Taxononsensical information on trees

It's come to my attention that some people are confusing different flowering trees with the very famous snowball trees. People! Not all trees with white flowers are snowball trees! The flowers have to be in clusters in a somewhat round shape. The trees that have white flowers in an overall, non-clustered pattern are usually wedding lace trees. When standing underneath these trees while they're in full bloom, and looking up, the lovely little white flowers resemble lace. We saw many of these trees while at Lake Chabot last weekend.

A tree with a black trunk, and little pink flowers clustered in a ball shape, are sno-ball trees, named after the famous Hostess pink marshmallow/coconut covered cupcake confection (which they're apparently making now in white or glowing orange, just to confuse the issue). Although the spoken name sounds the same as the snowball tree, let's not confuse them in our own minds, 'k?

The trees that have clusters of flowers in pink, white, red or lavender, appearing on the tips of new wood (and blooming for much of the spring and summer), are crap myrtles. No, I didn't misspell that. Have you ever smelled them? Or tried to clean up the mess left from their flowers/leaves/fruit? I removed a couple of those from my yard when I bought my house and they keep trying to make a grand return. Uh uh, no crap myrtles for me!

Some time in the future I'll give a lesson on flowering shrubs. That'll be fun!

The weather is warm and beautiful. Last night Pam and I ran our short short route. Although we both had our headlamps with us, it was light the entire run and we didn't have to turn on the lamps. It was so warm out we just stood around chatting forever, until it was dark. My brain is saying daylight savings time, but my body is insisting that it's an hour earlier than it really is. Should be interesting to try to get on eastern time in a few days.

Today we have something very special! It's a brand new feature, the Gratuitous (Guest) Bear of the Day! My friend Carol has submitted pictures of her old childhood Teddy. From the front, he's a very cute little sad bear. But Carol's Teddy, apparently, had a disorder not dissimilar to bulimia and has thrown up much of his stuffing. Poor little pancake Teddy! When you're done snickering or guffawing, please send Teddy your good wishes for a return to plump health!