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In This Issue March Events Friends of the Arboretum Lecture Hypertufa Workshop Plantsmen's Tour Triangle Camellia Society's 3rd Annual Camellia Show Friends of the Arboretum Lecture Year-long Class Wake Up! It's Spring! Herbaceous Perennials Class Friends of the Arboretum Lecture |
Magnolia stellata
by Mark Weathington, Assistant Director and Curator of Collections Deciduous magnolias are the epitome of the spring flowering tree with their large, fuzzy buds opening to reveal exuberant flowers arising from the tip of almost every branch. While the trend in breeding and selection in recent years has been to increase the already oversized flowers, the star magnolia, Magnolia stellata, with its more modestly sized blossoms remains one of my favorites. The genus is one of the most ancient of flowering trees and contains over 200 species with two centers of distribution, Asia and the Americas. The typical large flower was tailor made to funnel big, bumbling beetles into the center to pollinate the flowers while the tough, woody carpels made it difficult for those same beetles to chew into the fruits. Fossils of plants belonging to this family have been dated to over 90 million years old. The genus was named for the French botanist Pierre Magnol, whose concept of plant families is still largely used today, in 1703 and later officially adopted by Carolus Linnaeus. Herbaceous Perennials Class
by Cheryl Kearns, JCRA Volunteer and Board of Advisors The JCRA has a wide and colorful collection of perennials in flower almost all year, beginning in January with hellebores and Algerian iris, and ending in late autumn with asters and salvias, with many more too numerous to mention. We are going to look at some that can be used in the landscape in this area—those which will tolerate our N.C. soils, dry spots and wet, our summer heat—and our recently colder winters. Bulbs, ground covers, clumpers, those that bloom long periods, those that are less bold, and perennials that offer a rainbow of color for your garden will be some of the aspects we will discuss in the course. Bring your cameras and notebooks! Classes of about one hour will be offered in pairs of weekends to showcase various seasons, except during the summer. You can sign up for one class, a pair, or all. Class size limited to 15. First come, first served. To register for the Herbaceous Perennials Class, please contact Chris Glenn at (919) 513-7005. DatesMarch 27 and April 3 (Sundays) – 1:00 PM – Early Spring Perennials May 21 and June 11 (Saturdays) – 9:00 AM – Early Summer Perennials October 2 and October 30 (Sundays) – 1:00 PM – Autumn Perennials Propagation Workshop
by Chris Glenn, Programs and Education Coordinator June 4, 2011 (Saturday) – 9:00 AM-3:00 PMJoin Mark Weathington and Chris Glenn in this hands-on workshop and learn how to asexually propagate some of your favorite plants at the Arboretum. Participants will go home with a greater knowledge of plant propagation and with many freshly propagated plants. Techniques discussed can be done at home. This workshop is open to all knowledge/experience levels, and is open to Friends of the Arboretum members only. The cost is $80 per person. Registration opens on March 1, 2011, at 11:00 AM. To register for the Propagation Workshop, please contact Chris Glenn at (919) 513-7005. Hypertfua Workshop Update
by Chris Glenn, Programs and Education Coordinator March 5, 2011 (Saturday) – 9:00 AM-12:00 PMRegistration is still open for the Hypertufa Workshop on March 5. The announcement for the program was recently updated to include new details about the program. The plywood platform and the mold are now provided as part of the workshop fee. To register, please contact Chris Glenn at (919) 513-7005. Recent Members Only Additionsby Chris Glenn, Programs and Education Coordinator Three new videos were recorded for the Members Only section on the Arboretum's Web site in February. The video section on the site is still being reworked and improved. The videos now use a new video player that should be easier to use. It's HTML5 and Flash enabled so it should play on all current browsers with ease. Lower bitrates (quality) were used in the creation of the latest videos compared to those in January. This was done to improve the download speed for those with slow Internet connections. The quality is still much higher than in 2010 and earlier. If you experience poor quality/jerky video quality, please close other programs, try a different Web browser, and pause video until more of the video has downloaded or try playing it on a different computer. Please report any problems to Chris Glenn.
Content in the Members Only section is password protected and is only available to Arboretum members. In order to access these special features, members need to know the password that was printed on the label (use all lower case letters) of the latest Friends of the Arboretum Newsletter or included directly in the e-mailed version of the e-Update. |
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