Cork trees?

Walking down Meadow Road from the main gate of the Arboretum, after a bit you come to these cork trees. This glorious abandon of branches dances and covers the sky on a winter morning, before the recent snow.

What do I know of cork trees? Nothing, truth be told. I lived for several years in a second growth forest in New Hampshire. I knew many trees, mostly for their value as firewood – maples, oaks, red and white, endless evergreens, some cherry, and one young hop hornbeam. I walked my land and knew that portion of the woods and I am learning, now, decades later, how much more there is to see, to know. 

Like, for instance, these cork trees, some grown from seeds brought from China in 1909, not something you would see outside of our blessed tree museum. And while these trees resemble those in our familiar landscape, they are, in truth, exotic expressions of the never-ending variety of this natural world.

And yet, they fit right in along Meadow Road. What a wonder!