Clearing Woods - Shrubs - Part 1 - Spicebush


chill at 41ºF (5º C) they will require 105 days of chilling. He also says that cuttings of half-ripe wood will root, but in very low percentages; he has had only the occasional cutting root.

If the number of seedlings I find around my mature plants are any indication, propagation from seed is the easiest method.

Botanical descriptions of plant parts can be pretty obtuse to the average gardener.

Lindera is described by Dirr as having "small, superposed, upper collaterally arranged" buds.

This meant nothing to me when I read it and involved a bit of searching in glossaries, while looking at this image, to discover that:

    Collateral buds are accessory buds on either side of the true lateral bud at a stem node;
    Superposed means that there are buds at or near the nodes on the stems but not in the axils of the leaves as well as
    Axillary buds - those in the leaf axil, which is the angle formed by a leaf or branch with the stem.

Whew!

The more closely I learn to look at plants, the more I appreciate buds.

These are described as small and rounded, but I think they are cute, with their slight reddish staining.

You can see the little stems attaching each bud, which mean these are flower buds.

Lindera is interesting in that it has no terminal buds (the one usually found at the tip end of a stem or branch).


Spicebush stems are also intriguing. Very new stems are polished dark olive brown that ages to a lightish gray on older wood.

The stems are covered with little pale bumps, called lenticels. They actually serve a purpose, being made of loosely packed cells that provide gaseous exchange between the inner stem tissues and the atmosphere. On very old wood, they become odd, sunken places, giving old stems a very pitted appearance.

There are two cultivars of spicebush, which don't seem to be widely available in the nurseries I've searched:

  • 'Rubra' (or f. rubra) a brick red male flowering selection from Hopkinton, RI with darker, red-brown winter buds;
  • 'Xanthocarpa' (or f. xanthocarpa) with orange-yellow fruit, discovered as a spontaneous plant at the Arnold Arboretum in 1967.

There are also several related species from Asia. One, Lindera obtusiloba, the Japanese spicebush, forms a large, multi-stemmed shrub or small tree, reaching ten to twenty feet (3.04 - 6.09 m) in height. It has somewhat leathery, lustrous

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