The Urban Pantheist

Last Sunday I led an Urban Nature Walk in the Riverway. As it turned out, 2 Livejournal friends (who I'd never met before) came along! We went to the Studios Without Walls outdoor art exhibit. I was frankly disappointed with the quality of the art this time around, but this piece was pretty good.

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Cycle commuter in the Riverway.


Alexis throws cherry petals at me.

Urban species #120: Flowering crabapple Malus x purpurea

Cherry blossoms get all the good press, but there are other flowering trees in the city. Hybrid varieties of apple have been developed to produce sprays of white or pink flowers that rival their close relatives, the cherries. Crabapples can be distinguished from cherries from their bark: cherries have smooth bark with horizontal dashes (technically called lenticels), while apple trees have rough, flaky bark. Apples and cherries both produce flowers in spring and (more famously) edible fruit in fall; fruit bearing trees such as these provide food for birds such as robins and cedar waxwings, and mammals like squirrels and raccoons.

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