Tree of the Week

Callery Pear, Pyrus calleryana Dcne.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves simple, alternate, ovate to nearly round, 1 1/2 to 3 inches long, glabrous and often glossy, toothed. Winter twigs moderate in diameter, brown; leaf scars small with 3 bundle scars. Buds with several scales, often rather large, hairy. Flowers showy, perfect, regular, in corymblike clusters just before the leaves appear; petals 5, white, roundish; styles not joined at base. Fruit a pome about 3/8 inch in diameter, brown with pale dots. Bark gray to brown, becoming shallowly furrowed with age.

SIMILAR TREES: Flowering crabapples have elliptical to oval leaves, smaller buds, flowers with the styles joined at the base, and more conspicuous red or yellow fruits.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa: Third Edition, by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Comfort Foods of Iowa

Chocolate Buttercream

1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter
2 cups powdered sugar
2 1/2 ounces real semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled
Few drops half-and-half (or more)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

In a mixing bowl, cream butter. Add powdered sugar 1/4 cup at a time until very stiff. Incorporate chocolate until creamy. Add more sugar or half-and-half until desired consistency is reached. Add vanilla and almond extract and beat until creamy.

A Cook's Tour of Iowa by Susan Puckett

Winter Bird

Great Gray Owl

Strix nebulosa

On March 4, 2005, I heard Jim Duncan speak during the festival of owls organized by Karla Kinstler at the Houston Nature Center in southeast Minnesota. That evening, word was spreading of a great gray that had wondered farther south than usual to nearby Winona County. Over the next few weeks many people saw the bird, including my husband and me. While watching the owl perched on a fence post, its feathers ruffling in the wind, we could clearly see its yellow eyes and white bow tie. Soon it dove for prey and missed, then moved across the road to another fence post. Not wanting to disturb the first great gray we had ever seen, we soon left, wishing it well.

Fifty Common Birds of the Upper Midwest, watercolors by Dana Gardner, text by Nancy Overcott