You’ll fall in love with Sargent’s cherry blossoms so long as you plant this tree in well-drained soil. This tree does particularly well on slopes.
With Valentine's Day upon us, it's fitting to celebrate with some love poems and songs -- sweet, poignant and funny -- that mention trees.
All of which brings us to some related trees that do well in our northeast Illinois climate. That way, you can plant a little love this spring.
William Shakespeare gave us these beautiful lines from "A Midsummer Night's Dream": "So we grew together, / Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, / But yet a union in partition; / Two lovely berries molded on one stem; / So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart."
This spring, you might try a Sargent's cherry in a sunny, well-drained area. It matures to 30-40 feet and shows pink flowers in early spring and red foliage in the fall.
The poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gave a woman a ginkgo leaf along with a love poem he'd written -- but then never saw her again. Maybe she was more into roses? We love ginkgos for their beauty and tolerance for road salt, drought and air pollution.
Translated from German, here's a stanza from Goethe's poem that describes the distinctive, double-lobed ginkgo leaf: "Does it represent one living creature / Which has divided itself? / Or are these two, which have decided, / That they should be as one?"
You can always count on the Romantic poets for melodrama. Christina Rossetti's poem "Song" begins: "When I am dead, my dearest, / Sing no sad songs for me: / Plant thou no roses at my head, / Nor shady cypress tree: / Be the green grass above me / With showers and dewdrops wet; / And if thou wilt, remember, / And if thou wilt, forget."
Try Golden Thread-leaved sawara cypress, which grows into a 6-foot-tall semi-weeping shrub. Bald-cypress, not really a cypress but a tough, graceful deciduous tree with cypress-like foliage, grows into a 50-70 foot tall tree. Both like full sun and acid soil.
While not a poet nor song writer, Zora Neale Hurston was a master of our language, as demonstrated in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God: "He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom -- a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took."
Ornamental pears, beloved for stunning fall color late into November and their beautiful spring flowers, have a few faults that should temper their widespread use. Try Trinity callery pear, which has stronger branch structure to withstand storms or Chanticleer callery pear, which grows fewer fruits than other invasive pear trees.
We'll finish with Elvis Presley, who inspired undying devotion, even when he was singing lyrics like these: "You can shake an apple off an apple tree / Shake-a, shake-sugar, / But you'll never shake me / Uh-uh-uh / No-sir-ee, uh, uh / I'm gonna stick like glue, / Stick because I'm / Stuck on you."
A crabapple is just an apple smaller than 2 inches in diameter. There are many disease-resistant crabapples that give beautiful spring flower shows. Try Donald Wyman crabapple, which likes full sun and reaches about 20 feet high.
Laurie Casey is a staff writer at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle.
