THE PHILADEPHIA UNDERSTORY

Happy anniversary, Philly Trees.

September marks the sixth month anniversary of the Philly Trees blog and, in honor of that anniversary, I agreed to sit down for a one-on-one interview with Philadelphia’s favorite meteorologist, Cecily Tynan.

Cecily Tynan has been studying, and reporting on, the movement of the Medicine Wheel here in Philadelphia since 1995…no one understands the Philly seasons and their totems better than Ms. Tynan.

She’s seen it all…the highs, the lows, the scattered thunderstorms, the hot and humid summers, Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and the big daddy of them…Snowpocalypse 2010.  Nothing on the never-ending Wheel escapes the notice of Ms. Tynan.

Our interview brought back a lot of memories, especially from the beginning of the blog…and, to think, here we are at the beginning of Brother Grizzly’s first moon of autumn…the Ducks Fly Moon…six months down the line from Wabun the Golden Eagle and his Budding Trees Moon fever.  Six months and two seasons, from flowers to leaves to fruits and now back to leaves, from blossoms to acorns, there’s always something happening, always something worth watching when it comes to the Philadelphia understory…talk about your action news.

The broadcast date of the interview has yet to be announced…so we’ll celebrate the big six months right here on the blog…a candid, sentimental, sappy look back at all of my triumphs and all of my failures, my missed opportunities, my bold declarations, even my blunders and bloopers...the outtakes and the deleted scenes…a rare and privileged look behind the screen of Philly Trees.

MY COUNTRY, TIS OF TREE

Happy Independence Day, Philadelphia and all of its trees.  I’ll try to take a break from all that Original People mumbo-jumbo and spend a day celebrating the totems of the United States of America.

The national animal?  The bald eagle, although a case could be made for other native animals: the beaver, the bison, the shad, the crayfish, the painted turtle or the moose.

The national flower?  The rose.  That’s a little disappointing.  There are a lot of reasons why it could be the marigold, the dandelion, the prairie rose, the yucca flower or actually the sunflower, one of the few flowers native only to this Turtle Island.

The national tree?  Officially the oak.  Another disappointment.  How about something very specialized to America, something akin to Turtle Island: the sequoia, the tulip poplar, the ponderosa pine, the southern live oak, the Joshua tree, the bristlecone pine or the saguaro cactus?

Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. 

And the national colors?  The red, white and blue?  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just that we’re in the heart of the Strong Sun Moon, but I am enchanted and bedazzled by so many more colors than just those three.

There is no scientific basis for the following statement but I am going to say it anyway: it takes a real strong sun and a real high heat to brew all that summer color.  The first colors of the year are usually white, red, yellow and, of course, green…but, by the time we get to the Strong Sun Moon, we get the oranges, the blues and the purples, plus all the different shades and blushes of the original colors: the pinks, the crimsons and the jades.  In the summer, we go all the way around the color wheel. 

I believe, just on a gut instinct, that it simply takes longer for the trees and plants to produce those complicated colors than it does the reds and whites and greens.  But, like I said, I have no basis to believe that it’s true.

Except for my own eyes, of course.  Here is a typical farmstand in the very beginning of the Hardy Zone Seven growing season, mid-May:

And here are some farmstands in the heart of the Strong Sun Moon:

 

 

It’s just a theory but I’m saying that it takes more time, more sun and more heat to make all that color.   Although, come to think of it, the rainbow swiss chard kind of destroys that theory. 

Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.  Let’s move on.  Let’s go downtown to historical Philadelphia, see what the trees are doing over there.