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

Tree of the Week

Flowering Crabapples, Malus Mill. (Pyrus L.)

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves simple, alternate, elliptic to oval in shape (lobed in some varieties), toothed; veins usually ending or forming a network near the margin. Winter twigs moderate in diameter, usually with spur shoots; leaf scars linear or crescent-shaped, small, with 3 bundle scars. Buds small, subglobose to ovoid, with several scales that are hairy at least along the edges. Flowers showy, perfect, regular, in corymb- or umbel- life clusters at the ends of the spur shoots, appearing shortly before, with, or shortly after the leaves in spring; petals 5 to many, white, pink, or reddish, obovate to round; styles joined at base. Fruit a pome, variously sized and colored, but commonly small and berrylike, bright red or yellow, often persisting in winter. Bark smooth or scaly, gray to reddish brown in color.

SIMILAR TREES: Red- and pink-flowered crabs are not likely to be mistaken for other trees, as no other tree has flowers of their shape and color. (Redbud has much smaller, irregular flowers.) White-flowered crabs can be distinguished from serviceberries by their broad petals and later blooming from Callery pear by their united styles and usually later blooming time. At other seasons, crabs can be distinguished from other small trees by buds and fruits.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Commonly planted throughout the state.

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

Bachelor Bess Winter Story

Mar. 16, 1913 / Fort Pierre, So. Dak.

To Mrs. M. M. Corey

Dear Ma,—Last Monday and Tuesday were very warm and Wednesday was misty. Thursday it was mist, rain and snow by spells. By five o'clock it was storming to beat seven of a kind. It grew worse and worse and by Friday morning it was the worst blizzard I ever saw and I never expect to see a worse one.

When I get up in the morning I just get already then jump out quick and throw the covers back over the warm places, run and build the fire then crawl back in the warm place till the fire burns up good. Well Friday morning I jumped out of bed right quick and landed in a snow drift. That's once when I yelled now believe me. I just screamed "Golly!" at the top of my voice and made another jump. I didn't go in quite so deep that time and the next jump landed me on the rug before the stove. I couldn't get the fire started for quite a while. Then I looked for the broom to sweep the snow aside before crawling back in bed but Oh grief! there it was on the other side of the drift so I had to go through the snow again. I got into bed and warmed up but my fire went out and I had to build it over again. It wasn't very cold then but kept getting colder. My fire didn't amount to much. The wind blew down the chimney or something so I staid in bed most of the time to keep warm. The storm let up some about five or six in the evening. Yesterday was clear and bright but cold with a sharp north wind. It's the same today.

Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919 edited by Philip L. Gerber

Winter Gardening

Thursday/March 9

A whole clatter of display birds showed up for breakfast. Two jays, two pine siskins, two downy woodpeckers, a red-bellied woodpecker, a lady cardinal. And two redpolls quarreling in midair directly ober the feeder, momentarily suspended as in an aerial pas de deux. Why didn't they schedule the Iowa Winter Bird Feeder Survey for today? But the real news this morning was the warmer, more tolerable air that I felt all the way down to campus. Probably because the wind was coming from the southeast rather than the northwest and only moving about five miles an hour. The sky was still clear at that point, but a few hours later when I went uptown to have lunch with Kate, the wind had picked up, and the sky had almost completely filled up with midlevel clouds—signs of the weather's gradually changing over from an arctic front to a warm front. And even if I hadn't checked the outdoor thermometers on the downtown bank building, I'd have been able to feel that the air was distinctly warmer after lunch than before. And warmer still by afternoon.

From Carl H. Klaus's Weathering Winter: A Gardener's Daybook

Tree of the Week

Hackberry, Celtis occidentalis L.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves simple, alternate, ovate, 2 1/2 to 4 inches long with petioles 1/3 to 1/2 inch long; margins toothed (sometimes entire at the base); veins forming a network near the margin, the largest three meeting in a single point at the base. Winter twigs very slender, light brown to gray-brown, usually glabrous; pith chambered at the nodes; leaf scars very small, half-round, with 3 (sometimes 1) bundle scars. Buds about 1/8 inch long, ovoid to triangular, closely appressed to the twig, the terminal absent; visible bud scales usually 3 or 4, light brown, finely and rather inconspicuously hairy. Flowers very small, greenish yellow, either perfect or imperfect, apetalous, on slender stalks, solitary or in small clusters from the axils or the newly unfolded leaves in spring. Fruit a dark purple drupe about 1/3 inch in diameter. Bark light to dark gray with distinctive warty outgrowths.

SIMILAR TREES: No other tree has ovate leaves with three veins meeting at the base. The hackberry's warty bark, which is present even on small trees, is also unique

IOWA DISTRIBUTION:Native throughout the state.

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