29. Ebenaceae

There really ought to be a word for these surprise connections that the study of plant families provides us. The Ebenaceae or ebony family provides us with another: ebony and persimmons.

Ebony and persimmons both belong to the genus Diospyros, wherein most members of this mostly tropical family are found. I doubt I ever would have connected them, left to my own devices. Ebony is, of course, the famously dark wood that hails from Asia and Africa and has been used for carving by many cultures, notably the Ancient Egyptians. Ebony wood is so dense that it will sink in water.

There is a wide geographic spread between the various species of ebony: west Africa (Diospyros crassiflora), south India (Diospyros ebenum), the island of Mauritius (Diospyros tesselaria) and Indonesia (Diospyros celebica) -- to name a few.

I had heard of persimmons for many years, but not actually encountered one until living in California, where they are fairly common. What struck me above all about them was this: they have the most distinctive calyx of any plant or tree I have ever seen. The calyx in this case is a hard green "leafy" round base that connects the fruit or flower with the rest of the tree. They are strikingly beautiful and beautifully designed. 

I have tried the fruit of the persimmon, which, like a tomato goes from light green to deep red. I found the flavor to be a bit weird, if you want my offhand honest opinion. To be fair, I think I may have had the heart-shaped, astringent, Hachiya variety as opposed to the squat, non-astringent, Fuyu variety.

Like ebony wood trees, persimmons are widely distributed around the world in many species.

28. Cyperaceae

One thing about the Cyperaceae family is that, if a person were flustered or in a hurry, they might confuse the name with the Cupressaceae family - the same way that a flustered and hurried person might conceivably confuse the Aracaceae family with the Arecaceae family.

Similar sounding as the names may be, in all of these cases the plants could not be more different.

Whereas the Cupressaceae family includes the tallest and largest trees in the world, the Cyperaceae family consists of sedges. Sedges are low-growing plants that typically grow in wetlands. Although there are over five thousand species of these things, I am only aware of encountering a handful of them. They made an impression on me with their completely unusual flowers that don't really resemble flowers at all. Structurally, sedges are distinct.

27. Cupressaceae

 

The more I think about it, Cupressaceae is a family of mind-boggling significance. For one it includes the tallest trees, the coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), and for another the largest trees, the giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum, seen above on a 2007 visit to Sequoia National Park).

 

One would think that that would be enough for one family, and be done with it. But no... There are also to be reckoned with the famous bald cypress trees in the deep south (Taxodium distichum), seen here with their famous "knees" while visiting Louisiana. This is to say nothing of the cypress trees I encountered while visiting my brother in the Texas Hill Country - possibly but not necessarily the same species.

 

But it does not stop at this embarrassment of riches.  There are also the entire worlds of junipers and cypresses and the many images those words conger up. Juniper, a component of gin, is one of the most expressionistic looking of all plants. In Sedona, AZ it is said that their twisted, corkscrew growth patterns reflect the energy of the vortexes. Whether that is true or not, it is hard to argue with the cartoon-Kabuki-Dr. Caligari profile of a Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa). The better known Mediterranean cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) has a very different effect with its tall, skinny, calming elegence, a familiar archetypal component of Italian landscaping (seen below at the Krishnamurti house in Ojai, CA).

 

And still, the story of the cypress family does not stop here. For that, one needs to dig all the way back to the earliest encounter of all, the rows of arborvitae on my Dad's property in New York. The word "arborvitae" would slip gracefully off his tongue as though it were the most common everyday object. "It's over there by the arborvitae" he would say. For years this Latin phrase, which means "tree of life", intrigued me. I later assumed it must be the genus name, an understandable conjecture, but in fact the genus name in this case is Thuja.

26. Cucurbitaceae

This is an important family from the point of view of food, as it includes the entire universe of squash, melons, zucchini, pumpkins and, as the name suggests, cucumbers. My childhood diet was full of this stuff, from hot summer watermelons to zucchini bread that my Mom made from the overabundance of zucchini growing in the vegetable garden. 

An unusual twist on this familiar category of food emerged in my California years. It was in the chapparal of the Pinnacles that I first encountered the spiky, pendulous green fruits of wild cucumber (Marah fabaceus), also known as Marah or manroot. Another striking thing about them were their long tendrils that would attach and coil around just about anything, thus suspending the spiky fruits at various heights. Pretty soon I was noticing wild cucumbers growing in back yards in King City and brushy thickets all over the Central Coast. Apparently they were used as food and medicine by various Native Americans.

Separately and simultaneously, I encountered fruits that resembled wild cucumber without the spikes. A Mexican colleague explained to me that they were chayote (Sechium edule), a popular staple in Mexico, which explained why I found them in gardens and supermarkets throughout the Salinas Valley. An added surprise was learning about mirlitons, the Creole-Caribbean form of the exact same food, appearing in places like Haiti and Louisiana. The ultimate fulfillment of this journey was to eat the thing. Above, stuffed mirlitons in a preliminary stage of preparation.

