A yellowwood narrowly avoided Louisville’s 1974 catastrophic tornado that devastated portions of nearby Olmsted-designed Cherokee Park and toppled trees in our part of town. The tree is big for a yellowwood (Cladrastis kentuckea). Not state champion big, but certainly exceptional by any measure, even in its weakened condition. Multi-trunks have hollowed out cavities, and its upper limbs are cabled together to prevent further splitting. Top Hill’s many beautiful trees attracted Sharon Lamb to the neighborhood in 1999, and she has been admiring and caring for her yellowwood since. The yellowwood is slightly taller than her two-story house and has a circumference, at slightly below chest height (knobby from old branches), of ten feet, five inches.

“Ed has joked with the tree guys about my ‘sacred’ tree. They couldn’t believe I would repeatedly pay them to trim it for balance and replace any of four cables that would be yanked out in a storm.” 

Ed Garber and Sharon Lamb—friends, partners and yellowwood lovers. 

There is little not to like

Mike Dirr, American maestro of all things woody, wrote positively about yellowwood in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants:

“Excellent tree for flowers and foliage; the medium size and spreading habit make it a choice shade tree for smaller properties; can be used as a single specimen or in groupings; surprisingly beautiful yellow fall color and winter bark.” And despite its southeastern USA provenance, yellowwood is hardy to -20F (-29C) and adaptable to acidic soil. Yellowwood develops a rounded canopy and is suited for smaller yards and for planting under powerlines.

Julian Campbell, my go-to botanist, said native stands of yellowwood are hard to find and harder to reach. In the Bluegrass region of central Kentucky, they are found on the towering limestone Palisades overlooking the Kentucky River. There are also scattered populations in McCreary and Whitley Counties in Eastern Kentucky, where they are growing in shale-base soils, rich with calcium. These trees are found as well on bluffs of the Mississippi River in well-drained, base-rich Loess soils.

Heartwood and a stroke of luck

Paul Cappiello, Executive Director, at Yew Dell Botanical Gardens in Crestwood, Kentucky, said he’s turned wood with the heartwood.

“It’s fabulous when worked fresh, but the wood fades quickly. Still a nice wood when cured but not canary yellow. Don’t find it very often. It is delightful to carve but is prone to checking if you don’t stay on top of it. I’ve worked late into the night to quickly remove as much wood to fight the checking.”

Perhaps it was a stroke of luck that the neighborhood’s yellowwood was planted on Top Hill Road on top of a thick layer of Ordovician limestone, hundreds of millions of years old. Our local limestone is distinguished by sinkholes and caves—Mammoth Cave being the most famous example.

The yellowwood took to a remarkably friendly and sociable neighborhood. We mourn deaths and welcome new babies.

Later this month, Rose and I will host a wine and cheese party with our neighbors. Gatherings are common throughout the summer.

Plants have social lives in our neighborhood too

The origin of the tree has puzzled me for 30 years. I first suspected the yellowwood, one of America’s most uncommon trees in the wild, might have been there long before the neighborhood was developed, beginning in the 1920s. I called John Swintosky. (I would argue there is no landscape architect with a comparable working knowledge of woody trees and shrubs.)  He looked at the tree appreciatively, turned to me, smiled and said the tree was planted by someone with good taste. We both love the tree, and we’re not alone, but the yellowwood had not preexisted the construction of the house. But still, 100 years of surviving a tornado, ice storms, droughts, and lawnmowers is noteworthy.

 

Sharon’s neighborhood yellowwood was in full bloom last month

 I walked down the street to see the white, pendant “wisteria-like blooms” five doors away and met Oliver Roe halfway there. He was gardening near a large American beech with lily-of-the-valley covering the ground underneath. (Note to self: Don’t ever plant lily-of-the valley pips in good soil again. They only sulk. Though slow to increase, they clearly thrive in unenriched soil with root competition.)

I told Oliver I was going to see the yellowwood. He and his young family moved into the neighborhood last year and  had already discovered the tree. He  told me that Todd Korfhage had been by for a landscape consultation earlier in the week and had mentioned the yellowwood. I called Todd the next week. The Korfhage family are nursery and floral royalty in Louisville, They’ve been in the nursery and floral trade since 1919. Todd remembered the yellowwood from his teen years. “The tree was already big,” he said.  His father worked on the property in the 1970s and 1980s.

Yellowwood peculiarities

Flowering is better some years than others. Paul Cappiello said. “Flowering can be a bit cranky and somewhat unpredictable. Not sure I buy the alternate year advice that is often presented. I don’t think it is that consistent.” Yellowwood trees in Salvisa had no flowers this year. The same was true for an approximately 60-year-old beautiful tree on Mac Reid and Tay Breene’s farm, one mile from ours.

Yellowwood blooms. Scott Beuerlein photo.

“It could be due to the predator satiation hypothesis,” Julian Campbell told me over the phone. “If some plants produce an abundance of seed, populations of prey build up, reducing the likelihood of being overwhelmed by predators.” Oaks are an example where there is the occasional explosive “mast season” with an abundance of acorns, and then several intervening years of scarcity.

Fragrance is an often-mentioned bonus. Blooms on the neighborhood tree were too high for me to photograph or to catch a scent. I don’t have a good nose for scent anyway.  Sharon Lamb said, “The scent is sweet, subtle.  When you walk up on the porch, there’s a moment of being enveloped in a heavenly cloud, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s hard to describe a scent.”

Joanne Fischer of Weaverville, North Carolina, formerly from Louisville, has made a life in gardening. She said, “I don’t remember it knocking my socks off.”

Why the yellowwood discrepancy?

Thousands of flower fragrances exist in nature, some affected by time of day, bloom stage, climate or soil.  Or perhaps it is friendly fungi. Zoe Schlanger, in The Light Eaters, mentioned an interesting possibility. “…aromatics in patchouli and the antioxidant power of artichoke heads have all been found to increase with the presence of certain fungal associations…The list goes on and on. Where a plant ends and fungi begin becomes hard to parse…By some scholars’ accounts, roots are literally the product of fungal influence, made to stitch plants and fungi into relation.”

Our neighborhood yellowwood

Life goes on

Seed distribution of yellowwood relies principally on gravity, but it is possible that seeds are cache for small rodents—mice and squirrels. There are several yellowwood seedlings under Sharon’s tree on north facing hillside, adjacent to the road. I’ve often thought I should ask for one. Maybe trade something from our garden. ( Ed Garber, Sharon’s friend and partner, has free rights to all the Lenten rose seedlings he wants.) 

My yellowwwod seedling. There and gone.

Two weeks ago, ten feet from our front sidewalk, in a bed of Lenten roses, I saw a yellowwood seedling, maybe a year old. Heaven sent? The seed sower, I suspect, was a chipmunk. Our garden was periodically a happy hunting ground for neighborhood cats, but there have been no cat sightings at the pond for several years. Our chipmunk population exploded.

The tree whip vanished within a week. No sign of grazing or foul play. Simply gone. There is no certainty, only hope, when you mind a tree seedling. Still, I was sad. I never had the chance to touch the little tree.

Sharon offered me another chance.

Not only would she be happy to share a yellowwood for the street, but she offered another one for the farm in Salvisa.