This Week's Tour...
...met at 9:00AM Saturday on the Beltline Eastside Trail near Parish (R.I.P...soon to reopen as "Painted Park"!). We walked for 1 1/2 hours, covering 1 mile of the Beltline, ending at Ponce City Market.
"The Tourists"...
...shouting out to this week's tourists, another good sized group braved the cold, including a new Druid Hills resident and visitors from Minnesota!
Map of the week...
...is actually a "video of the week"; Georgia Audubon's wildlife camera compilation of fauna along the Beltline and the 80 acres of Trees Atlanta Arboretum. What's cuter than a raccoon? TWO raccoons!
Tree of the week...
...singling out one of the hundreds of specimens from the dozens of collections along the arboretum.
We spoke a little on this bright and chilly winter morning about some of the spectacular foliage and blooms you can see if you come back to visit the Trees Atlanta Arboretum in the spring. One of my favs is the Fringe Tree, planted in the Arboretum "neighborhood" themed "Peace", as it connects the The King Center and Jimmy Carter Library and Museum and the Nobel Peace Prize housed in each.
Upon close inspection, you may notice there are non-invasive Chinese varieties planted in the corridor along with the native varieties, providing a diverse and extended blooming season without being invasive and having the risk of crowding out native species.
From Trees Atlanta Hometown Favorites: "White Fringe Tree is a showy flowering native that takes on a shrub-like form, capable of reaching heights of 25′. This Eastern US native is renowned for it’s white fringe-like creamy white flowers, which densely cover the tree deep into Spring, prior to leaf emergence. Traditionally used as a specimen or pollinator tree in garden settings, its tolerance for air pollution allows for its use in urban plantings. However, its preference for decent soil and moisture should not be ignored. Fringe tree is sexed and in the right conditions, females can produce small olive-like fruits that are enjoyed by numerous bird species."
"Stump" of the week...
...featuring a question raised during the tour that Jeff couldn't answer.
