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Plants in the Park

posted March 17, 2006

Community Plantings

The community plantings in Dufferin Grove include a lot of bushes rather than trees especially elderberry which have done really well. There are also nine bark, wild roses, wild clematis, red twig, spice bush and a hazel nut which seems to produce nuts although the squirrels do not let them stay long. The choke cherry also does very well and produces lots of sucker which have to be pruned off. We've planted a few white and red cedar. Some people don't like these trees but they are native evergreens which seem to grow well in cities and we have a lot of native perennials such as Joe Pye weed, Indian cup plant and some grasses. There are also some very small trees planted as seedlings which may mature. Those include hackberry, oak and sugar maple.

posted July 31, 2005

The park's wild fruit and nut trees

Anyone who might be interested in seeing wild fruit and nut trees in the park should walk along Dufferin Street especially down by Sylvan in the very southwest corner. 3 young black walnuts are bearing their lemon-shaped lime coloured fruit for 2nd year. They are like young teenagers on the verge of adulthood growing so robustly you can almost see them increasing in size. Inside the rail fence is a hazelnut which is full of frilly green fruit still forming. The frilly part is called involucre and looks very flowery and decorative.

The wild plums seem to form fruit reluctantly preferring to increase their kind by sending up shoots and suckers. There are a handful of hard green plums all the same which some creature will likely eat. I keep hoping a song bird will build a nest in their thorny branches.

Closer to the fountain a choke cherry is now about 18' high and the strange mouth-puckering fruit are just ripening as are the small berries on the pagoda dogwoods. The elderberries are still green but it seems that some birds or other creatures will eat those without allowing them to ripen. These are common trees and shrubs of the countryside but not often grown in town.

- Gene Threndyle, in a note to the dufferinpark email list July 18, 2005.

posted August 4, 2005

Walnuts:

photo by Wallie Seto

posted February 24, 2005

Plant species at Dufferin Grove Park, 2005

Native Species Trees and Bushes

Black walnut (one of them with 4 walnuts, fist-time-ever),
wild plum (covered with plums),
aspen,
spice bush,
dogwood,
hazelnut,
elderberry,
winterberrry,
Eastern white cedar,
striped maple,
choke cherry,
meadowsweet,
hackberry,
sugar maple,
high bush cranberry,
black willow (planted anonymously),
Eastern white pine,
tamarack,
black oak,
poplar, and
red cedar.

And here are some of the flowers:

Joe Pye weed,
asters,
fireweed,
black-eyed Susan,
rudbeckia,
touch-me-not,
swamp rose,
Indian cup plant,
vervain,
Jerusalem Artichoke,
milkweed,
wild clematis,
bergamot,
rye grass,
grey-headed coneflower,
wild rose
There is also, of course, wild raspberry, and this year it has lots of berries to eat.
There used to be wild strawberries, but they have disappeared this year (2004). (If they don't reappear next year, maybe we'll re-plant them).