25. Cornaceae

 

Growing up, there was a dogwood tree (probably Cornus florida, flowering dogwood) directly behind my parents' house. It was a good size for easy kid climbing - not big, but user-friendly. It was perhaps one of the top ten trees that I was most intimately familiar with, physically, from the simple act of climbing and spending time around it. If, say, as a ten-year-old I had to tie my identity to a particular tree, it may well have been this one - a deciduous, temperate North American tree, loved equally by squirls and ten-year-old boys.

Many years later, while staying on Shelter Island, my mother pointed out a Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa), a very attractive tree covered with creamy white flowers. It is the stylized, Japanese version of the plain vanilla dogwood that I grew up with. It is more of an aesthetic experience than a physical one. Interestingly, these two dogwoods, kousa and florida, in addition to being around the same size, are closely related.

So there you have it - one lifetime, two dogwoods.

24. Clusiaceae

When I worked at Flamingo Lodge in Everglades National Park, many years ago,  there was a very interesting tree in front of the lodge that visitors would inquire about. It was Clusia major (formerly Clusia rosea), also going by such unusual names as autograph tree, pitch-apple and Scotch attorney. Autograph tree makes the most sense, since it is possible to "write" on the leaves with any pointed object. At the time, and up to this very day, I find this tree to be fabulously exotic. It is actually native to the Caribbean, making it both tropical and local, a great combination as far as I'm concerned. The leaves are firm and waxy, like a Ficus, whereas the nuts and beautiful white flowers are quite unique.

The only other member of the Clusiaceae family that has crossed my radar is Garcinia gummi-gutta, also known as garcinia cambogia, another tropical oddity that has recently been popularized as an herbal supplement. The claim is that it promotes weight loss. Whether that is true or not, what we do know for certain is that it hails from Indonesia and used in Southeast Asian cooking for making curries, among other things.

This is a relatively small family, around 1600 species that are mostly found in the tropics.

23. Celastraceae

At the beginning of this blog, I alluded to a feeling of surprised wonder at learning that two or more plants that you would never connect are actually relatives. The example I used was the Celastraceae family, which contains several wildly different species that I encountered in different ways at different times and in different places.

The first is the shrub Euonymus alatus,  familiar to me as winged euonymous, seen above in all of its "winged" glory. The plants grew all over my Dad's property and their sheer distinctiveness left a very deep impression on me as a child. You could even say that being next to one of these plants was a feeling I developed in the formative days of my youth, much of which was spent outdoors.

Flash forward about three decades to the California Central Coast, where I encountered a street tree that at first I confused with the California pepper tree (Schinus molle). It had a similar shaggy, poodle dog look, but close inspection revealed it to be the mayten tree (Maytenus boaria) from South America. The effect is similar to a weeping willow, as these specimens along Lake El Estero in Monterey illustrate.

A third member of the Celastraceae is a not a plant I have seen in person, but know of through people and films. About a decade before the mayten tree, an Ethiopian I met while working in a mail room in Oregon told me about Khat (Catha edulis), a plant that his compatriots like to chew for its pleasant effects. In his words, the drug makes people feel relaxed and outgoing. Then last year I saw the film Captain Phillips, wherein the Somali pirates are shown chomping the stuff non-stop, and it appeared to be more of a stimulant. In any case, this all seemed as far removed from the euonymus shrubs of my youth as possible, and yet they share a common heritage.

As it turns out, most of this family's 90 plus genera are native to the tropics, with Euonymus and Maytenus being among the few found in more temperate climates. Other exceptions are Canotia and Celastrus. My beloved Euonymus alatus is native to Asia, but has been popular with North American landscapers for some time. As an unintended consequence, it has spread into the wild and been declared an invasive species in some eastern states.

22. Caryophyllaceae

I mentioned chickweed (Stellaria media) earlier in this blog when I recalled removing the low-growing weed from around the stems of Hosta (which is a member of the Asparagaceae family). For better or for worse, chickweed is the one member of the Caryophyllaceae family that has made the greatest impression on me.

I think we can all agree that Caryophyllaceae is a mouthful.

But wait, this family is also known as the carnation family, so of course that is the best known of the over two thousand species and 86 genera of what are mainly different kinds of chickweed. There are also pinks (one of which is the carnation), sandworts, pearlworts, strapworts, ruptureworts, soapworts, corncockles, campions, catchflies, spurreys and sea-spurreys, among others. 

Common chickweed also goes by the name chickenwort.

21. Cactaceae

  

I have been intrigued with cacti ever since I sat on one in Tucson, AZ. I must have been around ten years old at the time; it was my first trip ever out west. Since then I have returned to the scene of the crime several times, and what a marvelous scene it is. The above photos, taken at Saguaro National Park, show a saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) standing with a pair of teddy bear chollas (Cylindropuntia bigelovii) and another cholla in detail. The photo below, taken elsewhere in the Tucson area, shows the famous prickly pears (Opuntia) in their wild state. In Mexico they are called nopales and are used for food.

 

Below is the cultivated form of nopales (Opuntia ficus-indica) growing in California. I will add that they are very nutritious and in the right hands, delicious. Both pears and pads are edible.

