Spring 2022 EJC Arboretum

DID YOU KNOW?

In light of springtime and pollinators becoming more active this time of year, enjoy this wonderful educational experience, "Nature, My Garden of a Thousand Bees." Please view the entire video here: My Garden of a Thousand Bees.

Volunteer Highlight

"The Gift of a Sassafras"

Written by Mac Hart

"He who plants a tree, plants a hope." - Lucy Larcom

No person or tree yearns to be uprooted and displaced. Yet, sometimes, it is the only means of preserving a life.

Today I transplanted a young sassafras tree along the edge of our back woods. The sassafras (Sassafras albidum) is notoriously difficult to transplant, so before I begin digging, I resolve to take great care with each step of the process: gently digging and unearthing the tree at the Edith J. Carrier Arboretum at JMU, gingerly loading and transporting the specimen in my car, and painstakingly preparing a new hole in a prime location on the back of our property. It is risky business. It's life-or-death. Hopefully, the sapling will beat the odds and survive the trauma.

I learned to identify the tree by picking out the three distinctive shapes of its deciduous leaves: ovate (football-shaped), two-lobed and mitten-like (left or right-handed), or 3-lobed and bird-foot shaped.

Though it is probably a fool’s errand, I have been contemplating planting sassafras trees in our backyard woods ever since we moved in last June. I’ve searched for these finicky trees at local nurseries across the Valley, without success. Their reputation has obviously proceeded them.

If sassafras is to grace our land, I would need a transplant. Yesterday, I found one, or perhaps it found me.

My newly-discovered sassafras is a gangly five-foot sapling that was growing at the Edith J. Carrier Arboretum at JMU. Yesterday, while onsite for a weekly stint of volunteer work with my fellow “Forest Stewards” (a group of volunteers who convene on Tuesday mornings to remove invasive weeds, clear underbrush, and maintain walking trails), I spotted several leggy sassafras trees growing on the scrubby hillside next to the Education Center. While laboring to dig up some invasive brambles and underbrush, I learned that two of the smaller sassafras were slated for removal. Inquiring if I might have one, the Arboretum Director generously responded, “Sure, take both of them if you like.”

Its big sister, and a same-size sibling, shared space on a hillside copse. We reasoned that for the health and well-being of the elder tree, the two little ones had to go. I tapped the pick-of-the-litter sassafras to take home and raise as my own. This fledging sassafras tree is an unexpected gift.

However, the story actually began years ago...

To read more of "The Gift of a Sassafras" written by Mac Hart, click here!