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Saturday, April 4, 2009

The Dog Wood Be Foolin' Me


dogwood branchesI had taken a picture of buds shaped like this on a hike a few years ago, and had no clue what tree they went with. Now, I should confess that if I had been paying attention to the alignment of the branches (opposite), and the size of the tree (small), and the way the branches grow (reaching upwards as you can see in this picture), I might have figured it out. It would at least have narrowed the choices. Just for fun, I left the moon in the picture.

dogwood branchesHere are the branches a little closer. Now you can see those funny little knobs at the ends of the branches. What the heck are those buds?

dogwood bud
Well, here you have it. Those little pointed onion buds are found on the Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida. Now here's where the joke is really on me. The tree I pictured on the hike several years ago is not one of these. These are from the tree in my own yard that I planted ten years ago. It finally bloomed last year for the first time. But had I ever looked at the buds before? Obviously not!

Hike Planning Report
Ordered the Steripen, our new choice for water purification since our old filter died.

Began to analyze some information received from people who are familiar with portions of this route.

Planned the menus for all 14 days. This is not as onerous as it might sound. We've done this for so many years that there is quite a long list of choices already established. But I had to choose ones to suit this group, and this hike.

Sent a long message to our hiking crew with updated information and the menus for approval.

Walked 3 miles with a 28 pound pack.


See Young Plans to Finish NCT in 2010

7 comments:

rainfield61 said...

It should be fun to guess what is at the end of the branches. Only one blossom per branch yet I think the blossom must be a big one in size.

Rick (Ratty) said...

This is a nice lesson about this tree for the rest of us. It makes it a lot easier if I find one of these.

Blogger Rise said...

nice photo & inspiring post you have here

VanillaSeven said...

A very unique tree.. hope we can see how it blooms :)

Lara Lutrick said...

Flowering dogwwods are beautiful. I like your border of your blog. My mom has this type of licen growing in her yard and I took a picture of it just yesterday.

Unknown said...

Hello.

Your blog is very beautiful.

I approved your paid ad, because your blog was a lot better than those on the paid ads list.

But it started running on my site immediately.
I don't think that's fair for blogs I approved before. Some as long as 11+ days ago.

I think I have to stay loyal to bloggers who paid with entrecardclicks too, because one display means 1024 credits, that's more than three days with many hours of work.

So I cancelled your ad.
I'm sorry. I really mean that.

But when no-one takes a stand against the lack of respect for those who enabled entrecard to grow big, than we're soon a kind of second class entrecardbloggers.

Know that I've been penalised for it, with a complete degradation in my category of blogs.

Sharkbytes (TM) said...

Hi rainfield & vanilla- yes, these are one of the showiest of our northern flowering trees. I hope mine blooms again this year so I can show you.

Ratty- Well now that I've gotten observant myself we can both find these trees in the winter!

Greetings Blogger Rise- nice of you to stop by.

Hi Lara- welcome! glad you like what you see. Your beads are quite beautiful too.

Laane- I posted a response on your blog, and I see you have replied again on a different blog of mine. I'm sorry you are so angry. But if you like my blog, why punish me? I can't afford the ECs it costs to advertise on your blog that way, it was 1024 credits when I checked. Once we paid money to be put in the entire EC system, unless we paid a higher rate to target a category our ad is presented to everyone. I'm sure that many people chose not to accept my blog. I chose not to accept about half of the ones I was presented with. But I sure didn't reject any that I liked. How this was going to work has been announced for two weeks.