Japanese maples in January

The Japanese maple still has dried leaves clinging to it.

Purple fruits

I usually walk by this area when I go to the radio station, but I never noticed these purple fruits before.

Strange twig pattern

I was intrigued to see a tree on which the branches were twiggy lower down, but had long smooth ends.

There was a row of this kind of tree on campus. Another tree of the same kind did have twiggy ends.

And another just had short lateral twigs.

Snow goose

There were plenty of gulls and Canada geese at Peebles Island, which is usual.  But today for the first time, I also saw a snow goose there.

Fallen cottonwood branches

There are cottonwoods along the shore at Peebles Island. Today I found many fallen branches. I do not recall a recent big storm that would have brought down so many branches.

Usually being among trees brings me serenity. But trees also fall with lethal ferocity. Today when I heard the trees moving in the wind, I felt fear at their power.  I also felt the bitterness of the cold.  That too can be lethal.  Nature is beautiful, but also powerful and merciless.

Contrast in bark

Today at Peebles Island, my eye was caught by a tree that was alongside the road, near the start of the path that goes out to the pavilion. What caught my attention was that the bark of the branches was so different from the bark of the trunk.

What kind of tree is this? Two things came to mind. Last spring, before the leaves came out, I noticed some stump sprouts that looked like the branches in this photo. After the leaves came out, I found that they were boxelder. The other thing that came to mind was chokecherry. That was something that popped up from my unconscious mind.  I know that when I was growing up, we had chokecherry trees at my house.  However, I did not pay attention to what they looked like, and if you asked me what kind of bark they had, I would say I had no idea.  However, when I saw this bark, my mind said "chokecherry."

When I got home, I looked in The Sibley Guide to Trees.  Boxelder did not seem to have bark like this.  For chokecherry, there was no picture of bark, but it said that chokecherry was similar to black cherry, and the opposite page showed photos of black cherry bark which matched the photo above.  Also, I did an internet search for both chokecherry bark and boxelder bark.  Chokecherry bark matched.  Boxelder did not.