One the many attributes trees have (among many benefits) is that they are indicators or heralds of the seasons. For example, the vibrant fall colors of leaves announce that the season of autumn is here and winter, with its cold and bare branches, will soon arrive. Spring, too, with it tree blossoms and emerging flowers, tells us that the cold of winter is behind us and warmer, more pleasant weather is on the way. These spring tree blossoms come in a variety of colors and shapes and provide a colorful spectrum to complement the daffodils, tulips, crocuses, and forsythia around the homes. This spring was a very profusely colorful one, due to more ideal weather conditions. In Vermilion, the crabapples, pear trees, cherries, redbuds, magnolias, and even the maples had a unusually great abundance of reds, yellows, pinks, corals, snowy whites as well as profuse green flowers. We certainly had a beautiful spring as our municipal trees are concerned.
But take a ride in the landscape of the rolling hills and fields and see another color palate of spring trees occurring in a much wider scope. In this short period of time from late March to early May, as the trees leaf out, but are not fully developed, woodland trees display a wide variety of hues and colors that blend together, forming a colorful display that almost rivals the leaf displays in the fall. The broadleaf trees, maples, elms, oaks, and beeches, all put forth a wide range of shades of greens – light to darker green, lime green, pale-whitish green contrasting with the dark forest green of the conifers. Mixed in with these colors are the burgundy redbuds, the whites of wild crabapples, the bronze- white flowers of dogwoods, and the sparse whites of serviceberries. Add in the brown of plowed fields and the green of emerging winter wheat and all these hues and contrasting colors add up to a medley that washes away the cold, gray of a barren winter and gives us hope for a new season.
However, view the trees quickly as they will be gone in the breath of a spring breeze. As the poet Robert Frost put it:
“ Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower,
But only so an hour.
The leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
If you have questions or concerns, feel free to contact the Vermilion Tree Commission by contacting Anne Maiden at the Mayor’s Office at annemaiden@vermilion.net or at 440-204-2402. You are also cordially invited to attend our monthly Tree Commission meeting which is on the second Wednesday of the month. The Tree Commission will meet at the Ritter Public Library on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, at 7:00 PM
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