This giving tree has brief but worthy season

It is the ninth of June and in a verdant section of Marjorie’s garden, the bird corner, stands a small, four-trunked, leafless tree. From the back porch the tree appears dead, a victim of winter, but as I fill the thistle feeder under a nearby oak I see swelling buds showing a hint of green. Smiling in anticipation, I know that in a week or so the flowering of this tree will transform the bird corner into center stage.

Fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus) is the last plant in the garden to acknowledge spring, almost missing it entirely this year as daytime temperatures reach 80 degrees before its buds burst into leaf and flower. The process is swift, terminal buds at the tips of the stems producing leaves skirted by flowers developing from lateral buds. It is the flowering that we anticipate every year, the event that makes fringe tree the perfect tree for June. After the flowers fade, the tree settles into a summer of dark green leaves that fade to a dull yellow in late autumn. We grow this tree for the two or three weeks of its flowering.

C. virginicus is native to moist woodlands from eastern Texas and southern Missouri eastward to the Atlantic Coast and north to Pennsylvania and Ohio. Throughout this region, common names for this tree, white fringetree and old man’s beard, testify to the uniqueness of its flower display. From a distance the tree appears bearded with bright white fleecy cotton. Up close, each of the sweetly fragrant flowers displays four very thin, drooping petals about half an inch in length.

Fringe tree is dioecious (see sidebar), with male and female flowers on separate plants. If growing a single fringe tree in your garden, select a male plant, if possible, as they have longer, showier petals. Female plants, on the other hand, if pollinated by a nearby male, will produce olive-shaped, dark blue berries that are relished by wildlife. Of course, the challenge will be finding a nursery that knows the sex of each of their fringe trees.

Perhaps the greater challenge will be finding a nursery that sells fringe trees. When I first came to Orono, I was delighted to find a fringe tree growing in the Lyle Littlefield Garden. I immediately went shopping for my own, only to be discouraged by emphatic declarations that fringe tree would not grow in the Orono area. I finally found one at Windswept Gardens in Bangor. The tree thrived in my Orono garden for three years and now graces the bird corner of Marjorie’s garden.

I often tell my students that as gardens become smaller we can ill afford granting space to single-season plants. I make an exception, however, for fringe tree. We grow it for what it gives us during three weeks of the year. Robert Frost said it best: “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”

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Gardening questions

I recently received a question from a local gardener who was distressed that Northern bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) plants purchased three years ago had never produced berries. He had decided to give them just one more year to fruit, otherwise they were history!

There is little doubt that this lack of fruiting was due to the dioecious nature of bayberries. Like the fringe tree, male and female flowers are borne on separate plants. (Literally, the term “dioecious” translates as “two houses”.) Hollies (Ilex sp.) are another group of popular garden shrubs that are dioecious. In all dioecious species, fruit production will occur only when flowers on female plants have received pollen from male flowers. In this particular case, either the bayberries were all males and thus destined to be fruitless or they were all females growing without a nearby pollinator.

Many garden centers label the sex of dioecious plants. However, if they are not labeled, your only recourse is to purchase plants in fruit to ensure that you have females and then select at least one fruitless plant, hoping it is a male to serve as a pollinator. Typically, one male will pollinate up to nine females.