The pod was plucked from a young tree growing in the municipal landscape of Arlington Virginia's Thomas Jefferson Recreation Center, where my son got to observe a pot being thrown on a wheel for the first time. My observant little nephew remarked that the pod looked like a heart, "the one inside your body." It fell apart while I was trying to photograph it, and I wasn't having much luck capturing the pyramidal pod's brittle, papery membranes riddled with veins, silvery on the side exposed to sunlight and coppery where sheltered by the angle, the thickness of the tree and the foliage, which was only beginning to emerge, pinnate, lobed.
As usual I have no idea what kind of tree this came from, and although my facebook friend Prospect Park has been helpful in helping identify the plants I've posted about up here in BK, I think I'd better not push my luck.
4 comments:
So pretty
That would be the goldenraintree, Koelreuteria paniculata. Sibley says Tom Jefferson was probably the first one to grow one in America. Cobble Hill Park has a couple and they are tucked away here and there among the boroughs.
Thanks, Matthew! That's a nice name. I wonder if the landscaper was paying tribute. The architect certainly wasn't.
The botanical swag is lovely, and so is the picture. A golden rain tree! How poetic!
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