The tough, elastic wood has a pleasing grain and is used to make tennis racquets, hockey sticks, oars, furniture, interior floors and the Louisville Slugger baseball bat. The juice from leaves relieves the swelling and itching of mosquito bites and has a folkloric use as a prophylactic measure for snake bites.
The green ash genus name, Fraxinus, is from the Latin name for the Old World ash species. The wood of green ash is used for baseball bats, tennis rackets, tool handles, oars and picture frames. Green ash undersides of leaves are completely green.
Escaped from cultivation and found in old fields, pastures, fence rows, and low, wet ground along streams. An Asian species, white mulberry was introduced by early settlers, who cultivated it for its berries and as fodder for an attempted silkworm industry. White mulberry is the favorite food of the silkworm caterpillar and in Asia is an important part of the silk-making industry.
It is named and noted for its cup shaped, tulip-like flowers that bloom in spring. Flowers are yellow with an orange band at the base of each petal. Four-lobed bright green leaves (to 8” across) turn golden yellow in fall. Wood is used inter alia for furniture, plywood, boatbuilding, paper pulp and general lumber. Native Americans made dugout canoes from tuliptree trunks.
The leaves are shiny, and dark green on the upper surface, and the undersides are pubescent and silvery. The flowers are solitary, and fragrant, measuring 2 to 3 inches in diameter, with creamy white blooms that have 9 to 12 petals. The flowers will open in the morning and close during the night for up to 2 to 3 days. After flowering, cone-like fruits of aggregate follicles appear and contain bright red seeds.
Southern magnolia, is a large, broadleaf evergreen tree that is noted for its attractive glossy dark green leaves and its large, extremely fragrant flowers. It is the only evergreen in the Magnoliaceae (magnolia) family and typically grows to 60 to 80 feet tall with a pyramidal to rounded crown, a spread of 20 to 40 feet wide, and a trunk diameter of 3 feet.
Magnolia × soulangeana, commonly known as saucer magnolia, is a deciduous hybrid magnolia (M. denudata × M. liliiflora). It is the most commonly grown deciduous magnolia. Fragrant flowers (to 8” across) bloom in early spring. Flowers are pink with white interiors.
It is multi-stemmed, spreading, and rounded. This plant is one of the smaller species found in the Magnolia genus. In the spring, goblet or lily-shaped flowers appear and have 6 to 7 tepals that are purplish-red on the outer surface and white on the inside. The genus name, Magnolia, is in honor of Pierre Magnol, a French botanist from the 17th century. The specific epithet, liliifora, means flower like a lily.
Aromatic leaves are bright green in summer and yellow to orange to brilliant red in fall. Dark blue berries on female trees hang from bright red stems in September. The name sassafras was derived from the Spanish word salsafras, referring to the tree’s alleged medicinal value. The specific epithet, albidum, refers to the light or whitish color of the undersides of leaves.
Foster Holly is a cultivar of Ilex x attenuata and is an evergreen shrub or small tree that has a fine texture, and a dense, slender, conical, or pyramidal shape. It is slow growing and may reach up to 20 to 30 ft tall and 10 to 15 feet wide. An abundance of small, pea-sized orangish-red-to-red berries ripen in the fall and persist through the winter.