on the old bureau, dusting the furniture instead of pollinating the cherry red pistils that would await the wind if I had not cut the branch and brought it inside. How we squander nature in the service of art.
I used to love using the alder to illustrate monoecious plants (one plant, two sexes) with imperfect flowers. Unlike magnolias, which have “perfect” flowers enclosing pistil and stamens within the same petals, or hollies, which have female and male flowers on separate plants, alders display separate, “imperfect” male and female flowers on the same plant, the fertilized pistils developing into woody cones later in the year.
                                               The wonders of nature never cease.
This time of year is bare and brown in the hollow, especially because the deer browse everything so closely. I look for winter bouquets everywhere. In addition to the alder, I’ve been tending a vase of sassafras twigs for weeks now, watching the buds slowly swell. This lovely native, S. albidum, is one of my favorites not only for its early spring yellow puff ball flowers, which I await with great anticipation, but in fall its mitten-shaped leaves color purple and red.
I have loved forcing winter branches ever since an elementary school project which I continue to remember vividly 65 years later: the array of different vases and bottles on the bureau in the dining room, checking them every day with Mother to see how each had progressed. The miracle of flowers blooming inside the house from old wood.
But my favorite winter bouquet has always been the snowdrop, Galanthus elwesii, with its pure white and tender green ready to brave anything.
When brought indoors, it’s like porcelain.