Friends of the Wildflower Garden
These short articles are written to highlight connections of the plants, history and lore of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden with different time frames or outside connections. A web of present and past events
This month highlights the Garden histories, the dead looking tree, FIPAG in 2024, one of the earliest spring blooming plants plus a historical Garden photo.
January 2025
The Histories
1907 - 2024
2025 will be the 119th year of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, Susan Wilkins’ 22nd year as Garden Curator and the 73rd year for the Friends of the Wildflower Garden.
You will find an annual history of each of the past 118 years of the Garden in the history archive on the Friends website. The histories are also available as printable files and in book form. If you are not familiar with the history archive, take a look at what’s available. Most documents are available in printable copies.
A bit of past history from 50 years ago may interest you. One of the worst blizzards of the century occurred on January 10-12 in the central US. There were 58 deaths in the midwest, one of the largest January tornado outbreaks ever in the south, a low barometer reading at Minneapolis of 28.6 and while the snowfall at Minneapolis was not a record, the winds shut down almost everything.
It is also known as the Super Bowl blizzard as the Vikings were playing Pittsburg on January 12, but fortunately, in New Orleans and you can guess how the game score ended.
The Dead Tree of Winter
Eloise Butler wrote in 1914:
In winter, a more intimate acquaintance can be made with deciduous trees. For it is only after the leaves have fallen that the architecture of trees can be clearly discerned. Every species has a different form. No individual, ever is exactly like another. A tree with its delicate tracery of leafless branches is a thing of beauty to eyes that are adjusted to see it.
It is on a winter day then that you may spot a tree that does not have a “delicate tracery of leafless branches.” You see branches but nothing twiggy. It appears devoid of twigs, naked, an ex-tree, deceased. You may be observing the winter form of the Gymnocladus dioicus, the Kentucky Coffeetree.
In spring you would still think it still an ex-tree as it shows no buds. They are hidden and wait their time to emerge from the bark and then they burst forth into huge six-branched compound leaves up to 30 inches long, in fact, the largest leaves of any deciduous North American tree. It becomes one of the gems of summer trees.
The flowers are in long racemes, quite striking in color. Trees are either male or female as the species name dioicus tells us but both have similar looking flowers.
If pollenated from a nearby male flower, the female produces a seed pod containing 4 or 6 seeds. The pod usually remains on the tree overwinter. If you collect a pod in the spring the seed will readily sprout and you can grow your own tree in a pot the first year, or directly into soil and it will usually grow to a foot in height the first summer, and about a foot every summer thereafter for about 10 years, then it slows down. And it is only late in this time period when the first true branch appears. A very young tree in winter appears to be a stick in the ground with bark.
The old coffeetrees in Eloise Butler were first planted by Martha Crone in 1934. You will find young seedlings in various parts of the Woodland Garden. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has planted them for many years, the oldest were established near Lake Nokomis.
When Francois Michaux wrote his book, North American Silva, in 1819 he noted that specimens had been sent to France over 50 years previously where “young trees are sought, on account of their beautiful foliage, for the embellishment of parks and pictoresque (sic) gardens."
As to using the seeds for coffee, Michaux said this: “The name of Coffee Tree was given to this vegetable by the early emigrants to Kentucky and Tennessee, who hoped to find in its seeds a substitute for coffee; but the small number of persons who made the experiment abandoned it, as soon as it became easy to obtain from the seaports the coffee of the West Indies.”
You can read the our fact sheet on the tree here.
Read Eloise Butler's article on tree form here.
Below: Looking up into the canopy of a mature coffeetree in leaf at Eloise Butler.
FIPAG had a busy year
The Friends Invasive Plant Action Group (FIPAG) conducted many events during the past year beginning with garlic mustard work in the spring with three scheduled sessions in April/May, although the first was a bit wet.
Below: The long-term effect of removing buckthorn and other invasives, allowing native shrubs and forbs to take over is illustrated this photo comparing the renovated right side of the path with the un-improved left side where buckthorn is still in leaf in late fall.
On June 2 an effort was made along the trail on the west side of the Garden fence to widen a swath of removed buckthorn in the area of Old Andrew’s Cave.
Work then moved to the new area southeast of the Garden where a pond, once obscured by nonnative honeysuckle and buckthorn, was being restored to a new meadow of native herbaceous plants, some of which were planted in the fall of 2023.
Below: Tangled brush obscures the hillside and pond in the new area FIPAG began renovating in 2023.
During early summer FIPAG was in the process of growing out hundreds of plants from seed purchased by the Friends. A small number were ready to plant during a June 15 work session; then they started tackling dense buckthorn among the beautiful ancient white oaks in the area near the pond.
These work sessions continued with “pop-up” dates on short notice for volunteers that had available time, ending with 3 scheduled-in-advance sessions to end the work in October.
In October Jim Proctor wrote to the volunteers:
I think the savanna pond area is becoming one of the most beautiful spots in the Minneapolis Park system. Gorgeous old white oaks; an open woodland with long sight lines; a pothole pond with emergent vegetation where owls bathe and wood ducks gather; a large red oak snag that provides habitat for wildlife; a very lengthy white oak limb that is truly a sight to behold.
Below: The newly renovated area above the pond contains a number of mature white oaks.
All photos in this article are from Jim Proctor.
Looking forward to spring
Once we are into the new year, we seem to look forward to spring and the reopening of the Wildflower Garden. Before the gate opens one spring plant is already flowering - the shrub American Hazelnut, Corylus americana.
If you know of this shrub in your neighborhood you have already seen the male catkins on the branches. These formed last fall. As spring approaches they elongate and then open their flowers to spread their pollen by the wind. Nearby on a twig of a nearby hazelnut the female flower is opening and receptive to pollen plant. They must cross-pollenate as the female flowers are unreceptive to pollen from male flowers on their own plant. You must look carefully to spot the small bud that houses the female flowers as only small red thread-like styles and stigmas emerge from it.
The nuts that develop in summer are sweet and similar to the European Filbert and have long been used for eating or grinding up into meal to make a cake-like bread. Flavor is similar to the two commercial varieties. Great numbers of wildlife species also benefit from this plant in the wild.
Fact sheet on American Hazelnut
For a look at the more noticeable early spring flowers once the Garden opens in April check out our article on these five earliest spring bloomers at the Wildflower Garden.
Historical Photo
Seventy-five years ago on February 16, 1950 Garden Curator Martha Crone made this Kodachrome of the old Garden office in snow sitting on the edge of the plateau halfway from the front gate to the wetland.
Previous articles
All selections published in 2024
All selections published in 2023