Finally, there is the lovable organ pipe cactus (Stenocereus thurberi) seen at Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the only native habitat for this cactus in the U.S.

20. Buxaceae

 

For me the Buxaceae family will always bring to mind the boxwood hedges (Buxus sempervirens) I grew up around in the eastern U.S. While they are native to a huge portion of the Old World, including all the Mediterranean and parts of Asia, I associate them with the stately old gardens of Europe. For this I have to thank places like Colonial Williamsburg and Old Westbury Gardens (above), which provide a direct link to traditional English gardens in the New World. Pictured here, appropriately, is the Boxwood Garden; the sprawling boxwoods on either side of the pool have unfortunately succumbed to disease and are no longer there.

A funny thing about the boxwood shrubs I grew up around is that they needed to be covered or "boxed" up in the winter. I don't think this has anything to do with the name. I guess they are just sensitive enough that six inches of snow would have a negative effect on their well being. Curiously, the nearby rhododendrons, which seem more delicate, do just fine uncovered.

Also in the same family, and also familiar to me from my early years, is the ground cover Pachysandra terminalis (seen below).  While commonly used in American gardening, it is native to Asia and sometimes goes by the name Japanese spurge.

19. Brassicaceae

Brassicaceae must be an economically important family, since it brings us broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and other highly nutritious vegetables. For me it always brings to mind California's ubiquitous mustard plants (Brassica nigra). They are wild but not native. It is said that the Padres from Spain sowed mustard seeds to mark the trail linking the missions along the El Camino Real. They sure did a good job. The yellow flowers are now not only everywhere, but recognized as impossible to eradicate.

18. Boraginaceae

There is a story about me and this family, the borage family. One day while working in the Salinas Valley, a gentleman called me over and asked if I could identify the strange plant growing in his yard. It was almost three feet tall and he swore to me he had no idea how it got there. I must say I had never seen anything quite like it.

It turns out it was something called Tower of Jewels (Echium wildpretii), a real curiosity hailing from Madeira and the Canary Islands. Apparently it does well in our Mediterranean climate and is planted in gardens for its aesthetic Dr. Seuss qualities. As for how it got in that man's yard, the answer is birds. The red flowers attract bees, butterflies and birds, the latter of which spread the seeds haphazardly.

Around the same time, I took notice of a very distinctive shrub that suddenly seemed to be everywhere I went in central and southern California. The shrub is called Pride of Madeira (Echium candicans). It belongs to the same genus as Tower of Jewels (Echium) and hails from the same place (Madeira). And as this photo taken in Venice CA shows, the blue flowers are very, very striking.

17. Bignoniaceae

The Bignoniaceae family includes some of the most striking plants I have ever seen. They are showy for sure, but in a good way as far as I'm concerned. My experience of them has been mainly on the west coast, although they are found throughout the tropical world and also some subtropical and temperate regions, such as the southern U.S.

It is hard not to be enchanted with the Jacaranda tree, with its lavish springtime display of lavender flowers that gently litter the ground, as the one seen above in Santa Barbara is doing. While there are nearly 50 species in the Jacaranda genus, I believe the one most commonly used as a street tree in California is Jacaranda mimosifolia, a native of Brazil.

Another eye-popper is the Catalpa, not only for its insanely showy flowers, but its enormous heart-shaped leaves. The leaves are the really distinctive thing about these trees that caught my eye as soon as I encountered them in the Salinas Valley. Evidently they were brought here, since the Southern Catalpa (bignoniodes) is native to the Gulf Coast and the Northern Catalpa (speciosa) to the Midwest. The long, skinny bean pods are also unmistakeable.

At one time Royal Paulownia (Paulownia tomentosa) was considered an Asian counterpart to the Catalpas, due to its similar leaves, but has since been placed in a family of its own. Evidently the presumed relatedness did not stand up to genetic testing.

One well known North American member of the family is trumpet vine (Campsis radicans), native to the south and well liked by humans and hummingbirds alike. Seen below are some of its beautiful flowers and pods, photographed by Kate in Louisiana.

Also loved by hummingbirds is Cape honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis), a South African import that gets a lot of play by California landscapers. It made an attractive hedge along a swimming pool in Tustin, where I first noticed it. Whereas trumpet vine makes an attractive hedge along a car wash in Salinas, which is where I noticed it the other day.

 

16. Betulaceae

What can I say about paperbark birch trees (Betula papyrifera)? I grew up with them. There was one right in front of my parents house. Like every dumb kid, I impulsively stripped the bark off the trunk for my amusement. I may have even written things on it. To my Dad's credit, he set me straight on the consequences of perpetrating such violence on the skin of a tree. Thank you Dad, and sorry Mr. birch tree. Happily, Mr. birch tree lives on to this day!

Betulaceae, sometimes known as the birch family, also includes hornbeams, hazels, and alders. It is a tiny family containing less that 200 species. Along with birch trees, the best known members are probably the hazels Corylus avellana and Corylus maxima, from which we get hazelnuts and filberts respectively.