The bees (and other bugs) be buzzing

Here's one that doesn't get much mention 'round here, blooming its fool head off in the heat of July.

And here's a little closer shot.

Is that Hep. minicoides? The one at my place has not a single bloom open, and this is zone 6.

Not Heptacodium miconioides. The seven sons flower doesn't get started for me till sometime later in August.

Looks like what they used to call Evodia. What's the current genus name, something like Tetradium? Gall-durned taxonomists just can't leave anything alone!

Guy S.

If taxonomists were horses, beggars would ride.

Tetradium daniellii (this time) attracts just about all the winged pollinators around in the summer. Pick your common nom du jour; it needs one that people can remember.

Korean bee tree works for me.

Foliage looks very similar to a Phellodendron I've got here. Its holding up well in this miserable drought we're going through.

And I would be sterilizing them on the surgery table. Good one Guy!

Guido:

And I thought you liked dogs.

Sofersogood:

Hope you wouldn't waste any perfectly good anesthetic...

MaackTruck:

Since you remarked...Phellodendron is one of those rare birds that has the bud totally hidden by the end of the petiole, like Cladrastis. Just one way to separate it from Tetradium. Tetradium also has very distinctive smelling foliage; I want to say something approaching oniony but I'm not home with the plant to make an instant reference. I'll check this evening.

Let's find a plant that might qualify for a name change due to some minor glitch in the holotype specimen's label, place it in a room with poison gas, and see how many of the little buggers we can entice to their demise!

Steve, sterilize the survivors!

Maybe we can even lure a few spammers, phishers, crooked lawyers, and corrupt politicians in there with them if we glue some money to the floor! Did I leave anyone out? Oh yeah, and used car salesmen too!

Arrrgggghhhhh!

Guy S.

Ooooo Equil. Your mean. Have you ever castrated a horse without anesthetic. The best protocol is to have everything ready and stand right behind the stallion's leg. Make sure there is no space between you and the foot. When you start your incision plan on flying through the air for 10 to 40 feet. Get back up and go to the next side. We won't give any more details or people will pass out. We used to do it that way. I hated it!

Hey! How'd I get dragged into this male bonding session? Sofer, you been sipping Sambuca slurpies?

Where was your succinylcholine Sofer? Castrating horses with xylazine/ketamine was bad enough--at times it was like doing it with nothing!

Hmm. I almost never had any problems with x/k - unless it was a mule - would frequently have to give a second dose of Rompun, 'cuz the first one rarely seemed to have any effect.
Always was a little skittish working with mules - they're so different from horses; whereas a horse would try to get away if you did something they didn't like or was even minimally discomforting, the mules/donkeys would try to kill you - or at least stomp you.
At any rate, I always felt like I'd done the world a favor every time I castrated a hayburner.

...if only I could find a picture of a horse beneath a Sweetgum, I could frame it up for Lucky....

As for horses not trying to stomp and kill you, you must not have worked on many Saddlebreds, or wild mustangs, or......

Kevin:

If I recall your reminiscences of working with Dr. Umphenour....you should have a pic or two of that stallion enterprise.

The whole central allée between the stallion paddocks (from Paris Pike all the way back to Elkhorn Creek, about a ½ mile) was planted by A. E. Bye with scintillating sweetgums.

And the outside edge of the paddocks were hedged with Taxus.

When Lucky dies, his ghost will haunt that exact spot, doomed to a lifetime of watching intact male horses idle their hours beneath the comforting shade of countless sweetgums. I was a young punk back then, and young punks don't carry cameras. How would I have known I would need that very scene captured some 20 years later?

Well that is how old I am. Ketamine/Romp was not available even then. Succinalcholine was but you had to wait too long to get them back up. Surital was the anesthetic of choice when I graduated that is why guys still did it standing. I remember a short story of a bad professor I had my first year. He thought he could control any horse and had us all watch how he floated the teeth on this"fractious gelding" His first step into the stall was met with a kick into his shin and he swore and exited. He then went into detail on how to convince the critter how powerful he was and got a twitch. The second time in he was hit in the same shin and buckeled over and swore. He came back out with a look to kill and went to the pharmacy and got succinyl choline and with the help of 2 unlucky students to detain the horse he got the IV dose delivered. Of course the horse collapsed and he then took the paralysis to inflict a whopping on the horse and walked out. We were all in shock. Nothing was ever said until he left to go to another university to abuse other horses. Note: Succinal choline paralyses the muscles while letting the pain to be felt from the pummeling.

Just went out to sample my Tetradium/Evodia/Euodia foliage. It doesn't smell oniony at all. More like green with some skunk. Now don't get the wrong idea here: although I have had it for 15 years and it tries to bloom every year now, the flowers never fully develop. Practically no petals, and sadly, no bees. It is quite drought tolerant here. I keep threatening to yank it.

Rick

Wait . . . I am eating some peanuts, and when I brought my Tetradium crushing hand to my mouth, I got a whiff of onion. Well, how 'bout that. But just a whiff.

I have just now performed my own test on various and sundry Tetradii around the yard (three specimens), and I hereby deny all knowledge of oniony smell on mature foliage. I get mostly green smell, with maybe some lingering citrus on the finish.

I wonder if the oniony thing is an artifact of young emergent first-flush-of-spring foliage.

I haven't collected seed from the bee trees in a long time. They apparently offer no resistance to germination. My plants came from seed I threw on the ground and forgot about. The following year I had to recollect what all these youngsters were crowding around the foot of the southern magnolia. I still have some to move out and about.

The parent plants are still populating the cloverleaf of the Newtown Pike/New Circle Road interchange in Lexington, KY. These were planted circa 1970. Most plants are still there, growing with absolutely no assistance whatsoever in heavy graded highway fill when not being run into/over by meandering motorists and mowers.

I can vouch for the ease of germination of Tetradium/Evodia/Euodia. I have a dozen seedlings growing quite nicely in pots. This is the second time I've grown this plant from seed and each time they came up quite easily.

I didn't realize it was such a great treat for pollen seeking-insects. That's a great plus. Thanks eVodia Valentino for the observation.

Scott