Winter Muse

Winter Muse | by Clark Beavens

It gives me comfort and joy to explore the landscape I’m passing through, whether it’s through the window of a car, from the seat of my bicycle, or trying to hike a rocky, rooty old trail without looking down at the trail the whole time – dangerous for a klutz like me, but it’s hard to resist.

I’m a confessed tree geek; trees draw my attention like a moth to a floodlight.  I always seem to be trying to understand the stories trees are telling through their body language, or simply admiring them for their form or size or beauty.

Winter, with its cold, gray, gloomy days and long nights, can be rough on your spirit.  I try to cope by embracing whatever the season has in store and trying to find beauty or interest wherever and whenever I can, especially outdoors.

Thank God for the sycamore (Platanus occidentalis, so as not to confuse any readers from across the pond where “sycamore” refers to a different tree).  In the winter, just the sight of a stand of sycamores cheers me, even on a gray day.  I love how their ghostly trunks stand out against the gray of common trees, often delineating stream banks in a bottomland.  Or, if I happen to be hiking IN the bottomland along a stream (as fishermen do), I love to see their creamy, mottled forms and shadows sweeping the clouds in a winter blue sky.

Witch hazel (Hammamelis virginiana) is a smallish species (is it a shrub or a small tree?) that exudes winter character.  It’s another bottomland plant.  I guess I’m giving myself away – the main habitat where I encounter these is along the banks of a trout stream. Like camelias in the Low Country, witch hazel blooms during the dormant season, from autumn into winter.  Unlike camelia, it is deciduous and its delicate yellow blooms adorn winter-bare branches.  Most witch hazel species sold in the landscape trade are nonnative, but grow well in SC and are bred specifically for their showier blooms, which come later in the winter.  When our native witch hazel blooms it doesn’t really call attention to itself in a brazen manner, but when your eye recognizes it, it makes you want to get close enough to check it out, and it rewards you when you do.

Finally, the brilliant red berries of another native shrub species, a deciduous holly (Ilex verticillata) called Winterberry, instantly banishes drabness from a landscape.  These natives are also found in wet areas (imagine that!) and are quite adaptable in natural or cultivated landscapes. The screaming red berries are visible for miles, but since this species is dioecious it does require a male plant for the females to set berries. I most often see Winterberry in cultivated landscapes, where a splash of fiery red draws my eye and lifts my spirit. Winter isn’t so bad if you can find your own way to embrace it.

Photos: (Clockwise) Sycamore, Holly, Witch Hazel provided by Clark Beavens.